Aim Between Believers and Skeptics

Happy New Year! And thank you for welcoming MtM into your inbox every week. It’s very much appreciated!

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There are two audience groups that exhibitions should almost never target. Both are a waste of your limited resources.

At one end of the spectrum: believers, who already get it. They will come regardless.

At the other end: skeptics, who refuse to listen. They won’t even come.

Don’t aim at either.

Aim between them.

Aim at people who want to learn, but aren’t already sure.

Think of all the exhibitions aimed at the wrong audience. Curators often write for true believers: other curators. This is normal. Curators want to advance the frontier of knowledge. But 99.99% of exhibition visitors aren’t curators. And there are other ways to address an expert audience, using accompanying channels.

Meanwhile, many exhibition planners imagine skeptics entering their show and leaving forever changed. We’re dreamers. But has that dream actually ever happened? Sigh. Not that I know of.

There are even more ways to segment your audience based on belief, but this is a good start.

Here’s the thing:
Exhibitions are a powerful, but expensive, medium of communication. Don’t waste limited resources on believers or skeptics.

Aim between them.

Warmly,
Jonathan

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MtM Word of the Day:
Footcandles. The unit of measurement for the amount of light falling on a surface. One "FC" is the amount of light cast by one candle onto a 12 inch x 12 inch square from one foot away. (Not to be confused with lumens, which measure how much a light emits; or lux, the metric equivalent.)