• by Nina Lentini  @Nina_Lentini, August 7, 2020

Opening MediaPost's CPG Brand Insider Summit, set for Aug. 18 - 19, will be Scott Finlow, global CMO of Pepsico Foodservice, who will expand on how the brand harnessed empathy to cope with the disruption brought about by the arrival of the pandemic in March.

In a recent interview in Brand Insider, Finlow mentioned the word empathy several times, which, as MediaPost's Steve Smith noted, "is not something that marketers talk about generally. Can we start thinking about empathy as just one of the variables a marketer has to keep in mind?"

"Marketing is about understanding people and the needs that they have and providing a proposition or solution or product to meet that need," said Finlow. "I'm intentionally calling them people and not consumers or shoppers because I think people is how we need to understand individuals in a fully rounded way.

"It's not a new thing. It's never been more important than now or never been more dynamic than now as we live through unprecedented change in the world we're not just working in but the world we're living in. 

"The pace of change and the degree of change is incredible. And it means as a marketer, you have to be trying to understand what is really at play. I intentionally use what are the actions and what are the feelings, because I need to understand both. That's going to be more top of mind."

You'll want in on this line of thinking so register for the summit right here.