The Communications Vault

The old adage “Know thyself” is not as valuable as “Know thy audience” when communicating to others. So many times we make creative or content decisions based on our own window to the world. I was at lunch with my peers last week and a fellow producer commented on a commercial that is on the air for a casino. He thought it was ridiculously bad, but his dad loved it. Guess what? Dad, a senior, is the target audience for that commercial. It doesn’t matter what we think about the message, it’s all about being effective with the audience who is receiving it.

At JPL, “Who’s the audience?” is one of our first questions we ask our customers. When the client says the target is “everybody” or “middle-aged men,” that’s not much to go on. We dig deeper. The more accurately we define who is receiving the message, the more effective we can be in shaping the message to their needs and interests.

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