Decision-makers often struggle to fully understand people because their view of consumers is increasingly shaped by data rather than direct exposure to lived experiences. True consumer empathy and understanding improves when teams stay closer to people’s real contexts and experiences, which is what we at Human8 call the empathy effect.

 When Google introduced its Gemini Olympics-themed ad, it told a simple, emotional story. A father helping his daughter write a fan letter to Olympic champion Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. But instead of writing it together, he used AI to help her find the right words. Google wanted to show how technology can support everyday moments. But for many, it didn’t land that way. Instead of feeling helpful, it felt off. As if something deeply personal was being reduced to a prompt. And that’s where Google missed the mark. Not because the campaign idea was wrong. But because it didn’t fully reflect how people feel about these moments. The brand failed to step into the shoes of the people it was speaking to. And this is not an isolated case.

We’ve never had more ways to understand people. We can track behaviour in real time, segment audiences with precision and test ideas before they reach the market. Yet, across categories, we see well-informed campaigns that don’t land, innovations that feel right on paper but fail to connect and messages that miss the nuance of the moment. When we have more data, more tools, more consumer insights and more access to people than ever before: how can we know so much, but understand so little – and build so little consumer empathy?

From consumer insights to the illusion of closeness

Over time, organisations have become increasingly reliant on data – such as purchase information, user data and attitudinal tracking – to understand people. Insight teams turn this complex, messy behaviour into clear takeaways, creating a shared foundation across departments. These insights travel through the organisation, shaping decisions and guiding action at scale.

It can create a strong sense that we are closer to consumers than ever before. But the core challenge sits elsewhere. While data helps us see patterns, it does not necessarily keep us close to people. You are no longer hearing the full story unfold. You are not seeing the environment someone is in, the influences around them or the things they choose not to say. What gets lost is not the information itself, but the lived reality behind it.

And over time, this creates distance. Not because organisations lack data, but because they are often operating without direct exposure to the human situations that give that data meaning. As a result, we risk understanding people through what is measurable, rather than through what is experienced – and this weakens consumer empathy. And that gradually shifts how closely we really understand people.

This connects to something broader. An empathy problem that is not only shaping how organisations make sense of the world, but also how people within them stay connected to the reality they are trying to understand.

Consumer empathy under pressure: empathy deficit and fatigue

Our cultural strategy partner Space Doctors identified two underlying causes for this empathy problem. The first is what we call an empathy deficit. In a world that prioritises speed, efficiency and constant responsiveness, there are simply fewer moments where we fully step into someone else’s world. We interact all the time, but often only briefly. We rarely pause to really listen. Over time, this dilutes our ability to experience the world through someone else’s lens and erodes consumer empathy.

This also shows up in how brands are working with consumer understanding and consumer insights. There is an increasing reliance on summaries, dashboards and AI-generated outputs that make complexity easier to digest. These are all incredibly useful tools in their own right. But each step also creates a little more distance from the lived reality those outputs are based on. What starts as rich, human context gradually becomes something more abstracted and structured, further removed from the original experience.

The second cause is empathy fatigue. We are exposed to more human stories, more emotion and more urgency than ever before. Just open your phone and you’re confronted with an ongoing stream of issues, opinions and narratives. And at some point, it becomes too much. It numbs people and they disengage. Not because they don’t care, but because it’s simply too much to take in. In organisations, this same dynamic shows up. Decision-makers are confronted with an increasing flow of inputs, reports, updates and consumer insights across markets, teams and channels. Each one is relevant and adds value. But together, they create a level of saturation that makes it harder to fully engage with every perspective in depth.

As such, it becomes more difficult to consistently step into the shoes of the consumer. Not because the intent is missing. But because both the distance created by the empathy deficit and the overload created by empathy fatigue reduces our ability to fully inhabit another person’s reality. One pulls us slightly further away from lived experience. The other makes it harder to fully take it in when it is available. And together, they reinforce each other.

Why consumer empathy and closeness change everything

The conditions around us make it harder to stay close to consumers. This is why simply knowing more is no longer enough. Observing people from a distance is not the same as experiencing their reality and build deep human understanding. And that is exactly what’s needed to shift consumer empathy from a concept to practice.

Because empathy becomes more powerful when teams don’t just interpret people, but step into the worlds they live in: seeing their environments, observing their behaviours and hearing their stories first-hand. These immersive moments make consumers harder to stereotype and reduce to a single data point. They bring back texture, contradiction, nuance and context. And it is often in those moments that true, deep human understanding unlocks.

A good example of this comes from Samsung. To help its shopper insights team get closer to real retail behaviour, we organised an on- and offline retail safari in New York City. Cross-functional teams stepped out of their usual environment and into real-world retail spaces, experiencing them as shoppers rather than analysts. They visited multiple stores across Manhattan, observing not just what was happening, but how it felt to navigate choice, complexity and decision-making in context. Back in workshop sessions, these observations were translated into over 80 ideas to improve the retail experience, alongside hundreds of consumer insights captured across physical and digital journeys. What made the difference was not a new dataset. It was proximity. By stepping into the experience itself, teams didn’t just understand shoppers differently. They felt the friction, the overload and the subtle signals that are often lost in translation. And that changed the quality of the ideas that followed.

This is what we call the empathy effect: the impact that closeness and consumer empathy have on the quality of understanding and decision-making, leading to stronger outcomes when it is present and weaker ones when it is missing.

Because ultimately, this is what is at stake. Not the availability of data or information. But the closeness we maintain to the people behind it. And in a world where both empathy deficit and empathy fatigue are shaping how we work and decide, consumer closeness is becoming harder to sustain, but also more valuable than ever.