Audience First
You're Not Talking to the People You're Talking To
By Will Feichter, Creative Producer @ Myriad
"We're not talking to our audience...really talking to them to see how our content is touching them, whether it's resonating or not."
A client said that to me recently. It stuck with me because it called out something I suspect most of us have felt: a ghosty, gray sense of unknowing whether the thing we just spent the last two months making will actually matter to the people it's meant for. After all the time, dollars and urgency...will the audience care?
We push the asset out into the world with optimism and wait for signs it's landing the way we'd hoped. We check the vanity metrics of clicks and views for an easy tell. We ask the client, but their insight into whether it's delivering results is about as informed as ours. I was told recently: "I can measure the downloads, but I don't know if anybody cared." This lack of knowing whether something is actually working has only increased in my three decades of work in this industry.
A Structural Problem, Not a Personal One
That's due to a structural lack of something vital rather than any personal failure. We're missing a key feedback loop: deep, persistent curiosity about the audience's lived experience before we create.
We didn't arrive here overnight, and the reasons are understandable. As a video creator I've lived it myself: short timelines, standard operating procedure, the next urgent project already on the horizon, basic personal ambition. Who has time for a conversation centered on understanding in that environment?
I can only speak for myself and what I sense in the zeitgeist. There are clearly campaigns and videos that provide the audience with genuine value. But it feels to me as if audience affinity for a brand and the hard-won resource of trust are being spent faster than they're being earned.
What's Actually at Stake
According to recent research from Edelman, trust now rivals price and quality as a driver of purchasing decisions.
And yet we're producing content that actively erodes it.
Brands want trust. Trust requires authenticity. Authenticity requires actually knowing the person you're talking to. But the content pipeline moves too fast and is too self-referential to stop and ask. What gets made feels like it was made for the brand, not the person watching. The audience knows the difference between being understood and being marketed at. So they tune out. Trust doesn't just stall. It actively declines.
What It Feels Like From the Other Side
As a viewer I know this feeling personally. During big event viewing like the NCAA tourney, watching my beloved Phillies or whatever else, there's a moment where the ads stop registering. Not because I'm distracted. Because I've surrendered. The same campaign hammered home on repeat, or streaming's gift of the exact same ad four times in a row, and something in me just goes quiet. I'm watching but I've lost the thread entirely. I can't tell you the brand. I can't tell you what they want me to feel or think about them. I just endure it.
The workflow is out of order. There's a better sequence. More on that soon.
