The Growth and Significance of Empathetic Marketing in Today's World

 It has to start somewhere. It has to start some time. What better place than here? What better time than now?
 You're listening to the Radcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford.
 Hey guys, welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast. A episode two years in the making I might add.
 Mike Weston, good friend, creative director here at Radical. What's up Mike?
 Hey Ryan, it's a pleasure to be here. I've finally took it long enough.
 You know, it's an open invite at all times. It's just a matter of fitting you on the busy Radcast schedule.
 That's right because we're really busy on the on the radical side. I know. It's a good thing.
 Well, some kind of shy. That's not true. That's not true. We'll pull it out of you. So how's life been treating you?
 Good. Been really, really busy. A lot of stuff on our plates. You know, holidays are coming up trying to get work done and advance of that.
 So we're fortunate in these times to be busy. That's right. I am.
 I know. So I know we're going to talk about, and we joked a little bit pre episode about how some things in marketing change,
 some things stay the same, but empathy and marketing will get to that. But I do want Mike, you know, people are starting to,
 it's just our subscribers to get to know radical on our team. And we certainly talk about some of the work.
 But I think it would be good perspective to just start with like, let's do some bragging about some of your experience.
 I mean, let's talk about you in the ad business. You've been in the game a long time. We both have.
 You know, you're beating me, but...
 Shines up still alive. Come on. But no, but for people listening, let's walk through the, you know, kind of your background in the ad business.
 You'd have been fortunate enough, at least I've been fortunate enough to work with you a few agencies now.
 But, you know, let's give people kind of that perspective. I know you've been in the game a long time and you've seen a lot done a lot and worked on some pretty oppressive stuff and still doing it here radical.
 Yeah, well, thanks for that. But, you know, my career started in my hometown. I'm from New York City, born in the Bronx, raised in Westchester.
 I attended the School of Visual Arts, graduated degree in advertising and I was really, really fortunate to land an iconic agency, BBDO.
 I was a great place to start my career. On Madison Avenue, when a lot of agencies, BBDO, Doyle Dane, we're still located on Madison Avenue. Now it's pretty much, you know, a word used to describe the business overall.
 But, I was actually there and I was able to work on some really iconic brands early on. I worked on Campbell Soup, chunky, the soup that eats like a meal. I worked on Firestone Tires, Leaver Brothers, Contact, Black and Decker, Hammer Mill Paper, just who's who of American companies.
 But, I think the one that I'm probably most proud of being part of was Gillette. I was part of the Gillette team and understand, teams were lots and lots of people because these accounts are so huge.
 But, we were actually the team that developed and sold to the client and produced the early stuff for Gillette, the Best of Man can Get.
 We developed that sting, the Best of Man can Get, that they still use to this day. I mean, it's been, I hate to say it almost 30 years, but they're still using it. And that's iconic.
 And, you know, I still admit, you know, it's not the great, honestly. It's not the greatest crib work in the world. It's not Geico or any of those things that we admire.
 But it's an iconic American brand. You say to people, Gillette, they're like, oh, yeah, the Best of Man can Get. I was there. I was there.
 So, I'm very proud of that. But, you know, I left BBDO after about four years. It's a long story. New York City was probably where it's at right now. A lot of people wanted to get out because it wasn't a great place to be.
 And I was offered a job in Detroit by WB Donor, which is another, another pretty well known agency. A lot of retail, a very intense environment. Some would say sweatshop. It was for me at that point in my life, single young.
 I lived for the business. That's all I wanted to do. And I did mind putting in the long hours and then, you know, being able to produce an awful lot of broadcast because that was my goal at that point. I wanted more broadcast in a very, very short period of time.
 I had every intention of returning to New York City, but love, love intervened. And I met my wife was a Michigan girl, and who was also an advertising did not, did not want to return or did not want to live in New York.
 So since then, our journeys have taken us from Detroit to, believe it or not, Kalamazoo Michigan, where I worked for an agency called Lawler Ballard, which is a really great creative shop at the time.
 It was bought by Earl Palmer Brown, and then from there, we ended up in Louisville, Kentucky at the oldest independent agencies in the country, even to this day.
 There's still independent, called Doe Anderson. And at Doe Anderson, I was able to touch Makersmore, which is another great brand, but primarily Valveline and specifically Valveline, and it's Noile Change, and was able to do a lot of really good work on that.
 After that, I was lured down here to Greenville, South Carolina, and I had to look on a map to see what I think that was.
 I was pretty sure when I was a kid going to Florida, the west coast of Florida, I was pretty sure we spent the night once in Greenville.
 Somewhere on the way to Florida, or maybe close to Merrill Beach.
 That's right.
 I was recruited down here by an agency called Erwin Penman, which is now called EP and Co, and is really doing some really great work, or some national brands.
 But that is where I met Ryan Alfred. He was a young account exec on the Verizon account at that time.
 Fair statement. True statement.
 That's true. True.
 But I was hired to work on a variety of other accounts that were not Verizon. Verizon was the huge account.
 And Ryan was part of that team, and I was heading up as a group cred director. I was heading up Unrival Tires, some other Michelin brands.
 And it was great. It was a wonderful town. I think the city really attracted us.
 And Joe Erwin and Alan Bosworth and Gretchen Erwin were all really, really cool people.
 They had started. Honestly, I admired them to this day because they really started from nothing.
 They had all come from New York. Joe was from here. Gretchen was from Lexington, Kentucky.
 Alan was, I don't see him, obviously.
 You grew up in North Carolina. North Carolina. I think it was Michigan Erwin.
 Yeah, anyway. Very smart people, and they were able to grow this agency into a platter in the Southeast.
 And I was there for about seven years and moved on a couple of other shops. And then Ryan and I, Ryan went on to return to New York.
 He did his stunt in New York City and worked on Verizon and worked for Hill Holiday.
 Yep. Pretty crazy.
 And then Faye would bring us back together and we both worked for another shop for a little while down here.
 And then Ryan decided to go up and start his own gig. And we probably all know that story.
 I'm happy to say we're reconnected. We didn't work together much at Erwin Poundland, but knew each other and stayed in touch.
 And now we've got this little, you know, this agency called Radical that's kind of gaining some momentum.
 And hopefully we'll grow. And, you know, I look, I look to the Erwin Poundland model because again, Joe and Gretchen and Alan really grew that thing.
 And hopefully we get the same thing here.
 Yeah. I think we're headed in the right direction.
 I hope so.
 And I think the work's been good. I think, you know, Mike has come on full time and is, you know, nurturing the team.
 And I think we're seeing the fruits of that with the work and the quality of it.
 You know, we're working with small to medium brands.
 But that's that those brands are growing. And both in number and size, you know, which I think a lot of agencies start in that model.
 But yeah, start small.
 Listen, we want to, you know, our stake in the stand is going to be like a lot of agencies.
 And hopefully creative that makes a difference and stands out.
 Not necessarily wins awards, but gets results.
 And that's huge. And it took me, you know, 25 plus years to realize that it's not about the award book.
 It's about creating success for the clients.
 When you create success for the clients, you create success for everybody in the agency and light this good.
 In this day and age, I feel like those worlds can coexist.
 You know, the work being good and the clients being successful.
 It may not always be as provocative, you know, as you want it to be potentially.
 But with social media and other channels, it's given, I think, fresh life to pushing the envelope a bit.
 I think so too. There's so many more tactics out there now to get the message out.
 But, you know, again, it's like I've had to forget everything I learned in the first 25 years being in this business.
 You know, with the advent of digital and digital basically being the medium of choice for most markers and certainly most of our clients.
 But one thing has not changed. I've convinced of this and that is you still need to have a strategy.
 You still need to have a roadmap and creative is still important.
 You know, again, I tell people this all the time, but the average consumers exposed over 8,000 ad messages a day.
 8,000. If you live in a major metropolitan area, it's probably 10,000.
 We didn't even realize we're seeing ad messages, but they touch us all the time.
 And it's still a matter of breaking through that clutter. How do you break through?
 And creative is a big part of that.
 It's a huge part of it. And I think what's starting to come back to, I think people recognized it.
 And I always, I've said this a lot, that the greatest denominator of success is the creative.
 Like, it's like, it is like a lot of things are of the tactics, are table stakes.
 But the creative is what ultimately breaks through and drives it.
 But I think what you're seeing a marriage of is the creative has to come quick.
 You know, like, that's, it's because, and not just because it's the AE's like me who used to bug the shit out of you.
 You know, you, and still do, it hasn't left.
 But it used to be just because the AE was being anal and wanted to get it done and wanted to please the client.
 And now it's because attention is so fleeting.
 You know, the channels are so fleeting.
 Oh my gosh, it's amazing. Everyone's got the attention span of a net myself included.
 Yeah, it's very, it's very hard to get anybody to stop and then really spend time with, with your messaging.
 And that's true for, I think that's true for most ages.
 Of course, you know, again, I mentioned immediate tactics you've got, you've got all, certainly I still have, you still have television.
 You know, although I discovered that, you know, the younger generations, my kids include a barely watched TV.
 I can't believe it. I cannot get my kids to sit down and watch something on Netflix with me.
 And they want to go upstairs and they want to stay, want to lay in their bed.
 And they want to look at their personal devices and do TikTok and everything else that, you know, their generation does.
 It's amazing. They don't read newspapers.
 Right? I mean, I still to this day, although I get most of my news from my news feeds on Google and Apple,
 that I still, I still love to turn a newspaper page to read a paper to read the printed word.
 You know, the rustling of the paper, I still love that.
 But yeah, I recognize it. They're, they're very few people like me out there.
 And most of what we do, we're not, we're not reaching them anyhow.
 Well, it's actually a good transition to, you know, kind of the topic.
 I think you've seen this bubbling up. I mean, in your LinkedIn feeds and you hear it, you know, within the industry is a buzzword.
 I think it's we'll talk about momentarily in a way.
 It's the way the way branch should always be thinking, but this notion of empathy and marketing, especially with, you know,
 COVID going on and everything that's happened that's really thrown everyone's life different, you know, and thrown it for a twist.
 You know, from moms have to stay at home, to dads have to stay at home, to, to kids being home all the time, to just the realities of the economic impact,
 the social impact, the events, you know, we can go on and on and on.
 But it has become more important than ever that brands think this way about their messaging.
 What's been kind of your overall perspective on seeing that dynamic and I know you've, you've seen the buzzword creeping into a lot of discussion.
 Yeah, that's the other thing that's changed about this business is more buzzwords and I can keep track of it.
 Yes.
 Content, content.
 But then it used to be creative.
 There was that creative.
 It wasn't a copywriting and art direction design come together to create, create the concept.
 Content, content, content, content, I get it.
 It's much more than that.
 But, you know, empathetic marketing is interesting and I, you know, I joke that I think we used to call it customer relations, right?
 You want, you, you as a marketer want, you want to dwell on the hearts and minds of your customers and your audience, right?
 And empathetic marketing should be ingrained into all your business strategies.
 You want, you want, it's not philanthropy, but it's certainly, it's empathy before profit.
 You know, it's connecting with customers on a positive level, not just because you want them to buy, buy, buy.
 Yeah, you know.
 And so I think what's interesting, you know, we're both, you know, having done this a long time.
 Somewhat cynical with the buzzwords because it's, at the end of the day as a brand and it with anything that you,
 any messaging or strategy is how do we want consumers to think, feel an act?
 Yeah.
 And if you're thinking through that lens, then in a moment when you know the consumer is in this position,
 what's the insight about your target and what action do you want them to take?
 I feel like empathy marketing, the empathetic notion belongs in the insight of the consumer.
 Moms and dads are home, they're, they're what, you know, like if you're zoom or if you're a product that plays perfectly into this,
 the insight is the fact that people are home, they're using their house more.
 That's the insight, you know, as much as anything.
 Yeah, you know, it's funny, American greetings did a really nice effort.
 It was, it was essentially from Mother's Day, obviously they sell greeting cards.
 But it was a job interview and it was people interviewing for the toughest job imaginable.
 And that job required that they work 24-7 that they work nights and weekends.
 Right, these people were interviewing for this incredible job.
 They were serious about it. As it turned out, they're, they're, they're interviewing for a job as a mother.
 Right, and American greetings is being empathized towards, towards, towards, to moms.
 And we know what the hell you go through. You have an incredibly tough job, you know.
 And the spillover effect there is dad, kids, make sure she gets at least a nice card on Mother's Day.
 I love that. That is truly, the brands I think that are breaking through are the ones where
 the difference to me is the pandering empathy versus the insight.
 Like what you just said there is the emotional tug of that of like playing into their mindset and being thoughtful in it.
 What I can't stand is, is the brand where you feel like it's complete pandering or like complete.
 We've suddenly taken on this cause, you know, like cause marketing.
 Like that's not empathetic marketing. That's like, I don't, I just see through that.
 Yeah, no, no, you're absolutely right. It's funny because it reminds me of worked on Scott Paper, a BBDO,
 and my, my partner and I back when we worked all the time as our director and copywriter,
 came up with something from Scott Paper called Helping Hands.
 And now looking back on it, it's kind of like every time you buy a roll of, you know, a roll of Scott Paper,
 you know, toilet paper, we're going to donate X amount to a child, a children's charity.
 I can't remember what the charity was at this point, but now looking back on it, it was very, it was disingenuous.
 Right. You know, cause there wasn't, there wasn't any specific organization.
 We're just going to donate money to children's charities. And it seemed like a ploy to me again in hindsight.
 Yeah. To sell more toilet paper. Yeah. You know, so I think about something that's truly empathetic marketing that worked.
 And it wasn't that long ago. And I think it was this summer Delta Airlines.
 Hundreds of its flights, hundreds of flights were delayed because of storms.
 All right. And passengers are stranded on runways all over the place at Georgia, Tennessee, Louisiana, Ohio, and Kentucky.
 And Delta took the opportunity to actually order pizzas for, I don't know if it was all the passengers on all the flights,
 but in certainly some of the markets, they had pizzas delivered.
 I don't know how they got through TSA.
 But they had them delivered to the planes. I love that.
 And they serve them pizza and listen, here's the thing.
 So empathetic marketing, customer relations back in the day, whatever the heck it was.
 It took, it took literally days and weeks for that to get out.
 But this is, this was getting out the news of Delta's benevolence.
 All right. Or at least taking care of their customers got out immediately because of social media.
 Yeah. It was out there in a heartbeat.
 Yeah. It was big news and a spillover effect there is.
 You know what? Not all airlines are uncaring and callous.
 You know, I saw it. It's funny you bring up Delta. I just read this last week.
 They have, and I don't, I don't know if it was done by, you know, marketing or demanded or whatever.
 But they are literally handing out the flight attendants personal handwritten specific notes to everyone on the plane.
 Like for flights that were over like three hours or something like that.
 The flight attendants were writing like Mr. Harrison. I want to thank you for flying today.
 Our, our, our services, our, our industry has been impacted heavily.
 You don't know how much we appreciate your willingness to continue to fly and how much it provides for our livelihood.
 Yeah. I mean, go figure personal written out.
 That demonstrates a company Delta in this case or that airline was.
 It was Delta. Same company.
 Beautiful. Going above and beyond customer service.
 Which again, you don't necessarily expect from airlines.
 No, you don't. But Delta has been, has always been, I don't know, a higher kill for me.
 They have.
 Absolutely. You know.
 There's no a legend.
 Sorry.
 Hey, it's a radcast. We keep it real.
 We keep it real.
 But they're demonstrating their empathetic side, you know, by truly caring for customers.
 And that's what empathetic marketing is all about.
 And I think that's, that's really the point that I think for, for consumers is like, you know,
 there's certain things that we've talked about us on a few other episodes.
 Like convenience rules, like, you know, a pack of gum in the line.
 Do you know if they didn't empathetic marketing or how much the money they gave to charity or is it just convenient because it's in the store line?
 You know, there's certain purchases that are less considered than others, right?
 Yeah.
 But at the same, but for most things, when you know a brand,
 truly cares is going out of the way.
 We look, we all know it's we're capitalistic country.
 Like people know brands are in business for money.
 Go figure.
 Really?
 Yeah. I don't know.
 I'm an after the last election.
 We might be head for comments.
 Not going there.
 Not going there.
 Not going there.
 Not political.
 But anyway, the, the point being,
 I think consumers know when, when brands are making a true effort.
 You know, when it's genuine or when it's disingenuous,
 people are, they're not fools.
 Yeah, exactly.
 They absolutely know.
 If you were a small business or brand and you know,
 you might be listening or something like that,
 are your things or ways that you might would,
 you know, you feel like for,
 I don't know, from someone in the creative,
 you know, side of things like that they should,
 I don't think about or consider in trying to do this more or better.
 Well, I think,
 I think first of all,
 you have to pay attention to, to their feeds.
 Yeah.
 And they have to act quickly and decisively
 when they do get a complaint or criticism.
 I mean, I've seen,
 I've seen some, some clients,
 some marketers, some products,
 who have clearly, clearly been slammed
 and there's been no response whatsoever.
 Yeah.
 And I think that's the worst thing you can do.
 You know, Airbnb.
 Do you remember this?
 Oh, yeah.
 There was some discrimination.
 Some, somebody had been legitimately discriminated against
 because of the color of their skin.
 Mm-hmm.
 Why somebody was discriminated.
 I don't remember that.
 You're supposed, it was early this year.
 Airbnb.
 They were, they, they had reserved a place.
 And the owner of the space,
 the room, the apartment,
 discovered that they were,
 they were African-American.
 And they basically,
 scared that shit even happens anymore.
 It's disgusting.
 Yeah.
 It's disgusting.
 It shouldn't happen on this day of age.
 Anyway, so,
 the guy consequently was refused his booking.
 And he reached out to Airbnb.
 In Airbnb.
 They could have sent him.
 They never, they never moved on.
 But what they did is they not only
 got him another room,
 another, another place to stay,
 they also created an open doors policy.
 Basically, as a result of this.
 So it was much bigger just the one guy
 because I need a smart enough to realize
 it's probably happens a lot more than we think.
 So they can't change the mindset of the person
 who, who refused the booking,
 although they can probably kick them out of Airbnb.
 Yeah.
 Hopefully.
 But when a guest faces discrimination,
 Airbnb is going to place him in another listing
 or paid for a hotel on them.
 I love it.
 Yeah.
 And they could have easily written it off.
 But yeah.
 And I think back to what you're saying,
 like, listen to your customers.
 I think that's for me, for if you're, you know,
 whether you're small, medium, large brand,
 whether it's customer search, like,
 you have to have a pulse on your customer base.
 There has to be some kind of feedback loop.
 They're going to come to you through social media,
 like you just said, one way or another.
 And if you're either listening or you're not,
 but you, whether it's surveys or like,
 and I know you see some of this, like,
 incentivization, but you've got to be having a lever
 that you can pull to know how your customers feel.
 You know, because in this day and age,
 if you don't, they're not going to be a customer for long.
 Yeah.
 No, you're absolutely right.
 You know, from a creative standpoint,
 I think that there's a lot of opportunities, certainly.
 Yeah.
 Listen, that pizza thing, Delta?
 Sure, it wasn't a creative team that came up with that.
 It's a simple idea.
 Operational.
 And one of the things I like about Radical,
 and one of the things I tried to incorporate
 in other agencies that I've been at,
 or I've had the, you know, the opportunity to lead.
 Teams was that a good idea can come from anybody.
 Even an account executive.
 And well, I do acknowledge that.
 In fact, one of the best headlines I've ever,
 I've ever been a part of was written by a print production guy.
 You know, so.
 And I think that's big with empathy marketing.
 If you, as a company, embrace the notion or brand
 or an agency or whatever,
 that ideas come from anywhere,
 you're going to get those broader perspectives
 because your customer base is so wide and large.
 Right.
 And so Sally and in operations or HR accounting
 or account executive or a Robbie who's, you know,
 doing operations, whatever that is,
 they have a perspective that perhaps the people
 that would typically be the idea of people
 or the marketing people might not have.
 And so how do you bring that perspective?
 Yeah.
 That's a great point.
 I mean, there are opportunities for creatives
 to actually develop what we do.
 Create spots, create stories, you know, video.
 For example, another airline jet blue.
 You know, etiquette is something that is,
 that is can be sorely missing on flights.
 Yeah.
 Especially now, people refusing to wear face masks,
 people getting into fights.
 I mean, it's absolutely crazy.
 And I remember seeing jet blue
 and I created a whole series of flight etiquette videos
 that were just hilarious.
 But they bang the point home
 in a really creative, memorable way.
 You know?
 What's on your radar, you know,
 as radicals growing,
 brand you're paying attention to in general?
 Where do you go for, I mean, creative energy?
 You know, I mean, now it's like,
 I know it was social,
 I mean, like socials kind of the answer for everything.
 But is there something that feeds your spirit?
 So obviously there's,
 there's the agencies I absolutely admire,
 like Martin and Goodby and Droga Five
 and still, you know, still BBD,
 of course, you know, I'm partial there, of course.
 Sure.
 There's still agencies whose work I'm constantly checking
 and widening Kennedy.
 I mean, there's just so many,
 so many really great agencies out there doing so much great stuff.
 And I like to tell my designers and copy,
 our designers and copy writers here that, you know,
 guys, you need to spend time with those.
 Be inspired, you know.
 Don't rip off the ideas,
 but be inspired by what you see, you know,
 and help.
 Because it's, you know, it's, again,
 it's breaking through that clutter.
 There's so many messages out there
 and they're all vying for your attention.
 They're all waving their hands, but no one is standing out.
 So certainly agency websites are a great place to go.
 Now, I like, I like to go to places like Vimeo.
 It's some really great creative stuff on Vimeo.
 So I like to spend time there too,
 but there's, there's influences everywhere.
 Thanks to the internet.
 I remember we used to have to wait for the, you know,
 the latest edition of CA advertising annual,
 looking out to get to see who's doing the greatest work.
 And now with this, this internet machine,
 it's, it's, it's at your fingertips.
 So yeah, I love it.
 I think, you know, in kind of, you know,
 recapping and things like that,
 I think if brands are, if you're thinking about this
 and you're either working with a brand
 or your small business or something like that,
 I would challenge you to get more in-depth
 with your strategy and your understanding, your target,
 and less about, I think, calling yourself,
 and we're doing empathy marketing this month
 or whatever, I think don't make empathy marketing a buzzword,
 make it a referendum on understanding the customers
 that, that service, that, that come to you, that you serve,
 and building that into the insights for why you're doing something.
 And, and then I think like leveraging, you know,
 more of your team and more people and all those avenues
 and perspectives to bring in a broader understanding.
 Yeah, that's a great point because, you know,
 I used to jokingly say,
 everyone's creative, it's just some of us
 doing a lot better than others.
 And yeah, I'm creative, I can draw, I can write,
 but everyone is empathetic
 and everyone can have an idea when it comes to empathetic marketing.
 Yeah, I love it.
 And as I said before, it should be ingrained into,
 into any company's business strategy.
 I love it.
 Mike, really appreciate you coming on.
 My pleasure.
 Let's keep doing it.
 I appreciate you being here.
 Hey, hey man, you don't know how much I appreciate you being
 with me on this ride and, you know, being part of Radical.
 And, you know, if you keep up with the Radcast,
 keep up with Radical, you're seeing some of Mike's work.
 He either touched it or built it or created it.
 So, we appreciate having him.
 Yeah.
 And we'll see you next time here on the Radcast.
 Yeah.
 Be empathetic.
 Mm-hmm.
 Yo, guys, what's up, Ryan Alfred here.
 Thanks so much for listening, really appreciative.
 Do us a favor.
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 If you want to work with me directly,
 you want to get your business kicking ass.
 And you want Radical or myself involved.
 You can text me directly at 864.
 729-3680.
 Don't wait another minute.
 Let's get your business going.
 864-729-3680.
 We'll see you next time.
 Bye.