There’s a version of this that happens in almost every organization. A campaign comes together and on paper it looks great. There’s smart strategy and solid tactics. It’s textbook, the kind of campaign that checks every box in the brief. Then it goes out into the world and the response is muted. There’s no clear signal that it moved anyone.
In moments like these, the instinct is to go back and sharpen the creative. Better visuals, tighter copy and a stronger hook seem like obvious places to start. And sometimes subtle tweaks help, but refinement has its limits. If the work was already good, the gap probably isn't in the execution. You'll need to go down at least one more layer, to the orientation of the message. If it was built from the inside out — shaped more by what your organization wanted to say than by the lived experience of its audience — chances are it’s not going to resonate the way you’d like it to.
This raises a question that doesn’t fit neatly into most after action reports: if the creative wasn't the problem, what was? It's easy to assume that if the campaign moves people emotionally, it's done its job. But eliciting emotion and making a connection aren't the same thing.
Emotion asks your audience to feel something. It’s the urgent appeal, the inspirational montage, the swelling music over smiling faces, the hero story with a nice, tidy ending. Don’t get me wrong, these approaches work but they have a ceiling. And that’s because they flow in one direction — from the organization to the audience. In effect, they say feel this because we need you to.
Empathy reverses that flow. It starts with what your audience is already experiencing and reflects it back to them. It says we see the world you’re actually living in, and we built this message from inside that reality.
That’s exactly what Procter & Gamble did when they launched their Thank You, Mom campaign. With the Olympics as their backdrop, P&G could have gone the obvious route by focusing on world-class athletes, medal podiums and national pride. Instead, the cameras followed mothers waking their kids up early, getting them to practice and sitting nervously in the stands. There was no celebrity narration and no product showcase, just the quiet, unglamorous reality of raising a child who ends up competing at the highest level.
Thank You, Mom generated $500 million in incremental sales, and at the time was the most successful global campaign in P&G’s history. The creative was brilliant, no question. But the reason it worked at that scale is that millions of people watched it and saw some aspect of their own life story in the ad. It didn’t center P&G’s brands, it centered motherhood, and that gave viewers a way in.
A recent meta-analysis from Ipsos puts hard numbers behind this approach. Ads that score high on both creativity and empathy deliver 30% greater effectiveness than ads that are creative but lack empathy. And of nearly 5,000 ads analyzed in the Ipsos U.S. database, only 10% achieved both. These stats are worth paying attention to because they suggest that campaigns that underperform do so not because the creative isn't good enough, but because they’re missing the ingredient that helps organizations connect with their audiences: empathy.
If you're involved in shaping messaging for your organization, think about the last time you sat down to work on something. What was in front of you? Probably a strategy doc, some brand guidelines, and a creative brief — all of which are useful. But was there anything in that stack that connected you to the person on the other end of the message you were asked to develop? Did you have any insight into what they were worried about or going through that had nothing to do with your brand?
When it comes to communicating effectively, knowing who you’re talking to is not optional. It is absolutely essential. Clever concepts have their place, but when your audience can recognize their own life experiences in your campaigns, the dynamic changes. They lean in, and it’s because you’ve done the hard work of understanding their world before asking them to care about yours.
If you're wondering how to improve your messaging so that it better connects with your audience, drop us a line. We love helping ministries get measurably better results from their marketing and communications.
