Do you advocate for your audience -- really? For many brands in the events business, the honest answer is "We say we do, but we don't." Too often, companies put together events and create customer experiences in order to tell their audience how great their brand is or will be without really understanding what their audience needs. "How to Be an Audience Advocate" presents a solution: empathizing with your audience by focusing on creating value and being accountable, consistent and simple. The presentation was created by Kevin Olsen, president of One Smooth Stone, an event and communication agency. Kevin shares examples of how brands can create memorable audience experiences by embracing the "value, accountable, consistent, and simple" mantra. "How to Be an Audience Advocate" contains detailed speaker notes to complement the rich visuals.
8. “Artists… need to engage on a social level in
an authentic way because fans have so
much more choice. An artist that doesn’t
want to connect with them, will quickly be
forgotten.”
Cortney Harding
Head of Partnerships
Soundrop
9.
10. “The aim of marketing is to know
the customer so well, the
product or service fits him and
sells itself.”
Peter Drucker
Do you advocate for your audience -- really? For many brands leveraging events for their business, the honest answer is "We say we do, but we do not." Too often, companies put together events and create customer experiences in order to tell their audience how great their brand is or will be. You have been there. I know I have.
Audience advocacy means empathizing with the needs of your audience. Audience advocacy means shifting your mindset away from "How many of my top executives can I cram into my event agenda?" to "How can I design a great experience for your customers?" Audience advocacy means thinking like an architect who designs a home around the needs of a specific family. We can learn a lot about audience advocacy by looking outside the world of events. For instance, Metro Trains in Melbourne, Australia, found a fresh way to create a public safety video. You might have heard of the PSA, "Dumb Ways to Die," which is so fresh, funny, and provocative that it went viral all around the world. Metro Trains, working with agency McCann, found a fresh way to engage us by empathizing with its audiences. Metro Trains put itself in the shoes of passengers and admitted that no one wants to watch a safety video. They are boring! By advocating for its audience, Metro Trains created a sensation. If you click to the next slide, you can play the video and see what I mean.[SLIDE 3-4] VIDEO
So how many brands, when they create events, know their audiences as well as a rail passenger service in Australia? How many brands have created content for their audiences that is so good that it goes viral?
How many brands really practice the mindset that Seth Godin preaches us to find products for our customers not customers for our products. Even Steve Jobs, who famously advocated for creating wants and needs with products, put the needs of his audience first. He was a passionate believer in making consumer technology elegant and easy to use, which is why he seemingly launched market-making products with such ease.
You can adopt the mentality of Steve Jobs and Seth Godin when you design experiences that delight and surprise audiences. Who does not want surprise and delight at an event?
Let ustake a look at a few other examples of industries that need to embrace audience advocacy.
The music industry, after facing years of turmoil, is finally learning the art of audience advocacy although the lessons are being taught by technology start-ups like Soundrop, a company that provides an innovative social listening experience through applications like Spotify.
And the artists in the music industry are learning (sometimes the hard way) that they cannot just make music and expect their audience to follow them. They have to engage with their audiences through channels like social media. Why? Because their fans want them to do so. The successful musicians think like their fans do and respond to them.
Let us look at another example of audience advocacy through the lens of a global brand, specifically Starbucks in Beijing. Starbucks understands its audience well, including the important fact that a generation of today's consumers grew up as only children. The 24-hour store in Taikoo Li Sanlitun in Beijing is designed to encourage only children to interact with each other -- for instance, mood lighting and decor impart the vibe of a social lounge, which encourages patrons to turn off their personal devices and interact with each other. Starbucks clearly empathizes with its audience.
Starbucks practices what Peter Drucker preached: "The aim of marketing is to know the customer so well, the product or service fits him and sells itself.” Substitute "audience advocacy" for the word "marketing" and you begin to understand the idea even more clearly.
OK. So how do you practice audience advocacy when you create an event? There is no silver bullet, but there is a process that works better than others.
We call that process, VACS, which stands for value, accountability, Consistency, and simplicity.
Delivering value to your audience starts with understanding what is important to them. It means understanding what your audience wants to know, feel, and do -- uncovering the information they want to know (not necessarily what you want to tell them), what they want to feel while they are at your event, and what action they want to take.
Truly understanding your audience so that you can understand what they value means having the unquenchable curiosity to learn what's important to them. It means conducting research such as focus groups or online analysis of their wants and needs. If you think you already know without doing some research, you will not get very far in being an audience advocate. Many leaders struggle (especially in top-down organizations) with this concept because they think they already know what is right for their audience.
Finding out what your audience wants to know is essential to realizing what they value so that you can deliver value to them. And, focusing on what the audience wants to know is a great way to cut through information glut that we all sometimes encounter when we try to research and decide how to structure a meeting agenda or assemble content.
But audiences want more than information. They want to feel something at any event. Sometimes they simply want to feel confidence and reassurance that they are performing well (as might happen in a meeting of a sales staff). Or they might want to feel enthusiasm about a key decision that their corporate leadership has made. Sometimes an audience might feel a roller coast of emotions at an event. As you design your event, it isimportant that you put yourselves in the shoes of your audience and ask first what emotions you want them to feel -- even better, ask, What would I want to feel if I were in their shoes?
Knowing and feeling are important. But ultimately action counts: both the actions the audience takes during your event and afterward. As you design your event, it is essential you consider how involved you want your audience to be. Do you want them to be bystanders, so fully engaged in the content onstage that they do relatively little? (Which might be the case if you are providing crowd-pleasing entertainment) Or do you want your audience to be active participants, both inside the four walls of the event and on social media?
At this point it is worth clarifying that I am not suggesting you discard your own needs as you design an event. Successful experiences require a balancing at between the needs of the event host and the audience. After all, you're paying the bills, and you are going to be accountable for whether you are meeting your own goals and objectives. As the event host, you should define the "What" -- a goal for the event that supports your business, recognizing that your audience very well may be asking themselves, “So What.” Audience advocacy is all about "how" you meet your needs in a way that will also satisfy the audience.
Unfortunately too many executives do not see a balancing act. They see themselves building a shiny bridge (through their event) that connects them to their audience. The problem is that the bridge they are building may not be the same as the one the audience perceives.
And when there is a disconnect between what you think you are delivering and what the audience perceives, you need to be prepared that the audience will doubt your credibility. Too often events become a hotbed of cynicism because of this disconnect. That is why the second element of VACS -- accountability -- is so important. Being accountable means holding yourself accountable to the promises you make to your audience.
And audiences will not forget if you fail to deliver on your promises at an event. Being accountable to your promises is so important to create trust through an event. If you build up an event as an exciting update on your quarterly earnings and then deliver terrible financial results, the disconnect at your event will be obvious. And your event will fail to deliver on your goals.
The third element of VACS is consistency. Consistency means delivering a consistent message through all forms of media that support your event, ranging from the environmental advertising to the social media you employ. It is a simple idea to understand. But many companies fail to deliver a consistent experience, oftentimes because they lack internal consensus on their core message.
The final element of VACS is simplicity. Simplicity means stripping down the audience experience to its essence. For instance, Simplicity means delivering relevant, easily digestible information instead of overwhelming your audience with complicated and voluminous PowerPoint decks.
A guy named Pablo Picasso knew something about simplicity. A story is told about a time when Picasso was carving a horse out of granite. He was asked by an observer, "How on earth do you turn granite into a horse?" His reply: "I just take away everything that is not the horse." Being an audience advocate means stripping away everything that is not about your audience.
VACS might sound like a process, but it is not limiting. Think of VACS as a palette on which you create your experience. And you have a wealth of tools available to you…to imagine, design, and create.
If you focus on value, accountability, consistency, and simplicity, you will achieve outcomes.
For one thing, you will create community -- a sense of belonging among your audience . . . belonging to each other, your organization, and your cause.
You will also achieve clarity around the message you deliver. The message you want your audience to believe. Your audience will be aligned around what is important.
One final word: advocating for your audience will differentiate you in a crowded field. Your position is what your audience believes about you. Differentiation will occur because you are designing and creating an experience so specific to the needs of your audience that you are aligned uniquely with each person in his or her mind. Because you've allowed your audience to define you. After all, your audience owns your brand, right?
