Addressing Multiple Audiences

Archeologists Dennis Stanford and Bruce Bradley argue that North America's first inhabitants came from Iberia…not Siberia. Around 21,000 years ago some very brave—and possibly very hungry—individuals crossed the North Atlantic by boat, surviving on marine animals and birds along the way, arriving at what's now the mid-Atlantic United States.⁵ This theory throws everything we've been taught about the identities of the first Americans into the trash—it's a complete reversal of the Bering Strait model we all grew up learning.

Like anyone putting forth a new academic theory, Stanford and Bradley were expected to write a formal monograph to present their theories to their peers. When academics drop a bombshell of a theory like this—one challenging long established beliefs—they need to provide a thorough analysis to their community arguing many points of their discussion backed by hard data. The final product is often an extensive tome likely to be read by a handful of like-minded experts. A rigorous and time-consuming process, it's not uncommon for scholars to labor for years writing a book that'll be read by a very small audience—most academic books sell under a thousand copies. That's a lot of work for a small return.

Stanford, whom I dog-walk with regularly, is the kind of guy who wants to get his research into the hands of the people. When he and Bradley started writing Across Atlantic Ice: The Origin of America's Clovis Culture, they wondered if they could publish a book to satisfy scrutinizing scholars but also reach a broader audience with their exciting theory. Looking a bit like Grizzly Adams and exuding an aura of adventure like Indiana Jones, Stanford is a man of deep character who's passionate about his work. He wanted to share his bold new theory with everyone, not just a few peers.

The archeologists knew a secondary market existed—the archeology/anthropology enthusiasts. When I met up with Stanford at his office in the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Natural History, he said he knew he was in for a challenge when he and Bradley decided they wanted to present their theory to both audiences: “We'd have to change scientific writing and eliminate a lot of the jargon to make the book more readable. We'd have to reduce the data so anyone could look at the data and charts and understand them.” Stanford expected trouble down the road; making it more readable for the enthusiasts would make it less scientific for the academics. Could broadening the book's appeal alienate the all-important scholars? If the scholars rejected the book, Stanford and Bradley's theory could've suffered a grave defeat.

The trick was to find the perfect balance between scientific and popular writing styles and determine how much data they needed to present to satisfy the academics without boring the enthusiasts. This theory is more difficult than you may realize—to put forth a theory on this topic, Stanford and Bradley had to do research in the fields of archeology, paleoclimatology, oceanography, geology, and human biology—then explain it all in their book.

Making Across Atlantic Ice accessible to broader audiences meant more than cutting information to make it less overwhelming—it also meant adding a chapter to help give novices background information needed to understand the archeologists’ process. Following the introduction, their first chapter is a primer on “flaked stone technology”—the stone artifacts that give us important details about our distant human heritage. Stanford and Bradley didn't intend this primer to be comprehensive, but culling the amount of data, writing the book in a more approachable style, and including a primer helped bring readers up to speed on technology and key principles used to understand how ancient tools helped to unlock the mysteries of the first Americans.

Stanford and Bradley breathed a sigh of relief a couple of months after Across Atlantic Ice was released. The Journal of Field Archaeology, Prehistoric American, and American Archaeology all gave favorable reviews. And book sales? Several thousand copies of Across Atlantic Ice sold within the first couple of months of being published…far more than anticipated.

Stanford and Bradley's approach was a lot of work. Their efforts were intensified by their decision to speak to two audiences instead of one. For your purposes, a one-size-fits-all approach may not always be an effective plan. If you want to produce a singular product designed to address disparate audiences—people with varied levels of experience in myriad subjects—be careful. It may seem easier to produce just one communication product for everyone, but it may not reach those varied audiences as effectively as you'd like.

Outreach efforts targeting one group of like-minded individuals are often easier than efforts that need to appeal to individuals with varied interests and abilities. With a single audience you can focus your efforts narrowly—providing just the right amount of information in a manner suited for that group. But once you add a second audience or more to the mix, your job becomes much more challenging.

As you start to write a document or plan a presentation, you need to use what you learned about your audience in order to deliver a communication product that's targeted specifically to them. This is why knowing thy audience is an important step. If you communicate complicated topics to multiple groups—whether they're venture capitalists, decision makers, academics, or subject enthusiasts—your interests will be best served if you speak to them directly and not as an anonymous entity.

Carefully consider the needs of all audiences when planning your communication strategy. Understand their educational and professional backgrounds. Determine how disparate the groups are—and to what extent their needs overlap.

THE MULTIPLE COMMUNICATION PRODUCT ROUTE

Often enough it makes sense to produce more than one communication product when you're talking to more than one audience. Cornell University science and technology professor Kathleen Vogel understands the importance of addressing multiple distinct audiences through separate communication vehicles. Her specialization—the production of knowledge on technical security policy—requires her to interact with two elite audiences: her academic colleagues and her defense and policy colleagues in Washington, DC. Both of these groups would be considered contemporaries, yet both require different information from her. Vogel faces a challenge that you're likely to encounter as a communicator—how to package your content for multiple audiences.

Examining how intelligence analysts produce knowledge about biological weapons threats—which is what Vogel does—is serious business. Learning about substances capable of killing dozens or even millions of people is a twenty-first-century imperative for governments. One group Vogel addresses, the policy and defense audience, is pragmatic about what they want from her. They're interested in how her academic framework can help them improve threat assessments. Vogel is to them both auditor and consultant—she pours over case studies provided by the U.S. government on suspected rogue states and criminal groups believed to be producing bioweapons. She collects data, analyzes it, then communicates her observations to the defense and policy communities so they can improve their ability to collect relevant information.

Vogel's efforts pay off for her government audiences: She often finds blind spots in the intelligence process and helps them understand weaknesses in their intelligence gathering. But Washington's defense elite isn't Vogel's only audience. As an academic at a major university, Vogel is required to share her research with her immediate professional peers. Academics, however, don't require the same information as the government. They're largely interested in how Vogel's work contributes to existing theory or concepts in academic literature—sharply different from the observations she provides the defense community.

For Vogel, creating two separate communication products is the most efficient approach to get the right information to her distinct audiences. She provides each group with the relevant information in a format that meets their expectations. Although it's more effort to generate different products, rather than employ a one-size-fits-all approach, the investment in time to develop an academic article and a more tactical presentation are clearly necessary to meet her professional requirements. Likewise, you'll probably find it's beneficial for you to communicate with different audiences by creating different products for each group. Effective communication products need to be targeted—multiple communication products help you achieve that.