The MacKellar Memo | September and October 2022

I live near Northfield, which is part of the old Stapleton Airport redevelopment now named Central Park. It’s by Quebec and I-70. Among other wonderful offerings, it has a Five Guys, a Torchy’s Tacos, my dog’s vet and Dick’s Sporting Goods Park (though technically in the City of Commerce City but still). 

In early September every year, thousands upon thousands of Phish Phans roll into town. The mix of prep schoolers, dirt people and general jamming enthusiasts is always an interesting time of the year. In addition to single-handedly propping up the Central Park economy for a long weekend every Labor Day, I think there’s something we can try to take away from their arrival — the concept of empathy. 

Now before you say, well I heard XYZ, it’s get this fundamental truth out of the way — humans suck. When talking about a group of people, there will always be some who defy the generalization for better or for worse. So, yeah, humans can suck, but we’re focusing on the positive here. 

Whether it’s the Phans, or the Festivarians at Telluride Bluessgrass, these tune-loving folks seem to double down on the “peace and love” stereotype that we think of when we hear the opening notes of Wilson hit. But it’s that stereotype, and one element of it, that I want to focus on. 

When I hear/see the peace and love hippies, my mind goes to empathy. I don’t know why — maybe because my dad went to Woodstock (but left early before the Mud People came into existence or Hendrix hit the stage) — but that culture has always led me to believe they strongly believe in empathy. 

So how, after 270 words, does this tie back to marketing? I was reading an article recently about the concept of empathetic design and realized that we don’t often talk about bringing empathy into marketing. Sure, it’s written about by industry thought leaders and it becomes the hot topic for a day or two, but then we go back to our daily lives at the agency. The agency we work at because we’re the best at what we do. That’s why clients hire us, right? Because we’re the experts and can give them results no other agency can. Yes…but that’s not the approach we should be taking. Consider this great passage from the Element Three article:

Empathetic design means that instead of thinking about what’s cool, or what’s beautiful, you think about that—what you would want from the website you’re designing if you were the one using it.

It’s easy for us to fall into that trap — because we might fashion ourselves as smarter, more talented, more whatever, we make that that WE want, not what the people we’re trying to help may want or need. 

So as we come down on the collective (musical) high from Phish Dick’s weekend, let’s look for ways to inject some empathy into our work for clients. Let’s really put ourselves out there and focus on the end-user who we’re helping to solve problems, and when we do that, I bet we’ll be surprised by the results we can create!