REVIVING THE LOST
ART OF LISTENING

Let’s take a look at the state of the union of “voices” today. We’re neck deep in the attention age, where every brand competes with every media outlet and every influencer and, basically, every person online. Often they work in unison. More often they work at cross purposes. It’s all so much noise that it’s no wonder that companies have traded real listening with cherry picking what already serves their narrative.

Because what do you really get from grabbing a few comments from social media? Or running a basic sentiment analysis without any real context? You get an extra page in a slide that’s part of a larger deck selling a pre-ordained strategy.

So is true listening futile? Is it time to eulogize the practice of giving a shit?

No. It’s an absolute imperative for any successful brand.

Listening is the quest for common ground - the first and most essential element of persuasion. Understanding how the intent of the people who made something, best jibes with the motivations of the people it’s designed for. Fail that, and every attempt to connect will feel like a record scratch.
And because listening gets you as close as humanly possible to the challenge, it forces you to face the ugly truths most research weeds out of the final report. It intentionally looks for the outliers - those counter intuitive quirks where true insights hide for cover. Listening leads to why.

Great, you might say before re-raising the earlier point that everything has gotten too complex to accomplish the task. We’d respond that giving up isn’t going to work either. Why not try and figure it out?

That’s what we’ve done by building an ai model designed to make us better listeners. We’re not saying our way is the only way. But the big difference is that we think listening should be intrinsic to our output. How we answer customers is directly related to how they think in the first place. So we created an enlightened, extra set of ears, if you will. Timeless wisdom and proven science built on new technology. It allows us to obsess over language. From stories and searches. Conversations and complaints. From language, we learn what lights people’s fire. What unconscious biases lie beneath the surface. We find the friction that stands between people and brands wanting better outcomes. Sounds good, right?

A lot of big agencies are working on solutions to listen better. And we think that’s a great thing. What they need to rethink is their overall process. Social listening on steroids? Surveys with AI? An automated replacement for IRL interviews? At the end of the day, these just become process plugins. Add-ons to a channel-driven, user journey mapping hamster wheel what you get already. But with the words “ai” in their capabilities page.

We hope the industry learns to listen. That we all use our collective talent to shape a stronger and more authentic relationship between brands and their consumers. But as long as we just accept the business the way it is, change will be hard.

We know that people want to be heard. That the most persuasive brands aren’t the loudest talkers, but the ones that put in the effort to listen. Our entire model hinges on capturing and contextualizing the chorus of conversation that’s self-identified - not shared with the promise of a $25 gift card - because we know those words hold weight.

Let’s be honest, it’s easier to innovate when you’re independent. But a healthier industry is good for us all. So, here’s to a healthy dose of self-awareness for the business at large. That’s a form of listening too.