I am by nature a curious person — one of those kids in the class who constantly annoyed their teachers with the question “Why?” Why does this mathematical formula apply to triangles? Why did Napoleon invade Russia? Why do I have to rule a line down the left side of the page rather than the right?
It was perhaps this curious nature that led me into journalism. News reporters are the ultimate personification of the annoying ‘why-orientated child’, peppering politicians with those annoying questions as they scramble up the steps of parliament.
Years ago, as a television producer, I found myself sitting in an expensive commercial editing suite one day and scratching my head over a curious factor in the design of the room, which was used to screen freshly made TV commercials to clients.
I had sat in the room on many occasions before, but one feature of its design had me stumped: the relatively miniscule size of the TV screen on which these expensive commercial productions were played to clients for their final sign off and approval. To be clear, this facility was ‘state-of-the-art’ for its time — computerised editing equipment imported from Germany, multi-channel sound mixers, lights flickering behind glass panels and endless stainless-steel racks of buttons, switches and flashing lights. It looked like something out of Star Wars.
So, why-oh-why, I thought to myself, had the engineers who designed and built this incredible facility decided to skimp on the quality of the most important feature in the room — the actual television set on which the output of all this high-tech equipment was screened?
One day, it just got too much for me. Hanging back after a few clients had left the room, satisfied that their 30-second TV ad would unquestionably lift sales of whatever product they happened to be flogging at the time, I pulled aside the production suite supervisor. Fiery-eyed and red-faced, I demanded an answer to my question: “Why on earth don’t we shell out a bit of cash and get a better TV in the viewing room?!” His response sticks in my mind as one of the most profound insights into what it takes to deliver a message effectively to an audience.
The reason for the small, low quality and down right ‘dodgy’ screen, the production suite supervisor told me, was that while quality was assured in the production process, it was known at the time that 40 percent of household television sets (on which the TV commercial would ultimately be viewed) were about this size and incorrectly tuned. A blue packet of soap powder shot by the commercial production crew on set would likely end up looking purple on the screens of half the viewers watching the ad as it popped up between segments of their favourite crime drama. Moreover, there was a good chance that the viewers’ TV set would be slightly out of focus, have muffled sound and suffer the odd bit of interference from someone using the microwave in the adjoining room. In other words, the dodgy TV set was crucial in judging whether a freshly produced TV commercial would actually succeed in getting its message across!
It was a lesson about context — and the critical importance of understanding the viewpoint and perspective of those with whom you are seeking to communicate, whether they are a TV audience seeing an ad for washing powder or parents reading an email about next term’s school camp. To my mind, this parable offers the ultimate insight into why so many communications don’t hit the mark: the failure of the communicator to take into account the context and circumstances of the audience when it comes to reading, listening or viewing your message.
The worst possible assumption you can ever make in creating a communication is imagining you have the complete, unimpeded attention of your audience. The parent reading that email about school camp is more than likely doing so while balancing their laptop on their knee and half-watching a nightly news report about rising mortgage rates while their kids argue over whose turn it is on the PlayStation. They might also be remembering that they forgot to buy bread and milk because of the traffic jam on the way home and worrying about a tricky meeting with the boss scheduled for tomorrow morning.
This, folks, is context. Welcome to the real world of communication — the vast array of distractions against which your message is competing for the ‘head-space’ of the people with whom you are trying to have a conversation.
It’s why just banging out a 200-word missive to parents so often misses the mark, and why having a communications specialist, capable of refining your key messages into an engaging six paragraphs, is worth every cent.
Having a quiet room in which to carefully craft and curate a message is important. But so is recognising that the room in which your words are consumed is likely to be crowded, noisy and chaotic. Now, what was the point of this article again? Never mind. Go back and read those last few paragraphs that you skimmed over — but turn the TV down first!
