Make empathy your strategic advantage, says Saatchi & Saatchi NZ’s Terri O’Connell

In Terri O’Connell’s opinion, strategy is impossible without empathy. She speaks with deputy editor Zahra Shahtahmasebi on how this has become her secret weapon at work.

Empathy was crucial in Terri O’Connell’s recent work with new women’s health brand E-leviate.

Due to launch formally in 2027, E-leviate is a vaginal ring pessary, designed to support pelvic organ prolapse and stress urinary incontinence.

Both are hugely common conditions for women, commonly occurring as a result of childbirth or menopause. And yet they are often under-discussed and under-treated, says O’Connell, who is strategy director at Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand.

She has always been of the mind that to build strategy that works, desk research is not enough. Even more so when the brand is geared towards women.

“Women typically aren’t leading the conversations on anything most of the time. Most of the rhetoric around anything in our world was build by a man,” says O’Connell.

“Without asking [women]directly, it’s very hard to find the why.”

So that’s what they did. When working on the E-leviate brand, they held focus groups interviews with women aged 45-plus and 55-plus.

Find the thread

When it comes to menopause, O’Connell found that many women don’t know anything about it until they go through it.

“You’re so unprepared all the time and you’re constantly having to do your own research because all of the big conversations around those things don’t really happen.”

These focus group conversations also helped the brand decide where and how it would show up. It was important to find a good middle ground that worked for the people who were already going through menopause, as well as those who were still yet to.

“It’s finding that thread, that thing you think is true regardless,” says O’Connell.

What E-leviate landed on is a visual world that feels calm and grounded with a bit of strength. The tone is authoritative while still being sensitive.

Because E-leviate is created by clinicians and is available as a prescription product, the trust part of the equation was already handled. But the tricky thing was not making it seem too “serious”, O’Connell explains.

“If you talk about it like a really serious medical product, they will go, ‘Oh that’s not for me. It’s never bad enough for me to ask my doctor’. You have to be real careful to get them to go, ‘I suppose it is pretty annoying actually, it’s not a big deal for me to go to my doctor’.”

Impossible without empathy

O’Connell’s work with E-leviate is just one example of her overarching philosophy: “Strategy is impossible if you don’t have empathy.”

“My opinion of strategy is that you’re trying to figure out the reason why. A strategy isn’t just about giving someone the facts necessarily, it’s understanding why it’s interesting,” she says.

The easiest way to do that? Go and explore that topic by talking to people.

And during that exploration, never take anything at face value, says O’Connell. Instead, always try and understand the reason why.

“There’s only so much desk research and data can tell you. It’s a great head start or validation, but the ‘why’ in those conversations with people are the parts that you get some really interesting creative outputs and business decisions.

“I work on behalf of brands all the time, so if I’m not empathetic in my exploration on their behalf, they’re not going to come across as human.”

Everybody loves talking

The key to a brand that truly resonates with people is building connections and trust, so that when a competitor comes in cheaper, your audience doesn’t leave – because it was never about price, says O’Connell.

She’s worked across Europe and says that in a small country like Aotearoa, talking to people isn’t hard, even on a small budget.

“You can find friends of friends, you can go out for drive, talk to someone at the bus stop. It’s not hard to access a human here.”

Besides, she adds, everyone loves talking, even people who say they don’t.

“If you are genuinely curious to hear their opinions, they’ll pick up on that and they’ll tell you. Often the people who don’t have strong opinions or don’t talk are just waiting for someone to say, ‘What do you think?’”

Brands have a responsibility to be constantly having these sorts of conversations, says O’Connell. She recommends that every brand do one piece of research a year to keep their finger on the pulse.

“To understand how the audience is changing, what do they care about, what upsets them, what are they worried about?

“If you’re never talking to them, how could you possibly know that?”

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