Start with The Audience Problem to Strengthen Your Creative Work
Creative work needs a strategic tension to solve.
Without it, it might look good, but it won’t resonate.
That’s why I always come back to this: before we write a message, we have to define the problem. But not the business problem. The audience problem. What’s the underlying emotional challenge to solve that will eventually help solve the business problem?
It’s easy (and normal!) to jump straight into what we want to say. But when we skip over the tension, we often miss the emotional core. The thing creative work is best at addressing.
We saw this play out in our work on the 988 campaign for older adults in Washington State. The problem wasn’t just lack of awareness, it was that this audience felt they didn’t have anyone to talk to during hard moments, especially when no one was around or during off-hours. That problem became the foundation for a creative campaign that introduced 988 as something personal, trusted, and always available. Watch the video here.
Going beyond the business problem can help redefine the work and provide strategic avenues for brands and creative work to solve for in a way that feels human.
When creative work solves an emotional problem, it has the power to speak to what Daniel Kahneman calls System 1: the fast, intuitive part of our brain (emotional). The thing about this part of our brain is that it is much stronger than the other side: System 2 – the slower, more logical side of our brain (rational). Although we all like to think we are rational, deep inside, we are not. If a message only appeals to logic, we’re more likely to forget it. But if it is something we feel true emotionally, we lean in.
Finding your message
Next time you are planning your campaign, instead of starting with “What do we want to say?”, start with:
- What’s the emotional tension your audience is sitting with?
- What are they feeling, resisting, trying to figure out?
- What can you do to solve that?
Get curious and be open! Keep in mind that starting with the problem isn’t negative. It’s empathetic and it can help you lead to work that resonates deeply and taps into your audience’s intuition.
