Creative work requires a deep understanding of one’s audience, crafted with emotional precision. Let’s just call that established (yet often ignored) fact.

But putting all your empathy eggs in your audience’s basket neglects your clients—the people who are the ultimate gatekeepers of whatever work your audience ends up seeing. And now’s hardly the time to neglect your gatekeeper.

Marketing leaders’ jobs have become exponentially more brutal and thankless. Channel explosion. Data overload. AI insanity. Demands to drive brand and immediate ROI. Bold work that blows up in CEO’s faces (hi, Solo Stoves). And zero runway to figure it out: 22% of CMOs in 2023 lasted one year or less.

Maintaining a deep understanding of your client’s needs, both professional and emotional, builds the trust that launching “risky” work requires. The stronger the branch, the farther they’ll climb out with you. Not doing so makes that goal exponentially harder at every stage. Let’s call that established fact, too.

Here are ways to start building as much empathy for your client-side allies as you should have for your audience:
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Work the counter

Embed in your client’s world. Become an actual customer to understand their product and service strengths and shortcomings better than they do. Shadow their teams. Attend internal meetings and sales calls. Help assemble the thing. Literally work the damn counter. You can make your case using first-hand insights and your client will see you care enough to have some skin in the game.
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Love their KPIs like they’re your own

Understand that those numbers on your client’s spreadsheets aren’t arbitrary, nice-to-haves or without draconian penalties for not meeting/beating. EFFIEs trophies are sweet, but so is keeping one’s job for another quarter.

My co-founder worked inside Amazon for 16 quarters and came away with a much deeper respect for performance metrics than he had from his earlier agency-side perspective. Reporting to Jeff Bezos will do that. Operate with that level of responsibility and motivation for tangible business results. Bonus: It will make the work better.
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Interrogate your client’s clients

Get to know and understand the people your client must keep happy, or at least not predisposed to root for their failure. Talk to as many cross-functional stakeholders as you can get to take a meeting—sales, product, engineering, finance, ops. Internal friction is never your friend, and listening and relationships are the ultimate lube. Gross.
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Uncover the real monsters under their bed

Business goals are real. But they’re often liberally seasoned with just-as-real human needs: personal relationships, ambition and good old-fashioned terror. Try reframing briefings around human vulnerabilities. “What keeps you up at night?” “What’s going to make you be a hero internally?” “If you could prove one thing to your customer, what would it be?” More importantly, earn the trust it takes to go there.
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Invite an ass-kicking

Don’t do your best and assume it’s enough. Regularly ask “What will it take for you to give us a 10/10 at the end of this year?” “Where do you feel we don’t understand you well enough right now?” “Does my Zoom background look like I’m working in a prison supply closet?” Accept that what you hear might sting a bit, and act on the feedback. Hiding and hoping never works.

Great creative makes your audience feel something real that makes them do something real. But getting there requires as much empathy for the clients championing the work as for the consumers it’s meant to persuade. Your audience risks nothing to like your stuff. Good clients risk everything. Act like it.