Transcripts
1. Introduction: We're bombarded with so
many different messages coming from so many
different directions. Social media, emails, text messages, websites, ads, they're coming from
all directions. But there are certain
ones that stand out. I was so passionate
about figuring out why. When I learned
what that why was, it had a lot to do with empathy. That's why I wanted to
share that with you today. Hi, I'm Jessica Nevins and
I'm a marketing executive. Today we're going
to be looking at brand marketing and empathy. My passion for marketing
started at a very young age. I was mesmerized by
commercials and print ads, and always looking at
the why behind them and why people were responding to them that the
way that they did. What that turned
into later on was working with friends
and family members, not realizing that
I was helping them market their products
and services, but I was. And later on that translated to a wonderful career that is still going and
growing that I love. In today's class, we're going to be breaking down your brand. We're going to look
at brand chemistry and how empathy can
weave into there, what empathy is,
why it's powerful, and how you can use that to communicate with your audience. We're going to look
at some attributes of your audience and understand what they need to hear from you. It is the human factor that is ultimately the driver
of how you connect. This class is great for marketing leadership and for anyone in the
marketing department. It's also great if you want to cross train from
other departments to understand marketing
a little better in your organization because
it's my belief as a marketing leader that when you're able
to integrate with other departments in
your organization and understand what you all do, that you can work together
for a more cohesive solution. For our class project today, what I'd like you
to do is to develop a marketing campaign based
on your brand's guidelines. Understand your brand
a little better, understand what your
audience is doing, and how you can speak to them in a way that they will connect. Your next step is to download the worksheet and walk
through the exercise. Then you can share it
to the project gallery and then ask questions
in the discussion area, and I'm happy to provide
feedback. Let's get started.
2. Defining Your Brand Chemistry: In this lesson, we're going to define your brand chemistry. We're going to dig in deep
and uncover what the elements are about your brand and about other brands that
make them successful. Let's start with identifying
the personality of a brand. Now there are brands
out there that we're all familiar with. Any one of those brands, maybe it's your favorite
brand, think about it. If you could characterize that brand and give
it a personality, what would you say? Would you say it's fun? Would you say it's luxurious? Would you say it's stable? Would you say it's trustworthy? What are the elements
that come to mind? I want you to think about, this is the best way I
can explain it to you, is think about your best friend and some of their qualities, some of their elements, what makes them up? Use some of those elements and mix them together with a brand. Obviously, if you have a
friend that's really loyal, you have a friend
that's dependable. You have a friend that's funny. Use those and correlate
them with a brand. Look at your favorite brand, think about some of those
personality adjectives, and go from there. Now let's take a look at the world's most
successful brands and I'm sure there's
a few of them that come to mind right now. Why are they successful? Well, first of all, there's the elements that we talked about just a
little while ago. They've been consistent with those elements for
the most part, the entire longevity
of their brand, whether they've been
in the marketplace for over a 100 years, or they've only been
on the scene a decade. They keep on going out
into the marketplace with an essence that is identifiable, whether it's on a
conscious or on a subconscious level and that creates a level of
trust and stability. Also, there's elements
like customer service, how they interact
with their customers, how they speak to
their customers. Are they really understanding their audience and
connecting with them? Once again, that's
where empathy comes in and that's where there's
a connection made. You've got this market presence where they show up consistently, then their messaging is mirroring that market
presence and they're making that connection
with their audience through empathy and they're
doing it consistently. Now if you'll remember me mentioning that
there are some of the most iconic brands out there that when you
see their logo, just their logo alone, you know what they're about. I have a few of them here
on this slide for you. Coca-Cola, Amazon,
Mercedes-Benz, and Apple. Now, all of those, very different in their makeup, but also a lot of
similarities in that there's a lot of brand
trust that's been built. Apple is very good at understanding
their target audience and using empathy in their
marketing so is Coca-Cola. Amazon has a way of making
your life easier and Mercedes-Benz is a very
luxurious brand that knows how to reach
their customer. These are all examples of brands that have stood
the test of time and continue to grow and change and revolutionize as they
continue in the marketplace. Now it's time for
you to take action. Pull up your worksheet
and you're going to identify three elements
of your brand. Now, if you are building
a brand right now, if you don't have your brand
quite established yet, or maybe you're going
through a re-brand. What I want you to do is to identify what you want
your brand to stand for and really think hard
about those elements, get into the personality
and make it fun.
3. Igniting the Superpower of Empathy: In this lesson, we're
going to talk about igniting the
superpower of empathy. But before I get into that, I want to walk you
through the why? Where does it all begin? I have two words for you,
authenticity and vulnerability. The more authentic
the brands can be in their communications,
helps your customer, your consumer, to identify
with what their needs are, and how your brand is
going to meet them. Also, when there is an
element of vulnerability, you can really strike a
connection with your audience. Now, we saw a lot of
campaigns with vulnerability especially during the beginning
stages of the pandemic. That's when your audience really needed to feel supported, and they were all feeling
a little vulnerable. Brands had an opportunity to
really make that connection. The good brands, the ones
that really leveraged it, are still leveraging
it and doing great. It's something that
you can really weave into your
messaging and do it in a very authentic way to
connect with your audience. As we continue to
move forward in this landscape that is ever
evolving and changing, what is called for
from brands nowadays, it's a higher standard. A higher standard
of authenticity, a higher standard
of transparency. When those things
don't mesh together, when they are disparate, when they're on
opposite sides of the spectrum, consumers know. Consumers are smart today. They can identify these
things a mile away, so it's really important to be authentic and transparent with your brand and your audience. Now, there are three essential
questions that your brand needs to ask in order to
really move the needle, and I am so excited to
share this with you. Number 1, why should I care? That's what your
customer is asking. That's the number one question. Why should they care? Why should they care about
your marketing campaign? Why should they care about
that ad that you just put up? Why should they care
about that email that just landed in their inbox? Why? Why should they open it? Why should they care? Number 2, what do I get? What do I get out of the deal? That's what your
customer is asking. They're wanting to know what they will get if
they invest time, money, attention,
whatever it may be. Number 3, how do I get it? Now, I know that this one
might seem like a no-brainer, but let me tell you, I've had many clients
in the past say, "Why isn't this working?" If there's a broken link, if there isn't a call to action, if that isn't present
to the customer, they're not going
to know what to do. They don't automatically know. You have to drive them there. You have to tell
them how to get it. You have to give them a
path to get your product, your service, whatever it
is, it's really important. I have two tactics that I want to share with
you so that you can start crafting a memorable and impactful
marketing campaign. Where do we start
with those two? Number 1, we just
talked about it. I want you to answer
those three questions. Those really powerful
three questions. Answer those honestly. Get into the head
of your customer. Figure out from
their perspective what the answer to those
three questions would be. Also make sure to understand
what you want them to do. I know that's part of
the three questions, but I just want to be
really specific to have you remember to create a call to action so that they
will know what to do. Next, make sure to infuse your communications with
empathy and authenticity. Now, let's put these
tactics into play. I want you to identify a marketing or ad
campaign, or both, that really speaks to you, that deeply connects to you, and answer these questions. Why are you drawn to it? Why does it make you
feel seen and heard? What is it about that
marketing campaign or that ad that really
hits home for you? Now, go ahead and fill that
out on your worksheet.
4. Using Empathy in Action: In this lesson, we're going
to use empathy in action. You're going to learn
how to use empathy in your brand marketing as a cornerstone for your brand
and your communications. We're going to start digging in. There's two ways I
like to explain this. Number 1 is to leverage
the power of storytelling. Everyone loves a good story. If you look back at some memorable marketing
campaigns or memorable ads, you are drawn in by the story. There is something in
the story that they told that emotionally connected. Stories convey emotion,
they build connection. When a story is told well, whether it's visually
or words on paper, it draws you in. Then secondly, you're
going to want to build trust by being consistent. Consistency is the glue
that holds the pieces of your marketing campaign
together and your brand. The more consistent you are, the more your audience
will understand what you bring to the table
and it will make it easier for them to trust you. A great example of this
is from the brand Lush. Now they make natural
beauty products and bath products
that are really fun. What they did is they leveraged
storytelling and empathy. This is how they did it, they pulled back the curtain on how they make
their bath bombs, how they make their soaps, how they make their
shampoos so you could see because one of
their key factors, one of their elements, one of the parts of
their brand personality is that transparency. They're building that
through a video of showing you how it's made. You understand
exactly the makeup, exactly the ingredients
that are going into, maybe that bath bomb that you're going to
go out and buy or that shampoo that they have that you liked
the way it smells. Now you know what are
behind the products, what's behind the ingredients, what is going into
the whole mix. Now that's really valuable, especially nowadays
when consumers are looking to brands to be completely honest
about how they're communicating and what's
behind their products. I think that Lush did a
great job on this in really communicating that
and speaking to, Hey, we're just normal people trying to make a great
product for you. Now it's time for
you to take action. I want you to take a
look at your own brand, dissect your
organization's brand , understand those elements. Understand if there is a story that's being
told with your brand. See if that story is
being weaved through. See if any campaigns you have, have a story that is
being weaved through. If not, how can you
create a story? What's the story
that you could tell? I want you to really just take the limits off and start looking at how storytelling can work in your brand and
your organization.
5. Dissecting Diversity & Inclusion: In this lesson, I'm going
to walk you through dissecting diversity
and inclusion, and what that really means. The best way to do this is to start by knowing
your audience, building the trust, and fostering the connection. How do we do that? The
first way to do that is to understand what diversity and inclusion means in marketing. In this ever-growing and
expanding marketplace, it is very diverse and
unfortunately in the past, brands ignored that
in a lot of ways. Nowadays, brands are getting
more and more intelligent in understanding that there is a very diverse audience
that they're speaking to. Brands are understanding
that there isn't a one-size-fits-all
approach in messaging. They're understanding that
consumers are intelligent, that consumers and their
audience is diverse, and they're wanting to
include them all by actually speaking to them in a way that that audience
can understand. There are key elements that
certain audiences want to hear and brands that are smart are learning
how to speak to them. Thirty-eight percent
of consumers are more likely to trust brands that do well using
diversity in their ads, including all customers
in your audience, and embracing diversity
can be challenging. Earlier on, I spoke to
knowing your audience, building trust, and
fostering that connection. There's a great article on HubSpot that I found
that talks about seven brands that got inclusive marketing right
and they break it down. They feature those ads
and they show exactly what it was about those ads and their marketing
that resonated and included diversity and
inclusion in their campaigns. I want to walk you through two tactics that
are very important. What are the values of
your audience and why? We're going to dig into that a little deeper in
the next lesson. But I just want you to keep that question at the
top of your mind. Is your brand doing
everything to modify to what your customer needs and what your
customer wants, and the diversity of
your entire audience? Why or why not?
Are you doing it? If you're not, how can you? Start thinking about that. Now it's time for
you to take action. Go ahead and pull
up your worksheet. I want you to
evaluate your brand. First of all, look at
your brand elements, and then look at how you are communicating
with your audience. How are you doing with diversity and inclusion
in your opinion? I want you to
revisit once again, remember that top-of-mind
question and analyze why or why not your brand is hitting the mark with diversity
and inclusion. If it's a why not, how can you change that? How can you foster connection? What would that look like? I want you to write that all out and then I'll see
you in the next lesson.
6. Leveraging Your Data: In this lesson, you're
going to learn how to leverage your data to
keep your brand strong. I'm going to walk
you through how to understand how
your customers and segments are responding to your messaging and
how to optimize that. We'll start with number 1, which is understanding
your customer and building out a persona. What is a persona? A persona is elements
of that customer. What makes them up? What makes them tick? What's their age? What's their demographic? Where do they live? What are they interested
in? That's a persona. Then number 2, you're going to leverage that
data by creating segments. When I say a segment, it's like a bucket. You create buckets where
these personas go. Persona A goes in bucket A, persona B goes in bucket B, and so on and so forth. The reason we
segment this out is because oftentimes when you
have different personas, they need to be spoken
to differently. The messaging needs to be slightly different
in order to hit home and that's really important for your brand and building
that trust and consistency. Number 3, getting
omni-channel marketing right. Omni-channel marketing is a cohesive solution that
is customer-centric, that leverages all elements of your brand and
how you communicate, whether it's through email or
social media or a website, or a storefront, and working them all together
to speak to your customer. A lot of brands do this
very well nowadays and omni-channel marketing
is something that's really taking off. It's essential if you don't have an omni-channel marketing
solution to consider one. So what does this look like? Well, it looks like when I spoke to
omni-channel marketing, having a solution in place. Most companies have an
email service provider. I'm sure your organization
does as well. There's a lot of information
you can glean from your email service program meaning you can create those buckets we talked
about those segments. You can create tags just like I'm showing you
here in my example. You can create tags that
speak to that bucket, that segment so that you
know exactly how to speak to them and you can send messages
directly to them that way. Then as you get that information back and look at the metrics. When I speak to metrics, I'm speaking to did
they open the email? Did they click through? Did they click on
the link that you sent to your product
or to your website? You can take a look
at that information, that data to see
if that message, that product, that link, whatever it may be is
really resonating. You can look at that
in a spreadsheet. You can take all of that data in and put it in a place
where you can see how the different segments are
performing and if it's really connecting with a
certain persona if it's not. The beauty of that, this is where the
optimizing comes in, is that you can set key
performance indicators, otherwise known as KPIs. You can set KPIs
to understand how your customers are
responding and then you can look at those
KPIs, evaluate them. If they're not the way
you want them to be, then that's great
because you know what? That's an indicator
that you get to figure out how to speak to your customer and how
to connect with them. Then you can watch as you make those optimizations and see
your responses go up or down. It's all about figuring out
how they are going to respond and then optimizing to speak to them so that
they feel included. Now it's your turn
to take action. I want you to
identify and create three very distinct personas that speak to your brand that are compatible
with your brand. I want you to remember that a good marketing campaign is an extension of
your brand always. Keep that in mind when you're
building your personas. You want to be able to speak to your customer in a
way that they feel, heard and seen, and appreciated and valued. You also want to stay
true to your brand. Make sure that you
are doing that when you're thinking about
building out these personas. Pull out your worksheet
and get started.
7. Final Thoughts: Thank you for spending time with me to learn more about how to infuse and leverage empathy
in your brand marketing. I am so passionate about this
subject because I really want everyone to be able to connect very deeply
with their audience, to be able to speak
to their customer, and to build relationships
that stand the test of time. That can absolutely
be done when you infuse that empathy into
your brand marketing. Now that you've
completed this class, I want you to move in to taking action with
your class project. I want you to develop a marketing campaign that leverages everything
that you've learned. I want to make sure that you are doing this within your
brand guidelines, be true to brand and also look at ways that you can
infuse strategy, communications, and empathy, into everything in your
campaign and once again, make sure that you're
true to your brand. If there are elements
within your brand that you can extend empathy into, I suggest looking into that. It isn't always possible. Brands are very intentional
in their focus. I'm not saying to switch focus, but just be observant. Make sure that you do that
in your class project. Most of all, get really solid on that campaign you're creating
and we've got empathy in. Now, going a bit beyond
what's on the worksheet, I also want you to
keep this in mind. You can use empathy throughout
your entire organization. You can weave it into
your communications. You can take this out of the marketing
department and into the other departments and
also out into your own life. Just remember that it
is a superpower that helps to build relationships
and foster connection. Thank you again for taking my class and I hope
to see you soon.
Jessica Nevins, Business Mentor | Marketing Strategist
