Lots of time and resources were invested in market research. What could we do to appeal to our key market. How could we ensure that we maximised our reach to bring in as many as we could. Success was measured by how many would come in and how many we could grab with the message.
Our approach had to be adjusted. Our idea of success needed to be redefined. Clearly we couldn’t think the message we shared in one place had to be the same in a different place.
We would be disappointed if we went for numbers. We would be aiming for the wrong thing if we saw success as measured by that metic. We needed to know something about the audience more than we were going with.
Some would listen, not understand and eventually wouldn’t even bother with what we said. Some would listen and get excited about all those parts of the message that initially appealed to them, but after a while it will become that there was no real depth to their commitment to the message. Some would appear to really get invested in it and stick around to the message. Yet as time went on their commitment to other messages of less value would choke any likelihood of being effective. There would be some however, who would get the message and get it to a deep degree committing themselve to its application and seeing what emerged from that to ever increasing degrees of effectiveness.
Appreciating that gave more of a desire of defining success as being faithful to getting the message across. Appreciating that gave more of push to leave the effects to the hearts of those who heard, giving every opportunity for processing and subsequent responses.
There was also something about recognising that people will be receptive at different times in different contexts. Sensitivity to the audience, awareness of their context was not a waste of time and could assist in the message. The perspective was not however on checking the audience ratings to see if they were high.
The perspective was more about celebrating the fruit that came from investing lots of time and resources in faithfully loving the message and applying it in our lives.
(Photo by Jonas Jacobsson on Unsplash)
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
Life With CD 