Communicate!

Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

Love Your Audience

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peasants in a tavern

Do you know what hurts me?

Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev in the Ukraine, used to say that he had discovered the meaning of love from a drunken peasant.

The rabbi was visiting the owner of a tavern in the Polish countryside. As he walked in, he saw two peasants at a table. Both were gloriously in their cups. Arms around each other, they were protesting how much each loved the other.

Suddenly Ivan said to Peter; “Peter, tell me, what hurts me?”

Bleary-eyed, Peter looked at Ivan: “How do I know what hurts you?”

Ivan’s answer was swift: “If you don’t know what hurts me, how can you say you love me?”

Love your audience.  Know what hurts them.

Know what excites them, frightens them, makes them happy, makes them proud.  Know what they want and what they detest.

Love your audience and you will frame messages just for them.  They won’t read your messages if they don’t feel the love.

What Downton Abbey Can Teach You about Promoting New Ideas

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Downton Abbey radio

How did Lady Rose get a radio into Downton Abbey?

Are you trying to get your organization to adopt new ideas? Take a tip from Lady Rose, at Downton Abbey.

Lady Rose is a bright young thing, and all the bright young things in 1924 want the newest invention: the radio. But Lord Grantham, the master of the house, will have none of it. Until he hears that His Royal Majesty George V will address the nation…on the radio.

Notice the rapt attention on all the faces in the photo above. But none of them is more attentive than that old stick-in-the-mud Lord Grantham. At the end of the king’s speech, he offhandedly orders the radio to be placed in the parlor. Permanently. And he thinks it is his own idea.

What can we learn from this episode?

Lady Rose could not get her uncle to accept the radio as long as he thought it was only good for jazz music and other horrid novelties. That’s what she liked about it–but it would do no good to use jazz as a selling point with Lord Grantham. Jazz would only make him detest the radio all the more.

Instead, Lady Rose had to sell him on the idea that the radio would give him something HE wanted.

Lord Grantham supports the monarchy. When he hears his sovereign’s voice on the radio, he and everyone else in the room stand up, just as if the king had entered the room in person. The radio is not an instrument of the devil any more. It becomes the way to make the king–the most important symbol of British tradition–present in their own home.

So…

Is your Board chair resisting your great new idea?

Do your donors remain inexplicably cool to your programs?

Are you trying to sell products you think are exciting only to find your customers don’t agree?

Take a note from Lady Rose. Forget about what you want. Find out what your Board chair, or your donors, or your customers, want. Show them a way to get it that involves doing what you would like to do.

You’ll get that radio into the parlor in no time.

How NOT to Survey Your Readers

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Enough about me, what do you think of meIt’s a good idea to get to know the people who read you. But there are ways of doing it that make them feel welcomed…and ways that make them feel used.

Here’s an example of the wrong way.

My dear wife Rona Fischman received an email that said:

“Rona,

When I started ___ 3 years ago, I couldn’t have imagined how much we would achieve together. ____has grown from a small community to a global one of over 5.5 million members, in nearly every country in the world. It’s hard to believe we’ve come so far, so fast.”

“But what’s next for ___? What will the next few years look like? As we start to think about those questions as a community, it’s critical to hear from as many voices as possible. It’s important to know what we think about what our community does, how we can be better and what we should work on together.”

“Our surveys are put together by a crack team of survey expurrts [picture of  cat at keyboard] and they don’t take very long to fill out. We’d love to find out what you think.”

Here’s what Rona thinks:

I don’t know who you are, and you want to trick me into doing your marketing for you??? Share on X

Here’s the right way:

If you want to know what people think, start out by listening. Continue by giving them something they’ll consider valuable. Get them to know, like, and trust you.

Only then will they be willing to answer your surveys. And only then will the information they give you be valuable to you.

 

 

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