Author: Siy Bishop

Messages don’t land when audience’s aren’t understood

When considering audience, it’s easy to get over excited – this content is for everyone in the region/organisation/on planet earth! The enthusiasm is great, but there’s a real risk of producing generic content that gets lost in a sea of sameness.

We’ve all seen or even produced content that didn’t quite land. Maybe the visual storytelling of an animation would have done a better job of explaining a new technical process than a piece to camera featuring an engineer. A series of 90 second videos may have had more success than the 5 minute video that time poor employees were sent.

5 simple steps

If we want to turn a message into a piece of content that moves audiences to action, we really need to understand our audience. We can do this using the 5Ws – WHAT, WHY, WHO, WHERE & WHEN. 

WHAT – Clearly understand the message

Are you really clear on what you want to say? Can it be articulated in a single sentence? Is it sensitive in nature? How much detail do you need to share to ensure the audience ‘gets it’?

WHY – Is there a clear goal?

You have a clear message, do you have clear outcomes and objectives? What is it you’re expecting your audience to do? What action do you want them to take?

WHO – Hone down your target audience

If you need to reach everyone in an organisation, what’s the best medium? Consider language and tone. If it’s a specific team, what level of detail will they need? What’s the best way to do this?

WHERE – What channels do your audience use?

How are your audience going to access the content? Is it suitable for their channel of choice? Is it easily accessible? Will you need to put spend behind it to ensure it reaches them? 

WHEN – Is it deadline driven?

Consider your timeline and how your audience relates to this. Do they have specific working hours? Are they across multiple time zones? 

Answering these questions will help you refine your audience and communicate more effectively with them. We’ll take a look at a technique that can help us gain even more insight in a future email.

This is just the beginning!

​This cinema advert we produced for ScreenSkills is a great example of the 5Ws at work. Understanding our audience allowed us to craft the right narrative from Mel’s story.We hope you’ve found this useful and if you’d like to know more, or you want to talk to us about a project you like our help with, get in touch!

When creating content for events, you get one shot connect

What was the last event you went to, whether internal or external, that used video in a way you really remembered? That really captured your attention, gave you goosebumps? I really hope the answer is more positive than I think it may be…

Let’s be honest, it’s easy for event content to be all flash and no bang. Content looks cool, but it’s forgettable. There’s a sea of illuminated faces in the crowd as phones come out… There was a perfect opportunity to set your stall out, land that killer message. Connect with the audience.

How can we capture attention, land the message and ultimately drive action?

Communicating human to human

Remember, the content we’re producing is speaking to a person, just like you. They’re trying to solve a problem, advance their career, or make a difference. The opening video for your event is THE moment to make a connection, grab their attention and communicate human to human.

Ok but how do we go about doing this? Consider these top tips:

Understand your audience
We mentioned the importance of understanding audience in a previous email – have a look at the 5W technique – and when looking for the human story, audience understanding is even more important. Once we know more about our audience, we can more deeply understand their hopes, fears, dreams and anxieties.

Find the human story in your messaging
There’s far more to it than ‘sell more stuff’ or ‘be better managers’. What does ‘selling more stuff’ unlock? What’s the human lens you can put on it by using words like enabling, empowering, owning and inspiring? What human problem are you solving? How can you make your message resonate and really mean something?

Tell an honest story
Do you have a customer/stakeholder who’d be up for getting involved? Can someone tell you what your audience is enabling? Can they see the human impact of what’s at stake if they don’t act? Hearing from a customer/client who has their life changed because of what your audience has done is incredibly powerful.

It doesn’t stop there!

Finally, turn the mirror back on yourself – does the message you’re crafting resonate with you? Share it with colleagues, friends and family – what’s their response?

When we produced the opening video for Adobe’s International Women’s Day event, we knew that a film where parents interview their young children was going to be risky, but we knew we’d nailed the human connection when our client told us there were laughs, tears and applause in the room when it played! If you’d like any more information about event content, get in touch!