SETTING AN OBJECTIVE

“Although I regularly convince myself otherwise, because I aim at something

doesn’t necessarily mean I have a target.”
Your tasks for today

1. Select target audience; evidence it; create persona

(Behavioural Insights - Week 10)
2. Craft your objective and the layers attached to it.
Why do we set an objective?
Most of your working life will be chaos.

More things can happen than WILL happen.

So you make life easier by managing expectations - an objective helps to make

sure everyone is expecting the campaign to do the same thing.
What is it not?
Well isn’t that the same thing?
What makes it good?
1. It should align with the different stakeholders
2. It should be single-minded
3. It should be simple (use Get-Who-To-By)
4. It should have goals attached to it and you make those SMART.
1. It should align with the different stakeholders
When you’re constructing your objective and goals, you can’t just work with one
stakeholder set.

E.g. you and your partner are going on holiday - both sides need to be aligned
otherwise you’ll have a shit time and they will keep telling you about it.

Overlap between the two needs to be as big as possible.

2. It should be single-minded

Vision Audiences

Aim Needs

Measure Actions

Content
For example...
Vision? To create memorable experiences to bring families together
Aim? To successfully open Aladdin the Musical in September
Measure? To sell [this many] tickets before the show opens
Audiences - parents with children under 10 / people who love musicals [audiences should be articulated
in a very clear way]
Needs - something to do with the kids / an idea for date night [use an empathy map to get inside their
head]
Actions - the first most valuable action is for someone to buy tickets. The second most valuable action is
someone sharing a social media post about it because it increases the likelihood of someone else
buying tickets. [Be really specific - what actions can they take that specifically impact our objectives?]
Content - website FAQs / blogs / social media posts [to support]
Now give it a go yourself… [30min]
Put each of the headings in a horizontal line (can use a
Vision Audiences shared Google sheet, for example)

Aim Needs Have points collected under each heading in a single column

Reorganise to put the most important at the top. You

Measure Actions prioritise under each heading…

Content e.g. a hundred different audiences, which one is most likely

going to give you what you want?

e.g. narrowing down 20 actions to 3 or 4, for instance, the

priority action is for them to get in touch
Remember, you don’t have to use all of these.
e.g. content - it’s tempting to come up with a whole bunch of
crap around wanting blogs and videos. But let’s actually strip
it down to content which gets this specific audience to take
this action.
If you focus on the most important things for the most important audience, you will
always ensure your resources are used well, because otherwise you will never
have enough time, money, etc.
 You can run the narrative through and see if it makes sense.

“Can instagram advertising help this audience take this action?” Yes/No. Ok we
discard or explore it.

You use the narrative to check whether something works or not.

It also relies on us being mindful of bending the truth to make it work for us e.g.
"well some of this audience do use instagram..."
3. It should be simple
GET: Target consumer [top audience]

WHO: Consumer problem [problems are usually about the way something is
perceived or the way people are behaving]

TO: Desired response [action you want them to take]

BY: One message/action [creative proposition]

Example 1

GET: Gen X music lovers

WHO: Think Spotify is a music streaming platform designed for the youth

TO: Reconsider Spotify as a song library for all music listeners, including them

BY: Showing that Spotify allows them to reconnect with good times no matter how
much the world may have changed
Example 2

GET: Old school music heads

WHO: Know Spotify only for new music
TO: See Spotify as a place for all their listening needs
BY: Letting them know that the bands from the 80s/90s are on Spotify
Now give it a go yourself… [20min]

GET: Target consumer [top audience]

WHO: Consumer problem [problems are usually about the way something is
perceived or the way people are behaving]

TO: Desired response [action you want them to take]

BY: One message/action [creative proposition]

Now do a quick brainstorm of the barriers… [10min]
4. It should have goals attached to it and you
make those SMART
S - no ambiguity

M - unless you can measure it, you may as well not even talk about it

A - you want goals to be a stretch, but they’ve got to be within the realms of
possibility

R - the goal should be relevant to the objective (e.g. a running goal because your
objective is about actively trying to get into shape)

T - make a million by the time I’m 70 vs by the end of the year

 I want to get better at running.

[Put through a SMART filter becomes…]

I want to run a sub-3-hour marathon by the end of the year.

Now give it a go yourself… [30min]

Specific

Measurable

Attainable

Relevant

Timebound