Who cares?
At the core of any communications strategy is the audience, and understanding that can make the difference between successfully landing a story or not. Whilst it can always be tempting to jump to the message, to the solution, without considering the target population, a campaign is destined to fail. And this is true regardless of expertise – whether your audience is external, internal, corporate, operational, public.
As I look towards my next opportunity in communications, it’s perhaps the biggest consideration: what will the audiences look like, and how can we reach them best. This isn’t over-simplifying or patronising, but meeting people where they’re at, through channels they’re comfortable with and where trust exists.
I don’t know whether it’s just me who gets excited about the prospects of mapping out stakeholders, along with the opportunity to develop relationships to understand differing priorities and build alignment through my work.
One of the organisations where I’ve recently applied for a role formalises this into an approach that ensures those working in support functions (corporate language for head offices) gain lived experience and insights into the realities of the customer-facing, frontline of their business that their work directly impacts.
The company takes it a step further, with colleagues expected to implement a change as a result, forming part of annual appraisals. It’s not a tickbox exercise, but something that has consequences.
Because the disconnect between head offices, HQs and corporate campuses and those working on the frontline is very real, regardless of sectors and industries. This is especially true when audiences are geographically diverse, located within different societies with a variety of cultures. As communicators, we must meet the audience where they are.
At the same time, we need to be pragmatic in understanding whether access to information, and to communications channels, is available or whether there are barriers to entry. If we can’t reach the audience, then what do we need to build to overcome this – and it’s more than just the solution but the process and commitment too. And perhaps most important: does the audience actually care?
That question – ‘who cares?’ – has been one of the core pillars of my approach to communications throughout my career because it forces us to put ourselves in our audiences’ shoes. It’s not a negative, but it directly shifts our angle and therefore our approach.
In my last role, I asked this question on a variety of subjects. It’s not enough to want to say something and talk at people. We must always make sure we know what outcomes we’d like to see. Whether that was around a major regulatory change impacting how customers crossed borders or a technical fix to a customer-facing booking process, getting to the heart of why someone should care was key.
As a result, I was able to communicate clearly about highly technical and complex topics, building trust that the company had the project in hand, and that even small changes contributed to annual priorities. My focus on frontline colleagues in telling those stories meant that comms didn’t just land – audiences actually wanted to engage with them too.
So, the next time you get a request to send an email, add something to the already overwhelming weekly newsletter, or just post something quickly about a topic on the intranet, take a breath and ask the question that matters most: ‘who cares?’