An Open Letter to CEOs Great CEOs understand that crafting messages that sing in tone and content is crucial to keeping and growing customers and members and maintaining good rapport with the general public. Tone-deaf organizations that rely on redundant messages geared for the few, but issued to the many, alienate and, even, lose their audience and market share. That inability to connect with me on a personal level is why I suspended my AARP membership about a year ago. Sure, the dollar-discount for a cup of coffee at Denny’s was great, but not so great as to make me stay with an organization that didn’t seem to know me or want to know me—a mid-50s, college-educated, never-married single woman with no kids (unless you consider my three dogs, kids). Month after month, I received AARP publications chock full of stories that didn’t resonate with me. Stories, like the ones about the sandwich generation caught between raising kids and grandkids and tending to invalid parents. Like I said, I don’t have kids and, aside from a little Crestor my dad continues to take after a single bypass operation a few years back, neither of my parents suffer from chronic conditions that would make them a burden to me or my siblings. Likewise, stories about the travails of applying for Medicare Part D insurance when I was a good 10 or more years from eligibility didn’t hit home nor did the ones about the ravages of the Great Recession on home-foreclosure rates when I chose to rent. Basically, none of these generic stories with their mass-produced messages worked for me—not even the profiles of aging celebs when I don’t follow pop culture and my taste in art and literature run askew of mainstream. So, how do large organizations, like the 40-million-member AARP, create messages that resonate with Baby Boomers and Gen Xers—two of the largest, most diverse and lucrative demographics in U.S. history—people, who, on first glance, seem quirky and hard to define, but really are part of the new mainstream? Well, for starters, they dump the demographic data that market researchers cling to like a holy grail. More than failing to reach audiences, this paint-by-numbers schematic based on age-race-gender will likely lose a diverse 21st century audience as my partner, Deb Caplick, points out in her blog, “Death of Demographics.” She says, “If you can’t get the right message to the right person, your customers will tune you out in favor of competitors who will.” To develop messages that connect with customers, many retailers use data mining, analysis that extracts patterns and relationships. President Obama used this with great success during his 2012 election, creating personalized messages, based not just on demographics, but values and issues. So, a younger, single, professional woman with no religious affiliation might receive a pledge to protect her reproductive rights while an older Catholic man, active in his church, would not. Instead, his message might promise to preserve Medicare and social security. Next, respect your audience and treat them like the unique individuals they are. When you do that, you’ll quickly learn that there’s no such thing as a middle-aged, married woman with 2.5 children. If there were, would you really want to meet that .5 of a kid?! Lastly, learn that audience determines messaging and get to know your customers, clients or members. That’ll keep you from making the hamster-in-the-wheel mistake AARP did, churning out story after story that play well with a select group, but miss the bigger one. Sincerely, Sherree Geyer Managing Partner, QuickSilver Edge Communications
Posted on: Tue, 16 Jul 2013 20:39:29 +0000
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