by James Ninness, creative director
This blog gets a little weird. You’ve been warned.
Let’s talk about communication. Countless articles and blogs and books have been written about this immensely broad topic. You can spend years studying how to listen, write a dissertation on talking, or use the rest of your life evaluating methods of eye contact and body language—all of these things have been discussed ad nauseam.
Let us spend a few moments considering another, slightly—emphasis here on “slightly”— less excavated, aspect of communication: understanding your audience.
The Tools of Communication
Most people know how to make sounds with their mouth to communicate ideas. Still more understand how to absorb sounds around them with their ears (a few of those people have figured out how to plug those sounds into their brains and mentally digest the information to apply it somewhere down the road). Generally speaking, people get the ins and outs of communication. The general population is taught to speak and listen at an early age.
That’s not communication. Talking and listening are tools used in communication.
To truly communicate with one another, we have to share ideas. And to achieve that, a speaker has to know what words to use for the audience before them. Likewise, they need to know how to listen to what that audience is saying in a way that their responses can adapt. Language that makes sense to the speaker is much less important than that which makes sense to the audience.
So, before you start spouting your message here and there, consider three simple questions to understand your audience first:
- What language do they speak?
- What’s their motivation in this engagement?
- Is there anything critical you may not know (or be considering)?
Before we break those down, let me give you the end of a story, Christopher Nolan style. Then, we’ll consider those three questions and see how we got to where we got.
The Story, Act Three
Just over a decade ago, my wife and I spent a brief period living with my parents. In their not-incredibly-large home we had me, my wife, our two daughters, our two dogs, and then, of course, my parents. Yes, it was about as comfy as you think.
On most days back then, I would come home from work to be greeted by the shouts of my eldest’s excitement, and the screams of my youngest’s tantrum. The adults in the situation varied from day to day, with everyone taking turns watching the younglings. Whoever it was, they were usually ready for me to take over, so they could search for the sanity they had lost while chaperoning my kids all day long.
On the day of our story, the adult with my daughters was my mother. And on that day, I came home to find…silence. I shut the door behind me and scanned the house. The living room and den were empty, as was the children’s room and the room my wife and I stayed in. The last room to check was my parents’, which is where I found my mother, barely awake, holding the youngest monster, who was asleep in her arms. Through the window, I heard my three-year-old playing in the backyard. Naturally, I wanted to say hello, so I went back through the house to the sliding glass door that led to a green space full of the kind of junk a family with toddlers collects.
And there was my daughter. Smiling as she saw me come into the backyard, squatting in the corner of the yard, flanked by both dogs, relieving herself. “Going number two,” is what we, toddler parents, like to call what she was doing in broad daylight for any unfortunate neighbors to possibly see. “Hi Daddy” she cried, excited to see me. “I’m a big girl!”
Before I could ask what was happening, she reassured me, “I shut the door!”
What Language Does Your Audience Speak?
Language goes beyond country of origin. Any parent will tell you that kids and their parents don’t speak the same flavor of language for quite a while, if ever. As a California guy who recently moved to Mississippi, yeah, English is varied.
Education, location, and ability are all factors that influence the language your audience may speak. To get the person or people you’re speaking with to your point as effectively as possible, it’s important to know as much about those factors as possible. Adjust your diction and syntax based on what you know, then give it a shot. And, like any good campaign, you’ll need to refine your choice based on the results you get. Don’t pander or mimic, but bend and ebb and flow through your conversation to ensure you’re using the same words in the same ways.
Nothing cultivates chaos like confusion.
What’s Your Audience’s Motivation in This Engagement?
Even if you grew up living next door to one another, your audience may be less invested in the conversation than you are. That could be the symptom of any number of problems.
Is your targeting off? Should you even be talking to this person or these people? If you’re a door-to-door steak salesman in a vegan neighborhood, you made a mistake. Or is this an audience that already has a source of steak they have no intention of leaving?
Perhaps the timing is wrong. Even if our fictional door-to-door steak salesman, which is totally probably a real thing somewhere, found themselves in the most carnivorous of developments, they’d likely struggle to make a sale at 3 a.m. Perhaps a rival salesman came through yesterday and filled these refrigerators up already, and our salesman is a week or so too early. Knowing what to say is just as important as knowing when to say it.
Is There Anything Critical You May Not Know (or Be Considering) About Your Audience?
In the ideal scenario, you’ve got a captive audience who needs what you have to tell them and you both speak the same language. So, what can be the problem, then?
Most times, it’s the price point. Perhaps the product or service is too expensive for the people hearing you to afford. And, as much as they love to have a Jaguar XJ, and they do, in fact, require a new car, this one won’t fit their budget. The inverse is also true, with some people seeing a price point too low as a turn-off.
Priority is another common issue. That same customer, who needs a car and is taking the bus for now, could have a list of other expenditures between them and your sales goals. Sure, they’d love your reasonably priced auto that is common for their income level, but first they’ve got to pay off their kids’ braces and get a television for the remodeled family room. You couldn’t know these things without talking to them, but you could have figured it out before you made your pitch. And that pitch might have pivoted a bit to accommodate their current situation.
The Story, Acts One & Two
When my mother was a child, most of what she was taught was based on what “gentlemen” and “ladies” did. My grandparents would often teach her how to behave with prompts like, “A lady closes her mouth when she chews,” or, “Gentlemen always open doors for their dates.” When my mother became a mother, she used the same phrases with me. So, naturally, as a grandmother, this was her reflexive coaching go-to.
Earlier in the day of exterior number two, my daughter, who was at the tail-end of potty training, did something truly offensive to my mother’s sensibilities: she went to the restroom and left the door open. My mother walked by, saw her granddaughter with her little legs kicking off the toilet seat, and thought this was the opportune teaching moment.
As my mother tells it, she waited until my daughter had finished, and leaned in the doorway while she was washing her hands. “Sweetie,” she said, “I’m so proud of you for going to the bathroom like a big girl.”
“Thank you, Nani.”
“You’re welcome. Now, we need to work on you using the restroom like a lady?”
“Lady?”
“Yes,” my mother continued, “When a lady uses the restroom, she shuts the door, so nobody can see her do her business.”
“Can I play now?”
“Wait. What are we going to do when we go potty?”
“Go like a lady.”
“Nice!”
Then they high-fived, and my daughter went back to playing, and my mother went back to whatever she was doing. Everyone was happy until I came home and found, well, what I found.
What Went Wrong
My Mother and Daughter Were Speaking Different Languages
At that moment, my mother was speaking with colloquialisms that had become innate to her. My daughter, meanwhile, was using the language of a three-year-old. Both were talking and listening fine, but they were on wholly different wavelengths. My mother’s phrase, “restroom like a lady” had backfired almost immediately, and the only thing my daughter understood beyond that was, “shuts the door.”
My Mother and Daughter Had Diverse Motivations
Clearly, my daughter wanted to play. She was ready to agree to anything if she could only go play. Had my mother picked up on the queues, she might have reinforced the need for full attention, or rescheduled the instruction in her mind until there was a less distracting promise of fun before her grandchild. Unfortunately, my daughter chose to understand in cliff notes, remembering only a few key phrases. Both of them walked away believing they were on the same page.
My Mother Was Not Considering Our Dog, Named Lady
Perhaps the biggest oops in this conversation was that my mother, who had allowed us to live with her, had forgotten that one of our dogs shared a title with her concept of the ideal woman. She exited their discussion believing she had set her grandchild on a proper path, and her grandchild left it wondering why Nani wanted her to poop outside.
Communication is hard. Nobody uses language in the same way, and we each bring our whole selves—history and circumstance—to every conversation. While it can be tempting to insist that people understand you, you’ll likely have an easier time if you approach conversations intent on understanding your audience first. Find a common tongue, figure out why they’re listening, and look for hurdles you can move around before you have to jump them.
Need an agency to help you better understand your ideal audience? Mad Genius is great at that. Reach out, let’s grab a cup of coffee or a beer, and let’s figure out how to best talk to your customers.