Using Heuristics To Analyze Audiences

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

This class is built upon adapting your messages to your audiences, and much of the course content applies marketing skills to interpersonal communication.  It's worth taking a few minutes, however, to also examine the pitfalls inherent in this kind of communication strategy.

When we analyze an audience or a demographic and attempt to identify that audience's values so that we can adapt our strategy to those values, we apply what's a called a heuristic:  a method or line of reasoning used to approach and solve problems or find answers.

We engage in heuristics whenever we have a question about how to behave, how to understand something or someone, how to approach a given situation or problem etc. and we employ a given method or set of rules to answer that question.

Examples: 

Computer programs and mathematical formulas.

Religious, spiritual, or philosophical proverbs (“Do unto others….”  “Turn the other cheek….” “Neither a barrower nor a lender be….”)

The Scientific Method

Heuristics and Audience Analysis:

Heuristics are the underpinning of any type of – both formal and informal – audience analysis; we take what we see or already know about a person or group and attempt to make educated guesses about how we should communicate with them.  Often, business communications courses like his one attempt to teach students specific, formal audience analysis methods.  This lecture explains why teaching those skills is evil.

Examples: 

The Myers-Briggs Type of Indicator breaking people into  Sixteen Personality Types (Introvert/Extrovert, Perceiving/Feeling etc.)

VALS (“Values and Lifestyles Survey”) and Claritas Lifestyle Clusters  (Article On Clusters)  Cluster/Segment Examples

Superstitions (Don’t walk under ladders, black cats are bad luck etc.)

Astrology

Stereotypes (All frat boys are sex-crazed drunks)

Racial Prejudices (I’m guessing you know a few of these already)

Obsessive Compulsive Behavior (Rain Man, As Good As It Gets etc.)

The Problem With Heuristics:

When you apply a heuristics, you usually find what you’re looking for.
 

But what you find depends on how you looked.
 

So maybe you just saw the heuristic and not the person.

Solution:

Try to gather info about your audience through careful observation and consideration rather than pseudo-scientific methods.

Ask questions rather than making assumptions.

Listen to your audience; give them opportunities to define them-selves.