5.2 The Concept of Target Audience

If you have ever played darts, been to a shooting range, or tried your hand at archery, you already know how targets work, but it is worth reviewing the concept in detail.

In this image, the archer is aiming at the bullseye — the yellow zone in the middle. If she hits it, that’s success, but if she instead hits the red, blue or even black rings around the outside of the bullseye, that’s not bad and she’ll still earn points. If she hits the white zone, she earns no points, and if she misses the target entirely, that’s failure. Dartboards, while more visually complex, are based around the same principle: hitting the bullseye is the best possible result, hitting areas around it is also good, hitting areas further out is okay, but try not to leave holes in the wall.

Let’s apply that model to communication, and explore the principle that effective communication is aimed at particular targets. That’s an easy concept to grasp, but it’s not how many people think. If you want to try your hand at making a movie, for example, you may say “I want it to appeal to everyone,” without putting much thought into who your ideal “bullseye” audience would be. That is equivalent to saying “I am aiming my arrow at everything,” which is not how archery works. Some targets are broad, some are narrow, but there is no such thing as archery without a target. Another way to put that is: “If you aim at everything, you hit nothing.” Think of toilet paper: it’s a product that everyone uses, but toilet paper commercials aren’t targeted at “everyone”: they’re targeted at mothers, with the assumption that mothers are the ones who actually buy it.

If you are an experienced film director like Christopher Nolan and you want to make a movie about Robert Oppenheimer, you know you must think hard about who’s in that bullseye. Is it only history buffs? Americans? Males? Or do you want to aim for a broader audience of people who enjoy dramas about moral dilemmas? A director’s answers to those questions will guide every choice in the movie: who is in the cast? How much historical background should you include? How is the dialogue written? What style of music will you feature? Will you include love scenes? The studio funding the film will have opinions as well, and may exert pressure to appeal to audience segments they want to see in the theater.

Of course, if millions of Barbie fans pay to see Oppenheimer too (because they heard the two movies make an interesting double feature, or because that was the only way their date would agree to sit through Barbie), the director and studio certainly don’t mind earning a few hundred million from the “outer rings” of the target. This doesn’t mean, however, that Nolan designed a movie about a nuclear scientist to appeal to fans of dolls (if he had, it would have been a very strange movie). While there were surprises about who went to the film, clarity about the target was still important.

Even if you are producing a very different kind of message with a very different goal, the principle of target audience is still helpful. Say you want to design a campaign to reduce cyberbullying. There are several target audiences you might choose:

Cyberbullies: trying to get them to stop bullying

Victims: teaching them how to avoid or cope with bullying

Bystanders, such as parents or teachers: training them how to be on the lookout for signs of bullying and how to respond

Moderators of social media platforms where cyberbullying takes place: trying to convince them to alter their policies or do their job better

Lawmakers: trying to convince them to pass new laws

Notice that your choice of strategy and message is completely tied to your choice of target audience. And deciding on the bullseye helps you dig deeper into questions about your audience so you can design a more effective message: What are their motivations and life experiences? What are the gaps in their knowledge, or misconceptions that need to be cleared up? Why might they be hesitant to do what you are asking? If your target audience includes all five target groups, you won’t be able to answer any of those questions clearly.