Yesterday’s post on Kraft's Oreo (re: mature brands) touched something that’s on my mind today: the importance of knowing your audience and be willing to talk with them, not at them.I just got a call from a professor-researcher who wants to have his findings published as a book and is looking for counsel. He has a message to offer and a vision for the project. The question I put before him: who’s your intended audience and how willing are you to adapt your vision for the book so that your message is received? In cases like this, a person may want to speak to the needs of an academic audience; others may seek a wider, more general audience. Both are valid choices. But a decision needs to be made. As communicators, authors, editors, producers, marketers, business leaders—and well, as people—we need to decide who we want to speak with and then be willing to do the work to meet them where they are. Think about it: you’re certainly not going to speak to people where they’re not. (Unless you shout really, really loud—and that’s exhaustive and you won’t last long.) Meeting people where they are means more than where they are physically. It means knowing where they are in mindset, in life circumstances, in needs, fears, and desires. It’s means asking and listening. It means relinquishing our assumptions, removing our prejudices, and slaughtering our sacred cows. It means bridge-building. Because it’s so easy to forget that not everybody is like us, is where we are right now, and cares about what we care about. At times I’m as guilty of this as the next person.
What it all comes down to is knowing your audience and engaging with them. The best books, websites, products, brands, etc., are conversations. Two-way streets in which both sides are enriched by the encounter (and I don’t mean just monetarily).
Getting this right is perhaps the most critical aspect of successful communication. Human nature tends to want to jump ahead; we want get right to the message-giving part. You have to connect first, then flow.
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