Results with heart: Inside Superside's empathy-fueled path to performance
Great creative hits hearts and targets. Superside’s leaders show how balancing creative empathy with performance metrics drives brand equity—and business results.
Creative impact can’t be captured by a single metric or mood.
But it is visible in results—and few understand this balance better than Superside's Gradwell Sears, Chief Creative Officer, and Josh Mendelsohn, Senior Director of Product Marketing.
In our latest guide, Inside Great Creative Partnerships, Sears and Mendelsohn discussed how creative and marketing leaders must harmonize emotional resonance with measurable business performance to drive real impact.
Spoiler: Results matter, but so do the people behind them. From ROI to vibes and empathy to partnerships that thrive, keep reading to see:
- Why creative is foundational to performance
- How to make empathy a competitive advantage
- How to prioritize the humans behind the results
- What balancing speed with substance looks like
- Why unity is essential for proving impact
Together, Sears and Mendelsohn offer a real-world look at what it takes to lead with both heart and rigor—and why that balance is the key to creative that works.
Inside Great Creative Partnerships
Tap into the minds of 22 top creative and marketing leaders at brands like Wistia, Booking.com and Twilio and see how they ship great work, together.
The ROI of great creative
Mendelsohn focuses on data-backed outcomes—whether it’s new leads, downloads or cost per acquisition. But as he acknowledges, he can’t reach those results without great creative.
It’s literally impossible to optimize things like return on ad spend or cost of acquisition without a steady flow of creative to test and learn along the way.
That belief is backed by hard numbers: According to a Forrester Total Economic Impact™ study, by providing highly creative and innovative content in a fast, timely manner, Superside improved campaign performance by $1.1 million over the course of three years. Additionally, Superside’s creative services delivered a 94% ROI—translating to more than $2 million in net value.
This is the marketer’s business case for creative: It’s not optional. It’s foundational to performance. Without it, the machine stalls.
Sears, by contrast, begins with the emotional imprint of creativity. “Creative impact tends to be something that makes you feel something... that prompts an action. That’s what great creative can do,” he said. From impulse buys to iconic campaigns that stay with you for years, Sears champions creativity that isn’t art, but should have a similar vibe.
The longevity of great creative may not show up in immediate ROI… but it’s what turns a bar of soap into something aspirational. That’s the power of brand.
These long-tail effects are often overlooked in quarterly marketing reviews—but they’re the bedrock of brand equity. It’s what makes someone skip over competitors and go straight to your product because they feel something when they see it.
Empathy as a competitive advantage
Empathy isn’t soft. It’s strategic. For both leaders, it’s the secret to aligning marketing and creative priorities and building a partnership that thrives—even under pressure.
I have a sticky note on my desk that says: ‘That's not how I would do it. But that doesn't make it a bad idea.'
This mindset is core to Mendelsohn’s philosophy. Leading with empathy, in his view, means making space for ideas that might not be your own, being flexible on arbitrary deadlines and protecting creative teams from performance pressure.
Sears takes a dual approach—empathy toward team members and empathy toward his audience. He emphasizes understanding what motivates creatives on a human level: “What’s making them excited about this opportunity?” Equally important, he says, is reducing ambiguity in briefs.
Sometimes you get a brief with 15 priorities, which means nothing is.
Lack of prioritization is not a hypothetical concern. In Superside’s Overcommitted Report, creative leaders disclosed that 55% of projects are marked high priority, making it difficult to know where to start. With 76% also experiencing burnout, transparency and protection from scope creep is vital for sustainable creative work.
Managing expectations, particularly in fast-turn environments, prevents burnout and disappointment. Empathy becomes a bridge—between urgency and inspiration, between short-term performance and long-term brand love.
Results matter—but so does the human behind them
Mendelsohn didn’t sugarcoat it: “If you’re kind but don’t deliver results, you're not going to have a job for long.” But he also warned against transferring that pressure to creatives, especially when their strengths lie in storytelling and craft.
When you pass that pressure onto creative teams… it can deliver worse work because it comes from a place of fear rather than inspiration.
The answer? Clear communication, role clarity and shielding creative teams from the metrics heat when needed. Sears echoed this sentiment, pointing to the importance of transparency: “Let them know upfront—this one is two rounds, the templates are there, we just need to get it done.”
Sears also highlighted that while reducing internal friction, clear communication and prioritization is essential to creativity, not every project will be a home run and that’s ok.
Failure isn’t necessarily the worst thing. Most of the time, failure is where you learn the most.
Balancing speed with substance
A recurring tension for creative and marketing leaders is reconciling short-term performance needs with long-term brand equity. For Sears, it’s about recognizing when to swing for the fences and when to take a step back. “This isn’t the one,” he tells his teams sometimes, helping them conserve energy and creative ambition for the right moments.
Mendelsohn offered a complementary take: Even performance marketing must reflect the brand’s emotional core.
The most successful brands are doing both at the same time—performance and brand—through a consistent feeling that permeates everything that gets into market.
Whether you’re running a single email campaign or producing a full-funnel campaign, that consistency is what turns creative volume into brand value.
Where to start: Proving impact with unity
So, what should a creative or marketer do when they’re struggling to prove impact?
Josh’s advice: Tell a unified story.
You need to be accountable for it. When you're explaining your programs and their impact to stakeholders and executives… bring both the marketer and creative together. It has to be a united front.
Start with the why. Translate campaign goals, align on both emotion and action and walk into stakeholder meetings shoulder-to-shoulder.
Gradwell closed on a note of humility and curiosity:
If you're getting it right every time, you're not trying hard enough.
Creative leadership that delivers
Ultimately, creative and marketing leaders aren’t working on opposite sides of a campaign—they’re building two halves of the same story. One half sparks attention, emotion and memory. The other ensures that spark fuels measurable outcomes.
What unites both? Empathy, clarity, and a deep respect for each other’s craft.
As Sears and Mendelsohn show, results don’t have to come at the cost of creativity—and creativity doesn’t need to abandon structure to make an impact. When both sides lead with curiosity, communicate openly and stay anchored in shared goals, the work gets better. And so do the outcomes.
For more insights on bringing together creatives and marketers to make an impact, be sure to check out our full guide, Inside Great Creative Partnerships.
Inside Great Creative Partnerships
Tap into the minds of 22 top creative and marketing leaders at brands like Wistia, Booking.com and Twilio and see how they ship great work, together.
Tess is a Senior Content Specialist at Superside, where she crafts compelling content for SMBs and enterprise businesses. With over 10 years of experience, Tess has honed her skills writing for both B2B and B2C audiences, working across agencies and in-house creative teams. Her expertise spans industries, including international relations, tech, hospitality, and the music industry, where she has a knack for blending storytelling with strategic insights. When she’s not busy writing, you’ll likely find her curled up with a good book, binge-watching the latest Netflix obsession or hiking.
You may also like these
Open doors, unlock ideas: Inside Wistia's creative partnership
An SNL-inspired twist on a classic campaign.An analogue book that’s shipped over 700 copies around the world.A TikTok series narrated by a psychic raccoon.Okay, that last one’s made up. But one thing’s for sure, the creative and marketing teams at Wistia don’t just bring the creativity—they crank it to eleven.That’s why we had to speak with them for Superside’s latest guide, Inside Great Creative Partnerships. Wistia’s Adam Day, Creative Director, and Taylor Corrado, Senior Director of Brand Marketing, were kind enough to oblige and spill their secrets, including:
Get off the conveyor belt: 22 leaders on the secret to great work
“It can’t be an assembly line. You have to bake in collaboration—brainstorms, thought starters—before your jump to production. That’s where the best ideas come from.”Kevin Branscum, Senior Director of Brand Marketing at Typeform, shared this thought when we interviewed him for our latest guide. And he wasn’t the only one. The concept of partnerships—true collaboration between marketers and creatives—came up over and over again as the lynchpin for any successful campaign.That’s why we called the guide, Inside Great Creative Partnerships.It digs into hard-earned, real-life lessons from 22 top creative and marketing leaders shipping great work, together. We’ve already spilled their number one secret. But there are many more big ones, like:The source of great ideas
Designing culture: A masterclass in creative leadership
Can you think of anything more tempting than a “do not touch” button for a kid?Maureen Carter, former Creative Director at Nike, BET Networks and Nickelodeon, was the mastermind behind a lime green button on a kid’s app that turned into a cultural lynchpin—replacing elevator buttons in offices and shower controllers on cruise ships around the world. Though Carter would attribute the idea to Bella, one of her 10-year old design partners on the project.She won an Emmy for her Nickelodeon app: A testament to the very real results of her innovative, empathy-fuelled approach. And at Superside’s INSIDER summit, she unpacked that approach for us.Brimming with joy, wonder and play, Carter is a creative leader who'll leave you smiling and inspired. So, let’s walk through her vibrant journey and the many lessons she learned along the way, working with everyone from Tupac to Michelle Obama, and every brand from Deloitte to Nike.Not just one note: Becoming a multi-dimensional creative leader