Have you made empathetic marketing part of your strategy?
If not, you should. Let me explain.
I interviewed Michael Brenner (@BrennerMichael), the CEO of MarketingInsiderGroup.com. Michael has received recognition across the Internet for his knowledge and role in shaping content marketing as we know it today. He’s a sought-after keynote speaker and co-author of The Content Formula. I’m excited to bring his thoughts on empathy to you.
Author’s Note: The transcript was edited for publication.
Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and your background?
Michael: Yeah, sure. Thanks, Brian. It’s a pleasure to be with you today, and I look forward to talking about empathy, which I think is important in today’s landscape. As we get older,  I’ve needed to summarize my career much more quickly than I used to. But a 20 plus year career in sales and marketing and leadership roles in various kinds of companies, large and small. About ten years ago, I was hired by SAP as their first head of digital marketing.  I became their first VP of Global Content Marketing and mainly helped them modernize the digital marketing approaches that they were taking. Very much taking an empathetic approach like we’re going to discuss.
There’s such a need, I think, for brands to understand.  They want to do it, I think but struggle with getting it done and changing the culture inside their organizations. That’s where I’m focused now. I built Marketing Insider Group, primarily, as kind of a one-person agency for now, but with the point that I’ve been there, I’ve done that, I’ve been inside corporate marketing departments. I understand the politics and the cultural challenge that marketers face today. Now I’m dedicating my life to trying to help as many companies, like many brands, as many marketers as I can, to understand how to put themselves in a leadership position by helping their customers.
Brian: That’s fantastic. I came across your article on LinkedIn, and several people forwarded it to me and said, “Brian, you should check this out for your book.”
What inspired you to start writing and talking about empathy recently?
What I’ve found is as I talk to senior executives – I have a good story. We could maybe get to it a little bit later on – but a typical conversation for me might involve, “Hey. This digital world and content marketing, and creating content for customers – we think we get it. Now we need to figure out how to do it.”
Often, I find someone in a position of power (with their arms folded) asking challenging questions like, “Well, how’s this going to help us sell more stuff?” I co-authored a book called The Content Formula to specifically address this sort of results-based question, which was, how do you show ROI from this approach? In the book, I talk about showing a better return on investment with marketing that focuses on delivering content people want.
Even after all those sorts of financial objections are removed, I still found resistance inside many companies. I think we can talk about this in a little more depth, but there’s an instinct inside a business to promote itself. That’s counter-intuitive. That’s why I came to this kind of realization that the missing element, and you’ve been talking about this for a long time, is empathy. It’s missing inside corporate cultures and structures.
Empathy is the most counter-intuitive secret to success.  Why is that?
For instance, the posts that I put up on Facebook.  I don’t do a lot of business content on there.