Diversity and inclusion—5 ways agencies can develop empathy and avoid blind spots

At its simplest, advertising is about moving people to feel something about a brand to sell a product or service and make money. Achieving “the feels” is crucial for effectiveness because, as psychologist Daniel Kahneman has shown, people make decisions with their hearts and then post-rationalize them with their heads. As an industry, we’ve intuitively known this for years, which is why we’ve put so much effort into understanding audiences. After all, how can we move people to feel a certain way if we don’t really understand them? Strategy plays a fundamental role in providing this understanding or empathy. The role of a strategist is often described as being the “voice of the consumer.” And we have a range of strategy super-skills and resources that help us leave our metropolitan bubbles and really understand the motivations of those by whom we’re trying to get noticed. From qualitative groups to ethnography, from social listening to behavioral data, these tools give strategists the power to understand why people think and act in the way they do. They give us the power of empathy. The pressure to get to a strategy quickly has never been greater. While we can make a logical argument for a strategic starting point in a couple of hours, it won’t allow for any of the strategy tools mentioned above. It won’t allow us to develop empathy for those we’re trying to reach. And crucially for our clients, it won’t allow us to truly understand the real “people problem” their brand is best placed to solve. Pace is the enemy of empathy and therefore effectiveness. Brands on the rise A look at up-and-coming brands disrupting their categories Read more here This challenge is especially true when we think about diversity and inclusion. While there has never been a greater push to make advertising more inclusive, there’s never been less time to truly understand the people we’re trying to include. Empathy is fundamental when it comes to celebrating diversity and being inclusive. It sounds obvious but we don’t know what we don’t know. All of us have blind spots. And as an industry we’re not only pretty homogeneous:—70% of us have a college or university background versus the national average of 29%, according to target group index research—we are more likely to suffer from groupthink than even those in the armed forces. All of which means our blind spots are probably hard identify, too. While blind spots might lead to average ads borne of little insight, in the context of D&I it can lead to exclusion. And unintentional blind spots can hurt just as much as deliberate exclusion. Now more than ever, we need strategy super-skills so that those working in advertising and creating ads can understand other people’s perspectives. Without these—and with the constant pressure to produce work more and more quickly—people revert to stereotypes and the comfort of their own bubbles. Here are 5 ways to protect the strategy super-skills and mind our blind spots: Acknowledge upfront we all have blind spots Our industry knows we have blind spots, but it often feels they’re addressed as an executional afterthought. Properly addressing blind spots isn’t about playing “diversity bingo;” we need to bake it into the upfront customer understanding. If that’s not a current behavior, we need to make it a process point until it becomes habitual. Make the financial argument for empathy We have never had so much empirical data on how advertising works, and we need to use it to protect strategic development time. Having the time to develop real empathy isn't a nice-to-have, it will make the resulting work and campaign much more inclusive and effective. Think about briefs as “people problems” When working at pace it’s very easy to hide behind marketing speak, so we must always think about what we’re trying to do in terms of real people—what really matters to them and how can a brand help answer that? Thinking and speaking about client briefs in everyday vernacular is a really great way of spotting gaps in our understanding and staying honest and inclusive. Always get human contact Sometimes it just won’t be possible to commission qualitative research or a round of ethnography, but we can still do better than Googling! Where else can we go to gain a better understanding of people? It can be going directly to a recruiter and running virtual groups or finding a contact who happens to know someone who truly is one of the people you’re trying to reach. Any of these options are better than nothing. Call the experts Another great way of really understanding people quickly is to call an expert. Be they a child psychologist or an experienced qualitative researcher who has done a lot of research into a certain group—they can be great sources and worth mining. Subscribe to Ad Age Sign up now for the latest industry news and analysis Click here

Diversity and inclusion—5 ways agencies can develop empathy and avoid blind spots

Featured Stories