An Audience of One
EPISODE 064: AN AUDIENCE OF ONE
When I sent out an email last month talking about the need to be able to identify the audience for our creative work, my own audience raised some questions about the importance of understanding who it is that might choose to experience our work, and the implications that might have on both our art-making and our efforts to put that art into the world. Let's talk about it.
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FULL TRANSCRIPT
About a month ago I launched a new thing, something I have been working on for 30 years if you count the time it took to pay my dues and learn the hard lessons. It's called The Audience Academy, and though this episode is not about that, you probably need the background for this to make sense. The Audience Academy is a new email series I send out to artists, creatives, and makers -people like you–who want to build and engage with an audience, specifically in their efforts to both make an impact and make a living. I figure people like us put our heart and soul into what we make, we pour the best of our creative energy into it, but those very same things are often missing from our efforts to put that work into the world, the efforts that so often get called marketing or promotion, and I want to help fix that.
So, on March 23 I sent out the first email and it said, basically, this: you need to know your audience. Before you can start speaking to them about how your art meets a need, or fills a desire, you need to understand what those needs and desires are, and have a growing sense of the human beings that you hope will experience that art.
As often happens it wasn't long before a stream of emails came back, many of them asking the same things. "I thought we were making our art for ourselves," said one. "How do I even know who my audience is?" asked another. "I guess this doesn't matter if you don't want to sell your work," suggested a third. All of them sounded a little discouraged by the struggle with the questions my email had raised for them, and as I sat down this morning to consider this episode I thought perhaps there were others asking about the role of audience in our creative work, and that maybe we should talk about it. I'm David duChemin and this is episode 064 of A Beautiful Anarchy. Welcome here.
Music / Intro
"I thought we were making our art for ourselves, so why does it matter how well we know our audience, or whether we know them at all?" is a fair question. Actually, it's two fair questions, so let's take them one at a time. Yes, you are making your art first for yourself, and some will only and always make what they make for an audience of one. The making brings them joy and is its own means to its own end. The opinions of others do not touch their motives for making, nor do they affect how they feel about their finished work. That is the way it should be. If there is a should at all in the experience of art-making, I'm willing to say it is that.
The art must come from the artist, and it must be made, at least first, as a response to your own impulses and for your own reasons. I don't see how it can be otherwise and still be fulfilling or meaningful to you. So, I'm not suggesting what we know about our audience should change our art-making, but it will change how you talk about your art. It will change the opportunities you seek and find to put your work into the world, if putting it into the world once it is made is important to you.
There is a basic human desire or longing to be heard. To be seen. And while we all fill that desire in different ways, I do think it's one of the reasons, though not the only one, or even the primary reason–that we create and share what we do. But it's there and it's probably the desire to fill this very real void that has made social media the phenomenon that it is. It's not a psychopathy or a disfunction to want to be heard and seen. It is a basic human need. So, in this sense, for those that want to be heard, either for the sake of being heard or because they believe their art can create change or have impact for others, audience can matter a great deal. Not to determine what we make or create, but to receive it. Audience gives us a human place into which we can pour our art and give what we make a life beyond ourselves. It gives us places, in hearts and minds, to be heard. There is something profound in the meaning that this can give to our art-making. I just don't think being very aware that we are creating for an audience beyond ourselves, and knowing who these people are, necessarily means we can't make what we make first for ourselves.
In fact, I wonder if this is the difference between finding or seeking an audience, rather than allowing the people in your eventual audience to self-select or choose themselves. The second question I was asked, and repeated at the top of this episode, "How do I even know who my audience is?" is concerned with this very thing. Your audience is, collectively speaking, that group of people that resonate with what you make and want more of it. It's not a group of people that you try furiously to please, chasing down different styles, and hoping something will catch their attention. They choose you. They choose what you make because they respond to it. It makes them feel a certain way.
That's the most obvious answer to the question: your audience are the people that like the very particular thing you make, in the way you make. This is great if you are very clear about what you do, why you do it, and also what you don't do, and why. But if you are all over the map, if you are a photographer, as just one example, and you make photographs of everything under the sun, and in every possible style–and there is nothing that unifies your work–no wonder it's hard to pin down who your audience is. It's not remotely a homogenous group in any sense. There's nothing in common. I would even go so far as to say you can't know who your audience is-yet-because you don't know who you are. You don't know what you stand for, you don't know what basic longings your work is tapping into for others. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. But it could be one reason you don't yet have much of an audience: those that would otherwise be that audience just can't figure out who you are or what you have to offer.
There is a time in the life of any artist when audience is not the point. In fact, early on concerns about audience are probably harmful. When you're still actively trying on new mediums or styles, still trying to get comfortable with taking risks and exploring what you're really all about as an artist or maker, the last thing in the world you need encumbering you are thoughts about what others think of your work. You're probably not even sure what you think about your work yet. It's likely that you're still working on your craft and while there will always be a place for whatever your version of open mic night at the comedy club is, you don't do open mic nights to grow an audience. You do them to hone your craft and workshop new material, to take risks in relative safety. The audience is only there to keep you honest.
One of my concerns about social media is that it has made it very easy to feel the need to be validated by an audience before we've met the more important need to master our craft and figure out who we are and what our art is about without an audience. I think the pressure to put our work into the world for public consideration before it's ready, before we are ready, can be debilitating. At very least it can divert our attention from mastering a medium and finding a voice, and put that focus prematurely on the assessment of others. There is a time to give careful consideration to how your audience responds to your work, and that time is after their response to that work and who you are becoming as an artist will not sabotage that effort. Creators need to be able to hear their own voice really clearly before trying to isolate it and stay faithful to it when the noise of a crowd threatens to drown out that voice and make it hard to hear.
Once you know who you are and what you are about, then knowing that your audience is filled with people that respond to your work, that feel about it a certain kind of emotion, and who find something meaningful or helpful within it, is important, if only to clarify things for you, and eventually to them as well. Knowing really clearly and specifically who you are and what you do is necessary because people need a clear way to think about you and what you do for them. They need to know who you are and what you represent. Think of any artist working in any medium, specifically an artist that's a household name. I'd bet good money that if you told me who you were thinking about, assuming I knew them and their work, that I would be able to say some version of "Oh, he's the guy who..." and then I'd be able to complete the sentence by describing fairly clearly what makes him different. Try it. Jackson Pollock. He's the guy who...you're filling the blanks in, aren't you? Banksy. Sally Mann, Ellen, and almost anyone we know only by their first name. Michael Jackson. Bob Marley.
Differentiation is what allows us to stand out, or stand apart. It's what helps an audience put a handle on what we do. Why does it matter? Because if they don't know how to think of you, if they can't identify in their own minds what difference you make to them, what emotions you stir up for them, what experiences you create for them, they won't think of you at all. They won't know, or be able to choose whether you're for them or not because they won't know what you're for, at all.
That's why you won't be able to identify your audience until they can identify you. If your audience is by definition that group of people who love what you do, the more vague "what you do" is, the more vague your audience will be, if you have one at all.
To use language that might be more familiar to us all, this is the difference between being a brand and being a commodity. A commodity is un-differentiated. It offers a thing that others offer in a way that's so unremarkable as to make the choice between several of them unimportant. It usually comes down to price and the lower that can be the better. An artist, creator, or maker of any kind should never be a commodity. If you're a wedding photographer, you're a commodity. But if you're the wedding photographer who, and here I'll let you fill in the blank because only you know what really makes you different, then you're a brand. If you're a painter, you're a commodity. if you're that painter who, fill in the blank with what sets you apart, then you're a brand.
A brand is identifiable. It occupies a specific space in the mind of those who think of you. It makes you feel a certain way. It stands for something. Think of Jeep, Victoria's Secret, Patagonia, Rolex, or Ferrari, to name a few. Nike. Apple. Starbucks. When I mention the name most of us know exactly who they are, what they stand for, and whether they are for us or not. Some of us will hear those names and feel strong emotions, one way of the other. The same is true of Tom Cruise, Will Ferrell, or Lady Gaga. They aren't all over the map. They've made choices about who they are and what kinds of feelings they tap into. Jeep taps into the longing for adventure. Apple taps into the longing for creativity. Will Ferrell is about laughter. Victoria's Secret is about seduction and sensuality. When I look at the work of the artists and creatives that I love, I know exactly what they stand for and what kinds of experiences they invite me into. When I look at the work of people that tell me they don't know who their audience is, I do not. It's vague and I have no sense of what they're all about. It's not a criticism, but an observation that specific choices haven't yet been made. The colours haven't yet been nailed to the mast, which is the mark of an identifiable brand, whether that brand is a company or a personality.
In the days of sail, when frequent battles took place on the seas of the world for countries and empires to establish dominance, it was a common ruse to swap your flag for the flag of another country, to escape conflict. Nailing your flag to the mast meant you couldn't swap it out. It was an act of defiance, a refusal to capitulate or run away. Nailing your colours to the mast said, unmistakably, this is who we are. Brands nail their colours to the mast. They tell audiences and would-be audiences, this is who we are, and who we are not. But first you've got to have picked sides. You need to have chosen colours, or a flag under which to sail. There's a bit of colloquial advice that encourages us to "let your freak-flag fly" - it's saying the same thing: show me what makes you different. I say nail that freak flag to the mast.
The third question I was asked implied that if we weren't intent on making a living with what we do, that perhaps none of this really matters. At first, I was inclined to agree with this. But none of this is about money. It's about impact. In some cases, money is exchanged for what we make, our audience pays us cash to experience more of what we've created. But in all cases–if putting your work into the world, and being heard, matters to you (and it might not, or might not yet)–you still want them to pay attention, or to pony up in the more valuable currency of time, or whatever form of engagement you ask of them. Understanding who your audience and who you are to them, is as important to those trying to make an impact as it is to those trying to make a living. Doubly so if you hope to do both.
There is a time and place to begin speaking to an audience, through whatever medium you have chosen. It is so important that you don't rush that, that you don't hurry too quickly into a crowd that will make you feel all kinds of pressure to nail your colours to the mast before you're ready to make those choices, before you even know if putting your work into the world is something you want of your creative efforts and art-making. But once you're there, once you decide that this is meaningful to you and might be meaningful to others as well, to make either an impact or make a living, then you need to be really clear on which freak flag you're nailing to the mast, because that flag is a promise. It says this is what I'm about. This is the need I serve, the desire I want to explore, the longing I want to fill, or the emotions I want to conjure for those who will listen. Only then will your audience decide if you are for them, and in doing so, decide that they, in turn, are for you. But it's all got to start, it must always begin, with you: an audience of one.
Thank you so much for listening. I'm honoured to be a part of your creative life, however small a part that might be. I want to thank you for the reviews you've left and for sharing this with the people in your life, which–if you're looking for a way–is just about the best way I can think of to say thank you for this. And if you're not already receiving it, I'd love to send you On The Make, which is like an emailed version of this podcast, sent out on the one week in four that this podcast isn't published. Just go to StartUglyBook.com scroll to the bottom and tell me where to send it. Thanks again for being part of this. We'll talk soon. Until then, go make something beautiful.
Music in this episode: Acid Jazz (Kevin Macleod) / CC BY-SA 3.0