One of the best teachers I ever had was Dr. Alice Kendrick; she currently teaches advertising Research and Account Planning at Southern Methodist University while leading the field of Account Planning. She taught me many valuable lessons about becoming a successful account planner.
For example how we should always keep things simple (The KISS Principle), how we should never assume anything in this world and to always question everything. But of all the lessons she taught me one of the most important one as an account planner was to always put yourself in the shoes of the consumer, think like they do, act like they do, become your consumer.
After all the only way to design a successful campaign is by researching our target market first, right?
But most of the times we don’t do this, we don’t have the resources or the time and we tend to not listen to our target market. We are the experts after all; and we know what they want.
Or so we like to think.
When was the last time you asked your target market what they want to see? Or how can you make their experience more enjoyable when using your website? What do they want to see in Facebook and Twitter in order to connect with you? Do their answers match with the tactics you are using? If the answer is yes, I would bet that you have a great successful campaign going on. If the answer is no, I hope you are a lucky person. The problem is that most of the time we are more focused on the finished product than on our target market, on having everything that the client wants and what we as designers think is best. We seem to forget that our job is to create the bridge between consumers and companies. Some of the times we will launch a great campaign without ever knowing or understanding our target market, without ever taking into consideration what the clients company does or how they are seen by their consumers. Other times that campaign may completely fall apart.
Changing this is easy, and it can take as little as an hour. Always start by finding what your target markets wants and go from there, don’t assume that what you think is best will be the best for them, because chances are we are not the target market. The discoveries you can make in a one hour focus group are endless, take advantage of them. That one hour can save you hundreds of dollars.
Ultimately this is what will make the campaign not only stand out but also be successful in the minds of the consumers, and after all isn’t this all that matters?
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