Finance Marketing Summit: Empathy in marketing ‘is not f***ing nice, it’s valuable’, says Alison Tilling
“Empathy is not fucking nice, it’s valuable,” says Alison Tilling, chief strategy officer at VMLY&R. For marketers in financial services whose work is increasingly digital-led, achieving empathy at scale is now more important than ever.
In a keynote presentation at Mumbrella Finance Marketing Summit today, Tilling said the financial industry’s digital transformation efforts exemplified by the banking sector have led to a new challenge for marketers.
L-R: Paul Nagy and Alison Tilling at Mumbrella Finance Marketing Summit
For example, as brands scale back on the branch-first philosophy, the banking sector is losing one of the most effective channels to help financially distressed customers.
As an industry with a diverse group of customers, including those who are neurodivergent, for example, Tilling said delivering empathy at scale is crucial for financial services to challenge existing norms, understand their audiences better and do better business with them.
“Empathy is one of those words you say and then go, oh yeah, empathy, oh lovely, we can all feel good about ourselves,” she said.
“But if there’s one thing I could say that I passionately believe in … it’s that empathy is valuable in how your brand comes across as valuable in your commercial endeavours.
“Empathy can make an experience more involving, and that’s going to make that customer experience deliver more your brand – it’s going to make it more memorable.”
Presenting alongside Tilling was the chief creative officer of VMLY&R, Paul Nagy, who conceded that, no matter what vertical a brand plays in, “being empathetic with everyone is very hard, you’ve got to find these very generalised, empathetic things that sort of happen at scale”.
However, he said “targeting the edge of the customers” is a way of working around it.
He quoted an example of VMLY&R’s work with Bankwest as a part of the brand’s bespoke agency, Union, where the campaign creative had a playful take on customers’ often irksome experience with unravelling terms and conditions (T&Cs).
Employing a visual design expert to simplify the T&Cs, Nagy said the iteration aimed to reduce customers’ anxiety about signing documents that are loaded with financial jargon.
“Sometimes people equate empathy with ideas that make you feel gooey in your heart … but empathy can equally be making people laugh, making people feel safe, etc,” Nagy said.
“An experience can be about understanding the edges of the audience. It can be signalling empathy through the stories that you tell and the way you tell to tell them. It’s about being vivid. It’s about being memorable,” added Tilling.
“In terms of customer experience, delivering with empathy, being involved and being authentic … is kind of putting yourself in harm’s way of it. It requires some emotional energy, and that’s one of the things that can make it truly powerful.”
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Darcy Song was a reporter at Mumbrella, covering media owners, adtech and social platforms. She left in October 2023.
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