MYBRAND: The audience, revisited

Of course, the first thing someone asked me when I was talking about branding, was who is your audience? My first thought it my audience is the people who hire me. The second thought, of course, is the home audience. But since I would strongly prefer to work for a broadcast network, the audience is adults 18-49. Pretty broad! No niche there for me.

Then I came across this e-mail from Doug Lipman. I don't have the answer, but this might be a way to identify niche in a nicheless broadcast world:

Make a chart (or view the printable sample at <http://www.storydynamics.com/chart>) with three columns, representing the three qualities of the iPod that I believe storytellers can learn from:
1. How it fits into cultural needs;
2. How it's a statement of personal style, and
3. How it represents design and related abilities.
On the left, you will make a list of six questions about storytelling:
What stories do we tell?
How do we tell them?
Who do we tell them to?
Where do we tell them?
When?
Why?
Choose one of the questions about storytelling, then ask yourself (or have a partner ask you) what each of the three columns suggests to you about storytelling and its future.

For example, take the question, "What stories do we tell?" Ask yourself how you would tell stories that fit into the cultural needs you see around you. Are you aware of people using simplisitic stories about human nature, for instance, to justify violence? If so, what stories would you tell to counter that?

What about style? The story that someone lives is the ultimate statement of their personal style. If you had no limits, what stories would you tell in order to speak to people's desire to create and express their personal style?

What stories might appeal to your listeners' sense of design? You might choose stories with particular content, but you might also choose stories with certain forms. For example, perhaps you feel that the current sense of design requires stories with neat endings - or maybe, on the contrary, that it requires stories with open endings.

Continue down the chart, spending some time thinking about each of the 18 possibilities. It's not important that you fill them all out. But you may have to think about all 18 to find the one idea that will make a difference for you!

As you do this exercise, think big! Don't be constrained by the past!