Philosophy of empathy: Lessons from NBCUniversal’s Joe Benarroch at Ragan’s Future Comms Conference

Storytelling is more than an action. It’s a philosophy that we must construct and weave through every aspect of what we do as communicators, Joe Benarroch, EVP of Communications, Global Advertising and Partnerships at NBCUniversal, told the audience during the opening keynote of Ragan’s Future of Communications Conference, part of Communications Week 2022.

Benarroch came back time and time again to the idea of building your storytelling philosophy. It’s a way of differentiating yourself in the job market and creating a communications strategy that your team can understand get behind.

“It’s not easy sometimes to get people to rally around (your philosophy), but if you center yourself in it and you believe in it, naturally and organically your activations will start to shape around it and you will have built your own case study,” Benarroch said.

Empathy and values

One cornerstone of these philosophies should be empathy. The importance of this trait has only grown since  outset of the pandemic, when we all had to speed up our internal communications plans by two years and really start listening to each other about how we were doing personally and what we needed socially. It’s the foundation of good storytelling, too.