Is empathy the new frontier in business?

On July 9^th we held a workshop on business empathy with 4 major Dutch companies, all leaders in their category: banking, supermarkets, rice and cable companies.

This workshop was part of the Dutch Empathy Monitor 2010, conducted by Ruigrok | Netpanel in cooperation with Fronteer Strategy. One of the interesting outcomes: there is a positive correlation between empathy and attractiveness.

But how can these four large brands be empathic while serving literally all Dutch consumers between the four of them? How can they understand all these 17 million consumers? The truth is, they can’t. But they can at least start trying.

These are some of the brand challenges that came up during the workshop:

- How can a commodity- or technical brand be empathic?
- Is empathy the reason why people still write us real letters?
- Should we deal with all the millions of expanding on-line touchpoints our brand has?

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The Empathy Monitor 2010 – Results and Reactions

Fronteer Strategy and Ruigrok Netpanel have launched the Dutch Empathie Monitor – all results can be found on the website. It ranks major Dutch brands on perceived empathy, attractiveness, innovativeness and approachability levels. The research has been done with 1700 Dutch people 18+. Why have we done this? We believe empathy (the awareness and understanding of other people’s feelings and motives) will be one of the big business drivers of the future. All brand touchpoints are moments of truth, brand exposure, innovation opportunities and moments where you can show empathy. And – to our surprise – a Swedish brand has won. IKEA is leading the pack. In the top-3 we see Albert Heijn, the leading Dutch supermarket, and Bol.com, the little Dutch brother of Amazon.

We ate now almost a week after the launch and the reactions have been great. People have recognised the importance of empathy. Publications and debates online and lively Twitter exchanges are for us confirmations that empathy has value. Also, the monitor has been published on the ‘Ranking the Brands‘ site. The next step for us now is to help clients to understand empathy and what it means for their businesses. How do you drive empathy? How do you develop a touchpoints strategy? How can we innovate at all touchpoints? Those are questions we like to answer.

Feel free to contact us for more information.

2010 – The Year of Empathy?

2009 Has been a great year. It was the year that we were able to support our clients in many different ways. Co-creation has been one of the major project pillars in 2009 and definitely something that we will continue to work on/with in the future. Our Co-creation’ 5 Guiding Principles white paper has been downloaded tens of thousands of times already. Expert co-creation has proven to be a tool for clients to tackle the toughest strategic challenges and work with the smartest people around.

What’s next? Empathy. We at Fronteer feel that brands that are interested in the world that they’re in and understand another’s situation, feelings, and motives are the ones that will thrive in the future. I was able to deliver a presentation in december 2009 in Amsterdam on empathy. What struck me was the honest and happy reactions of the people around. It seemed to be spot on. Also, our research on the relationship between open-ness of brands and attractiveness was an eye-opener to people (as it was for us last year).

So what will we do? We will focus part of this year’s efforts on developing our knowledge on empathy. Read the rest of this entry »

Research shows: Open brands are most populair

“The more accessible a brand, the more it is perceived as attractive and innovative.” This is the result of a research amongst 500 Dutch consumers, performed by market research bureau Ruigrok | Netpanel in cooperation with strategic consultancy firm Fronteer Strategy.

The research looked on the impact of openness of a company on brand value in different sectors, among which supermarkets, banks and electronics. Coffee brand Douwe Egberts, supermarket chain Albert Heijn and Rabobank are considered to be the most accessible brands and in line with that also the most attractive and innovative. Beer brands Heineken and Grolsch are performing on similar, but mediocre levels. Nokia is performing best in the electronic sector, leaving Samsung and Apple behind.

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