For a long time, I’ve talked about the importance of empathy.
In fact I regard it as the most important trait I look for in a planner.
That’s right, empathy … not curiosity.
As my Mum used to say, ‘being interested in what others are interested in’ is the foundation of forging real understanding … understanding that lets you gain real insight that leads to work that doesn’t just resonate, but is both authentic and sincere to the core.
I recently took my team through the original ‘Thank You Mom’ work I was involved with at Wieden for P&G.
In essence, there were 2 roles the planning departments of W+K had.
The first was to find a point of view for P&G’s Olympic sponsorship that was authentic rather than falling into that trap of being ‘the proud sponsor of razor blades for athletes’ etc etc.
However, once it had been identified that P&G could genuinely claim to helping the Mum’s of athletic hopefuls in their role of being supportive Mum’s, the rest of our job was to ensure the work we produced was authentic to the regions we were going to cover … the UK, the US, China and Brazil.
It took a long time, a lot of meeting, watching, listening and chatting [in fact the little film I made from it all to help the client and creatives really understand our Mum’s is still one of the best things I made at Wieden] but it made all the difference because while some elements of the film may be lost to viewers of other nations [ie: Westerners thought the Chinese Mum who watched her child win via a TV in her home did it because she couldn’t afford to go to the event, when the reality is we had learned parents wouldn’t attend key events for fear of afraid of adding extra pressure to their beloved child with their presence] the fact is those within each culture we featured connected to the little nuances we were able to reveal which led to work that felt part of the culture rather than just being an observer of it.
The reason I am saying all this is because I recently read an amazing article about interrogation techniques, or more specifically, how the interrogation techniques favoured by the Police and military are wrong.
Now I am not suggesting interrogation techniques are anything similar to how we find out our insights about people … but the learnings are.
You see what a team of scientists discovered is that rather than intimidating individuals in the hope of getting them to reveal their information, the secret was to show genuine empathy towards them.
Not in what they did or tried to do.
Not in their cause or their ideology.
But in why all of it was important to them.
In essence, they discovered empathy – rather than intimidation – was the closest thing we have to a truth serum.
Or said another way, be interested in what others are interested in.
Another reason [for me] to say Thank you Mom.
[Read the article here]