It’s Time to Abandon “Target Audiences”

By Ann Searight Christiano

Think about the last time you attended a live performance. Maybe you were among the lucky few who scored Taylor Swift tickets. Or one of Messi’s first games in his new Miami home. Or you were someone’s grownup for a school concert. Regardless of the venue, you got your ticket, found your seat and observed until the end of the scene or the performance. Nothing more was required or expected of you than your attention, applause and cheers.?

Given what we know of “audiences” and their expected behaviors, it’s an unhelpful metaphor for strategic communication. Combine it with “target,” and it’s even worse because you’re inaccurately and pointlessly invoking violence.

Here are some reasons to consider dropping the term “target audience.”?

1. The power dynamics are wrong. Audiences wait passively for a performance to begin. They offer their undivided attention. And when the performance ends, they signal their appreciation with applause and maybe a few Instagram posts–and leave. The terms of the engagement lie entirely with the producers, director and people on stage. The audience has little say in what goes on, how things turn out or any aspect of the performance.
2. The language of “target” invokes violence for no reason. Once you start identifying all the ways in which it’s common to use violent metaphors in everyday discourse, it becomes more and more notable that language is one of the ways that violence becomes normalized. (Bullet points, impact and “take a stab at'' may have come through your inbox in the past 20 minutes.)
3. “Reaching” your audience requires nothing more than their brief attention. There’s no call to action or focus on what they might do differently.?
4. It doesn’t require you to focus your efforts narrowly enough. I couldn’t guess the number of times people have told me their target audience was “policymakers.” Policymakers might include people with beliefs as disparate as Marjorie Taylor Greene, an administrator at HUD or Donna Deegan, the newly elected mayor of Jacksonville. They have different objectives. They don’t see the same things as being true and have different kinds of power to make a difference on the issues you’re working on.?

Consider calling them “actors” instead.

In the Center for Public Interest Communications , we work with organizations around the world to help them apply social, behavioral and cognitive science to real-world communications challenges. And one of the things we see over and over again is that people are hesitant to define the groups they’re trying to reach as narrowly as they need to. One language shift that can help is moving from “audiences” to “actors.” Calling the people you’re trying to reach “actors” can be helpful because:

1. It reminds you that the only people you need to reach are the people whose actions or decisions can make a difference on the issue you're working on. See if you can identify–by name, if possible–the people whose change in behavior or choices can make the biggest difference on the issue you’re focused on.
2. Once you’ve identified this narrow group of individuals, you can concentrate your efforts where you can have the greatest effect. Communications campaigns–particularly in the world of social change–don’t tend to be well-funded. You probably can’t afford to develop a campaign and messages that are going to resonate with everyone in your community.
3. Focus instead on the people whose actions can make a difference, and you’ll be looking at a small group of people whose interests, habits and values are discoverable. For starters, you can look at their social media feeds and public bios to learn what they care about and which aspects of their identities are most important to them. In a historical moment when we are acutely aware of people’s very different values and belief systems, identifying a narrow set of actors makes it possible to research and understand what’s important to them, what they value and where you may have shared beliefs or values that you can connect to.
4. You can define a call to action that is within your actors’ power. We often hear from organizations trying to craft a great call to action at the end of their campaign or strategy. Knowing who your actors are from the get-go means you go into campaign design with an understanding of the actions they can take that will be meaningful toward your issue.?
5. You’ll find it easier to focus on the agency of the communities you serve.

Of course, switching out the term ”target audience” for “actors” is just a small part of the change. Referring to your “actors” without naming them and identifying exactly the action you want them to take won’t help you any more than calling them “stakeholders” or “priority communities” will. Identifying the specific people whose behavior you’re trying to shift or whose decisions can make a difference is essential.

One of our partners–the Center for Coastal Solutions at the University of Florida–has researched the causes of algal blooms along the Florida coastline. Their research has helped to document the factors that make these blooms larger and last longer. One could argue that the actors in this case might be anyone who lives, works or plays in the regions affected by red tide. But grouping them in this way isn’t especially helpful.

There are, of course, a range of actors who might use their research–people who work for the Department of Environmental Protection, people who work in the various sectors and industries that affect or are affected by red tide, activists, folks who love water recreation activities, fellow scholars and people who live or vacation in the region. This is a broad and varied group, each with their own values and objectives. Communicators solve these challenges with “audience segmentation”–separating people into groups based on their perspective on the issue or their ability to make a difference. But even audience segmentation doesn’t require you to identify specific individuals within each group who are well-positioned to act or make a decision that could make a difference on the topic. In this case, identifying the actors helped the scientists go a step further to identify specific people in each group and interview them about the kinds of data they use to make decisions and the formats they find most usable. Taking this focused approach helped them formulate better research questions and identify formats and approaches to sharing the data that would be significantly more helpful to them.

Understanding the people you’re trying to reach at this level of specificity makes it possible to concentrate your scarce resources where they can make the greatest difference. In other words, getting them to “act” rather than “targeting them.” And in building the world we wish existed, we don’t have a second or moment to waste.

If you’d like to build your communications skills to drive lasting change, check out our new online workshop series , where you’ll learn the essentials of a science-based approach to strategic communication. The program launches September 21. Register now to reserve your spot.