Know Your Audience (Response)
Prompt
Chapter 3 deals with understanding audience and context. In this discussion I am interested in what types of audiences one might write for? What are some of the problems with “audience?” How can we know our audience and what difference does this make when it comes to being successful at persuasion? Any personal anecdotes when it comes to audiene and context? Is an audience one might write for different from an audience you might sing for? Plan a menu for? Design a course for?
Relevant bits of classmate1’s post
… There are three examples I would like to give regarding how important of a role an audience can play, specifically with commercials. There are big differences between the audience of a dog show, a cartoon and a sporting event. If you were to watch all of these different television programs, you would see how advertising is targeted toward a specific audience.
With a dog show, you might see many pet commericals. With a cartoon, you might see commercials about diapers or action figures. With a sporting event, you will see a lot of commercials about different types of cologne, other sporting events, cars, etc. This is why it is important to fully understand what audience you are trying to reach.
Classmate2’s post
I liked your use of examples with commercials. Very clever. It is true that, especially with advertising, that you need to know your audience. A child watching his favorite cartoon show is not going to pay attention to a commercial dealing with what type of aerobics class to take, on the other hand, if a commercial came on that promoted a new video game- then he would most likely be interested. And when commercials are related to the television show being watched, then ratings go up, and as a result the broadcasting network has appealed to their audience and accomplished their job.
Response
I love the marketing examples. Both of you should apply to work at Google.
While Google is known best for its search engine and data-related services (mail, calendar, etc), at its core it is a massive advertising entity. Google’s primary revenue comes from its AdWords / AdSense advertising platform. Adsense is a targeted advertising program uses the contextual data from a web page to build a profile for the audience most likely to visit and in turn shows ads that would most appeal to them. Advertisers enroll in the AdWords program so that their products will be promoted on related sites that are using AdSense advertising.
By knowing their audience, Google is taking over the world. But at least they won’t be evil. :)
