6 Audience Principles
I’m working to map out some core beliefs about entertainment and animation. Starting by thinking about the audience seemed most logical because without them our work has no purpose. The six principles below are just a start. They’re not the only principles, or the best principles. What principles would you add, delete, or change? Would you make edits to my notes under any of these six principles? Let me know in the comments.
1. Delight, inspire, and enlighten.
Audiences want to see amazingly great stuff that is fundamentally new. Homogeneity, canned ideas, and old ideas painted up to look new are out. Creativity has to be front and center, not marketing. Stories should inspire audiences, make them think, and give them new understandings about the outside world and themselves.
2. Prosumers. Not consumers.
The audience is a partner. The goal is not to extract value from them in the form of ticket sales, useless merchandise, or a barrage of ads. The goal is to create work that brings real value into their lives. Focus on connections, not transactions. Build authentic, honest, open, and collaborative relationships with the audience.
People want to support and spread the word about content they believe in. Enable them to promote, share, and actively engage with work.
3. Trust is hard won, easily lost.
Trust is essential. Audiences should be able rely on ethical production standards, a predictable level of quality, and honest representation. Advertisements should be clearly identified.
4. Be inclusive.
Quality content should be available to all people regardless of age, race, sex, or class. Focus on underserved and ignored audiences. Content should be available at the lowest possible cost to the audience, making it available to as wide an audience as possible.
5. Content must be mobile.
People want to be entertained at a time and place of their choosing. Media in a single form is less valuable. Produce work that can be enjoyed in a theater, on TV, online, or on mobile devices. Give people access to quality content no matter where they are, or how they’re watching.
6. Audience determines value.
The audience is intelligent and connected. By sharing content with their networks, remixing it, and adding information such as ratings, the audience contributes and determines the value of work. Media giants, marketers, and critics are not the arbiters of quality entertainment.
