100 Insights

Perhaps the single best technique for understanding the views and feelings of others regarding messaging is to use focus groups, which are, in essence, group exercises dedicated to teaching empathy. Focus groups, at least those that are conducted by skilled professionals, are effective in helping people acquire empathy because the conversation often snowballs to allow participants to see the perspectives of others.

The goal is never to reach a consensus but to simply experience other people’s feelings and understand them. This allows you to learn how to engage the intended audience and create a successful relationship: the point of messaging.

– James Bost, Jones PR

Market research is actually about the business of empathy. If PR messages are designed to create or shape attitudes, opinions and behaviors, it is vital to understand how the intended audience currently thinks, feels or acts.

Market research can discover where the audience is and most importantly, why. PR messages are the product. Often, like any manufactured product, the step of understanding the intended customer is skipped – it takes time and it’s just easier to assume you know the audience.

This is why many PR messages do not have the intended impact; they were not developed from the audience’s perspective.

– James Bost, Jones PR

It’s difficult to empathize with recipients of your messages if you don’t know much about them. Gaining insights that help you see the world through their eyes is the only way to put them at the center of the receiver experience. Empathy is an interpersonal skill – something to be learned.

One way to acquire empathy is to have experienced what the recipient of your message has experienced. If you have not had those experiences, how do you understand the recipient of your intended message? One effective tactic is to ask them questions and the tool for that is market research.

– James Bost, Jones PR

PR can be summarized as telling your story to a target audience. Most people are satisfied with how they tell their story; however, an element many forget is empathy – the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. If you don’t consider the viewpoints of others, communicating with a group may not be effective.

There are numerous examples of PR failures when communicating with the public – United Airlines, Pepsi and Uber come to mind as PR disasters in 2017. If PR is telling a compelling story in an effective manner, consider who’s on the receiving end. That is empathy.

– James Bost, Jones PR