Understanding your audience.

“In the world of advertising, there's no such thing as a lie. There's only expedient exaggeration.” —Cary Grant in North By Northwest

It shouldn’t be surprising that some of the smartest people are also poor communicators outside of their own circle. This oversight clearly reveals a fear of losing control over their communication style.

The most oft-used excuse for not learning how to effectively persuade all kinds of people and not just those in your tribe is that somehow changing the way you speak is watering down the message. The argument goes like this: Using simple language is a form of “dumbing down,” or “creating one word soundbites.” 

Simple does not have to mean oversimplified.

In fact, oversimplification leads to the same problem of complexity and the same lack of understanding as circumlocution. Some ads are extremely guilty of this. You watch a sixty second ad and you have no idea what the ad is for.

A good example (also parodied in SNL) was for Enron. Set to a typical “manifesto” voice over, they celebrated “why” without ever explaining who they are or what they did. In retrospect, it now seems obvious why they chose this route, but at the time it was just absurdly profound advertising, signifying nothing. Because it was oversimplified.

Simple does, however, mean knowing your audience.

If you are effective at communication, then you should be able to make anyone and everyone understand you. A philosophy professor. A truck driver. A six-year old. You name it. 

Similar to how you adjust your greeting based on the person you're addressing. If I email a client, it will be more formal than if I hit up a best friend, or my daughter. The first will be the equivalent of “I hope all is well with you.” The second will be the equivalent of “sup,” and the third will be via text on Telegram. 

Sometimes the message stays the same while the media changes how the message takes shape.

Historically both Jewish and African American comedians understood this concept well and I would argue their effectiveness in persuading audiences was a direct result of their willingness to communicate. Someone like Redd Fox might do a stand up containing vulgarities uptown, while downtown the bits would be different even if the intention to persuade was the same. Make ‘em laugh and you win.

Knowing your audience isn’t a bad thing. Indeed, if you don’t know your audience, you won’t have one for long, and you certainly won’t be able to grow it. 

This is true in daily conversation, in lectures (unless you’re a tenured professor and can do whatever you want from the confines of your ivory tower) as well as in conversation that takes on the art of persuasion. Hence the Cary Grant quote at the beginning of this post. 

Advertising isn’t a lie. It’s an expedient exaggeration. This quote was said over 60 years ago and still holds true. The key word here isn’t exaggeration but expedient. Why point with the whole hand when one finger will do? 

The best advice I ever got as an advertising portfolio student was “Don’t write above people’s heads, and don’t talk down to them either.” It’s the equivalent of staying in the middle, which took a long time to understand and even longer to get it right. I had to resist the urge to sprinkle in my smartness at every turn until I learned that consumers aren’t there to indulge me. 

People are impressed by thoughts. Not words. 

If you are purposefully using six-syllable words when a two-syllable one will do, then you risk losing the audience which ironically is stupid. Someone who is guilty of this on a daily basis is Jordan Peterson. In small soundbite clips, he’s somewhat palatable, especially when set to uplifting music.

But watching a podcast, or worse, watching him lecture in person for two hours straight, is the linguistic equivalent of running an ultra-marathon. A single sentence can go on for five minutes or longer. I’ve witnessed this mass audience eye-glazing firsthand. It’s impressive in the worst possible way and I don’t think he’s cognizant of it and probably doesn’t care either way. I don’t blame a person who didn’t go college for thinking Peterson’s a blowhard just as I don’t blame someone who happens to have an MBA for thinking the same thing. The IQ bell curve is never wrong.

One of the few people I know who makes a living using them big ol’ fancy words who attracted a large audience in his heyday is comedian Dennis Miller. Lou Reed tried to do this and succeeded with The some of the Velvet Underground albums and his solo Transformer, but all too often he veered into midwit territory by trying too hard to be smart.

No one cares where you went to school.

Telling someone where you went to college and what subject you studied is the academic equivalent to saying “Don’t you know who I am?” And unless you are giving a speech at Oxford or Cornell or any school where people are impressed with your bona fides. it’s also a death knell to effective communication. You are putting a block between you and the audience. You are the equivalent to an asshole who makes it all about you by showing up to a child’s birthday party in a Maybach.

Even Kamala Harris who will never win a prize for the world’s most effective communicator knows this on an intrinsic level, or at least her advisors do. Repeating “I was born in a middle class family,” like an incantation won’t actually make you more relatable but with few exceptions (Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan come to mind) politicians are never relatable. But at least she’s trying. 

This is also why people like Hillary Clinton and Nikki Haley are inherently unlikeable, regardless of their political ideologies. When they try to be relatable it comes across as fake. 

Patronizing is badly disguised superiority.

Advertising legend David Ogilvy said it best: “The customer is not a moron. She’s your wife.” If you are approaching any form of communication or persuasion from a condescending standpoint, your audience will know it. And they will hate you for it. 

Pepsi’s much-maligned commercial Live For Now, starring Kendall Jenner is a perfect example of condescension in advertising run amok.

Pepsi "Live for now moments" (2017) 2:40 (USA)

See we’re just like you. We’re activists! 

Effective communication and effective persuasion starts with understanding the audience and knowing how to sincerely relate to them. 

It isn’t hard to understand. But it is hard to accept.

Using your academic background as a justification for talking above people or below them is missing a glaringly obvious point that you are playing a zero-sum game. 

Very few people have the same shared experience as you do. Someone who did not go to Yale, let alone community college, has no frame of reference to your educational background. This isn’t tilting the conversation in your favor. 

Sorry to tell you but most people don’t care that your thesis on the fascist themes in Foucault’s Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique – Folie et déraison, was first rate. 

Change the words. Keep the essence.

The audience isn’t asking you speak like Adam Sandler or only use monosyllabic grunts. They want to be receptive to your message. But the only way to successfully do this is by first understanding who your audience actually is and then tailor-making the message to them. 

If you want to grow your audience, and grow your business, this is non-negotiable. But if you only want to speak to the ivory tower professors, and make inscrutable advertising, that’s your loss.

More like this on my substack https://faulttolerant.substack.com/