Poker chips, jellybeans and audience-focused teams
The process of helping teams to think from the ‘outside in’ rather than the ‘inside out’ can inspire some of the best and most authentic ideas.
And there’s nothing like bringing teams closer to their audiences, to help in re-energising their work.
If you’re considering more work with your team in this area, here are three of our favourite creative techniques:
1. Audience mapping, with a bit of poker on the side
We’ve run numerous audience mapping sessions, but the one that stands out involved a set of poker chips and a membership body that wanted to engage new members in their services.
Towards the end of their mapping session, we split them into groups and gave them each a set of poker chips representing their marketing budget and a grid detailing the audience segments they had developed. They were challenged to spend their chips strategically, which led to some important conversations around how they should phase and focus their resource. It also prompted some key decisions among board members about how to ensure the best use of their spend.
2. The user experience fishbowl
We worked with a charity board that wanted to understand how to engage more volunteers in their work. They saw an opportunity to invite some volunteers to join them for a board away day to help plan their approach.
The user experience fishbowl is a simple technique that brings a group of people with direct experience together in a small circle (in this case the volunteers), whilst observers (the board members) sit in a larger circle around them to hear them share their stories. This is followed by an exchange between the two circles of people to explore and develop any insights that arise.
On this occasion it helped build a much stronger connection between the board and the needs of their audience. It was a joy to see their exchange in action and the focused plans that flowed from the conversation.
A full overview of the technique is available through the Liberating Structures website.
3. Crafting a café pitch (jellybeans optional)
We’ve lost count of the times that this approach has energised the teams we work with. It can be particularly helpful for organisations without the budget for audience research, especially if they can involve colleagues who work closely with the people they are trying to influence.
We start by asking small working groups to create their own audience persona, guided by a set of carefully crafted questions that help them step into the shoes of a person or a specific group of people that they need to communicate with. The more graphic their creation the better, so we encourage doodling, clipping out photos, anything and everything to build a meaningful picture.
Then we ask them each to work alone to draft a two-minute pitch focused both on the interests of their persona and the messages they want to convey. Finally, we send them to a fictional cafe in pairs, so that they can take it in turns to make their pitch or to adopt the role of the target audience/drinking partner. Collectively, we then identify the language, phrasing and content that ‘sings’. They usually know it when they hear it. It’s content that just comes alive.
These sessions always lead to more direct, insightful and engaging messaging, and they can also be great fun. The fictional café setting acts as a reminder to keep it personal and avoid jargon. And if it’s later in the day, we’ve dished out cocktail-flavour jellybeans for a bit of extra atmosphere and to keep energy levels high.
After months spent working online, creative workshop techniques like these can provide a very efficient way of building energy in any team. They will inject new ideas, insights and impetus around the needs of their audiences.
More ideas for creating audience-focused teams
As part of our work with CharityComms on trends in team structure and culture, you can also read more about the routes communications teams are using to embed a stronger audience focus.
In our next two articles, we’ll look at techniques we’ve found helpful in strengthening team resilience and in fuelling creativity. See here for ideas on how to clarify and crystallise your team’s purpose when you come together.