Empathy disappears because no one is really in charge of it. Product thinks marketing has it. Marketing assumes research covered it. Research waits for leadership to set the tone. Leadership assumes everyone already gets it. With no clear owner, empathy becomes vague. Everyone values it, but no one protects it.
I read an article about how some cities in South Korea, China, and Japan have implemented ground-level traffic lights so people who walk the world with their heads down and their eyes on their phones don’t walk into traffic. Is that empathy? Or is it just surrendering to the fact that people would rather look at their phones than the faces of other people, the world around them, and even traffic? I’ll be generous and say it’s empathy. These changes are being made because the governments of these places know how hard it is for certain generations to actually engage with the world around them. They know that huge swaths of their citizens wake in the morning and look at a screen, and then spend the better parts of their lives walking around and looking at screens. They have empathy for these screen-controlled citizens, and they don’t want those citizens to be hit by trucks driven by people who are also looking at screens. It’s a form of empathy.
This isn’t new. Disneyland and Disney World both paint curbs red because that color draws the eye, and they know the folks visiting their parks will be wide-eyed and looking at everything everywhere, and the red curbs will bring them back to reality so they don’t trip and tear an Achilles tendon. That’s thoughtful, and it expresses a form of empathy.
Empathy is one of those words that comes to the surface now and then, usually when the world is off kilter, and we need a human ideal to cling to as we watch the actions of humanity turn toward the cruel and the harmful. When this happens, people start asking what happened to empathy. Why don’t our leaders show any? Empathy is a powerful word, but the action itself, the showing or applying of empathy, seems to be losing importance.
So where did it go? How did something that once felt so basic start slipping out of daily life? Some people blame the pace of everything. Others blame the screens. Some say we’ve all become a little too busy keeping ourselves upright to make room for anyone else’s point of view. The truth is probably a mix of all of it. Empathy didn’t disappear in one dramatic moment. It faded. It got pushed aside by louder habits and faster tools. It lost ground every time a shortcut looked easier than a real conversation.
But it didn’t vanish. You can still find it in small, intentional choices. A red curb. A light at your feet. A gesture that shows someone thought about what another person might feel or miss, or overlook. These little decisions might seem minor, but they reveal a bigger truth. Empathy shows up most in the details. And when details get ignored, empathy usually goes with them.
This is where the trouble begins for brands. Because people can feel the difference between a company that understands their reality and a company that’s talking past it. When empathy thins out, the work gets flatter. The message gets a little more self-centered. The audience pulls away because they don’t feel seen, even if the product is good and the intent is fine. It’s not dramatic. It’s a slow drift.
How Empathy Slips Inside Companies
And if this is what’s happening out in the world, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that it creeps into companies, too. Things grow, people get busier, and somewhere in the shuffle, empathy starts to thin out. No one decides that. It just happens. Work piles up. Everyone’s trying to keep pace. Decisions get made fast because they have to, and the human stuff gets pushed to the side without anyone really noticing.
Most brands say they understand their audience, but the way they operate tells a different story. Teams lean on old research because updating it feels impossible. They chase numbers that don’t actually tell them how people feel. They move so fast that they start talking at their audience instead of to them. At a certain point, the work stops sounding like it came from humans who understand other humans. It starts sounding like it came from a system that forgot who it was serving.
Empathy disappears because no one is really in charge of it. Product thinks marketing has it. Marketing assumes research covered it. Research waits for leadership to set the tone. Leadership assumes everyone already gets it. With no clear owner, empathy becomes vague. Everyone values it, but no one protects it.
The strange thing is that companies need empathy most when they’re under pressure. Growth brings new problems. New problems bring blind spots. Blind spots lead to choices that feel off to the people they’re meant to help. Empathy is the thing that cuts through all of that. It pulls teams back to real lives and real contexts. It makes sure decisions don’t drift into wishful thinking.
When brands hold on to empathy, even a little, the difference shows. Their questions change. Their tone softens. They notice things others miss. They stop trying to impress people before understanding them. They remember that every message, every click, every tiny moment of a brand is landing in the middle of someone’s day, not in a controlled environment.
Most companies still believe empathy matters. They just don’t realize how quietly it slipped out of the room.
The Business Problem This Creates
When empathy fades inside a company, the work doesn’t fall apart right away. It just gets a little dull. A little safe. A little harder to connect with. People feel that long before anyone inside the building does. A message that should land cleanly barely gets a glance. A campaign that looked strong in a room full of smart people feels flat the moment it reaches the real world. The gap between intention and impact starts to widen.
You can see it in the numbers, but the numbers always show up late. Conversion slips. Engagement drops. Feedback gets vague. Teams respond by pushing harder instead of listening more. They add more content, more noise, more features. They tweak things that were never the real problem. All of it distracts from the simple truth that the work stopped sounding like it understood the person on the receiving end.
People don’t want perfect brands. They want brands that seem to know what their lives feel like. They want clarity. They want recognition. They want a sense that someone thought about them before asking for their attention or money. When that’s missing, no amount of polish or budget can hide it. The work might look impressive, but it won’t feel right. And if it doesn’t feel right, it won’t move anyone.
Inside companies, this drift creates its own cycle. Teams lose confidence because nothing hits the way it should. Leaders push for faster fixes. Everyone starts reacting instead of thinking. The work becomes more about solving internal frustration than solving the customer’s problem. Creativity shrinks. Curiosity fades. The brand gets louder but not smarter.
Empathy isn’t sentimental. It’s practical. It keeps the work aligned with real human behavior. It shows teams where the friction is and where the opportunity sits. Without it, brands spend more money for less impact. With it, they make better choices and waste a lot less time.
This is the business problem at the center of all the others. When a brand loses empathy, it loses the ability to see its audience clearly. And when you can’t see people clearly, everything gets harder.
What Empathy Actually Looks Like in Branding
Empathy sounds soft when people talk about it. It gets treated like a personality trait or a mood. In branding, it’s anything but soft. It’s a way of seeing. It’s the ability to understand what people bring into a moment before you decide what you want from them. It helps teams build things that make sense in the real world instead of the imagined world inside a conference room.
It shows up in small places first. In the way a brand writes a headline. In the way a product explains itself, in how a website greets someone who is already tired from the rest of their day. Empathy shows up when a team asks a simple question before they make something. What’s happening in someone’s life at the exact moment they meet this message?
It isn’t guessing. It isn’t assuming. It’s paying attention. It’s listening for the tension in people’s lives, the pressure they feel, the little habits they fall into. It’s knowing that someone who lands on a page is not a persona. They are a person who might be rushing, or hopeful, or skeptical, or confused. When brands start with that, everything they create becomes clearer.
You see empathy in research that looks for feelings, not just facts. You see it in writing that speaks like a human being. You see it in product choices that respect someone’s time. You see it in moments where a brand decides not to shout, because shouting isn’t what the audience needs.
Empathy is not about pleasing everyone. It’s about understanding the one person who is right in front of you and designing with that understanding in your hands. Brands that do this well aren’t nicer. They’re sharper. They’re more specific. They make choices that feel intentional instead of generic.
The best creative work usually comes from a simple place. Someone cared enough to imagine how another person might feel. Then they built something that made that moment easier.
Why Empathy Makes Brands More Interesting
Empathy makes brands more interesting because it pulls them out of their own heads. Most companies talk to the world as if everyone is already paying attention. They lead with themselves. Their goals. Their features. Their timelines. After a while, everything starts to sound the same. Empathy breaks that pattern. It shifts the focus from what the brand wants to say to what people actually need to hear.
When a brand understands the real context of someone’s life, the work gets sharper. The writing gets more specific. The ideas get more grounded. A message that once felt generic suddenly has a point of view. It has texture. It feels like it came from someone who has lived in the same world as the audience instead of floating above it.
Empathy brings contrast to a brand. It gives creative teams something to push against. The tension between what people feel and what a brand offers is where the interesting work usually shows up. You can see it in campaigns that speak to a frustration people rarely voice. You can see it in product stories that honor the messy reality of how people actually use things. You can see it in brands that feel alive because they clearly understand the lives around them.
It also creates trust, and trust is what makes a brand memorable. People remember the feeling of being understood. They remember when a company seems to get the rhythm of their day. They remember when someone made something easier instead of more confusing. That memory lasts longer than any feature list or tagline.
Empathy does not make a brand softer or safer. It makes a brand clearer. It gives the work weight. It keeps teams honest. It pulls everything back to the one thing that always matters. Does this meet someone where they really are, or only where we want them to be?
When a brand gets that right, people notice. They lean in. They stay longer. They come back. Not because the brand was louder, but because it felt real.
How To Bring Empathy Back Into Your Brand
Bringing empathy back into a brand doesn’t require a full reset. It starts with small habits that change how teams see the people they serve. Most companies think they need a big initiative or a workshop, but empathy grows in the day-to-day choices that shape the work.
Start by listening in a way that feels old-fashioned. Talk to real customers without a script. Ask open questions. Ask how their day is going before you ask what they want from your product. People will tell you things you won’t find in a report. They’ll share the context that makes all the difference. A single honest conversation can reshape months of assumptions.
Pay attention to the moments that confuse or slow people down. Friction is usually where a lack of empathy hides. Look at your website through the eyes of someone who is tired or rushed. Look at your messaging through the eyes of someone who is skeptical. Look at your product through the eyes of someone who is learning it for the first time. If something feels harder than it should, that’s your clue.
Bring more real life into the creative process. Before you write, picture the person you’re writing for. Before you design, think about where they might be sitting when they see it. Before you launch something, imagine the mood they might be in when it appears. This sounds simple, but it shifts the work instantly. It keeps it grounded.
Encourage teams to question their own certainty. When someone says people will love this, ask how they know. When someone says the audience always behaves a certain way, ask when they last checked. Empathy grows when you make room for doubt. Doubt opens the door for better answers.
And above all, give your team permission to slow down at the right moments. Not everywhere. Just in the places where rushing creates blind spots. A little pause can uncover a misunderstanding that would have cost months of backtracking. Empathy needs space to show up, and that space doesn’t have to be large.
None of this is complicated. It’s simply a shift in how a brand pays attention. When teams practice these habits, even lightly, the work starts to change. It becomes clearer. It becomes more human. It becomes something people recognize the moment they see it.
What ThoughtLab Has Learned
Working with brands across so many industries has given us a front row seat to how empathy shows up and how quickly it can disappear. Most teams don’t lose it on purpose. They lose it because the work moves fast and everyone is juggling more than they can reasonably hold. Deadlines get tighter. Expectations climb. The room gets loud. In the middle of all that noise, the audience becomes an abstract idea instead of a real group of people with real lives.
We’ve seen how different the work becomes when a team slows down long enough to listen again. When they stop assuming they already know what people feel. When they stop building for the perfect scenario and start building for the way life actually goes. Some of the strongest breakthroughs we’ve watched didn’t come from big creative swings. They came from small shifts in awareness. A better question. A sharper understanding. A moment where someone realized they were designing for a person who might be overwhelmed, hopeful, frustrated, or tired.
We’ve also seen how often brands mistake volume for connection. They talk more. They publish more. They send more. But more is not empathy. More is usually a sign that a team has lost the thread and is trying to make up for it with noise. The brands that reconnect with their audience usually do it by simplifying. They cut the clutter. They get honest. They meet people where they are instead of where the strategy deck said they would be.
One pattern shows up over and over. The teams that protect empathy early make better choices later. Their creative process feels steadier. Their work carries more intention. Their message lands because it actually has somewhere to land. They don’t have to guess what their audience cares about because they’ve done the work to understand it.
Empathy isn’t a soft skill in our world. It’s the thing that keeps the work honest and keeps brands from drifting into empty noise. When teams build with empathy in mind, everything else gets easier. The ideas get clearer. The strategy gets sharper. And the people on the other end can feel the difference.
The takeaway
Empathy isn’t a trend. It isn’t a tone choice. It isn’t something you add at the end of a project because it sounds nice. It’s a way of paying attention to the world and the people moving through it. When brands forget that, the work loses its shape. It stops connecting. It stops feeling like it was made for anyone in particular.
But empathy doesn’t disappear. It just gets ignored until someone brings it back into the room. At ThoughtLab, we see this all the time. The moment a team slows down and looks at what people are actually dealing with, the work changes. It sharpens. It finds its footing again. It starts to sound like something built for real lives, not for an imagined audience in a slide deck.
Most people move fast and only stop when something feels relevant to their lives. Empathy helps a brand get to that point. When the work shows that someone actually thought about the person on the receiving end, people notice it. Not in a dramatic way, just in a simple, this makes sense to me, way. That recognition builds trust over time, and trust is usually what decides whether someone comes back or keeps looking elsewhere.
