In a business, we need our stories to embody the challenges, contexts and feelings of our audience. Not what they say they want — what they actually want.
I had a conversation with a mate about gym marketing once. He said something I’ve never forgotten: “No one wants to get fit. They want to look good naked.”
That difference matters. It’s the difference between the stated want and the real want. And that gap is where empathy lives.
For the first forty minutes of Wall-E, we watch a robot — a trash compactor — trudging through an abandoned world. There’s barely any dialogue. And yet we’re flooded with emotion. Why? Because the robot is industrious, creative, and desperately lonely. He gazes upwards, dreaming of connection, of companionship, of love. We see ourselves in him.
Director Andrew Stanton called this the purest form of storytelling. In business, we do the opposite. We talk about our organisations, our processes, our features. And nobody cares, because they can’t relate to any of it.
The first commandment of storytelling isn’t “tell a good story.” It’s “make me care.” And you can’t make someone care about an abstraction. You have to make them see themselves.
Here’s why: we’re built to respond to human struggle. John McClane in Die Hard is impossibly cool — but the moment he runs across broken glass, we wince. Everyone has cut themselves. Everyone has struggled with family. Everyone knows what it feels like to be undermined by someone with perfect diction. The human side of the story calls to us because it’s our story.
This is where neural coupling enters. When you create empathy, you’re not just moving people emotionally — you’re activating their mirror neurons. Their brains start simulating what the character experiences. They become the character. And when that happens, your story stops being something they’re watching and becomes something they’re living.
The practical application is simple but relentless: find the feeling beneath the want. Ask yourself: “What does my audience actually fear? What do they actually hope for?” Not what they ought to want. What they do want, deep down, even if they won’t admit it.
Then build your story there.
Because empathy isn’t sentiment. It’s the foundation of all persuasion. When someone feels seen — when they recognise themselves in your story — that’s when they’re ready to move.