DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ
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Posts in Tag: Trigger

Avoiding your audience’s autopilot

Our audiences have a lot of bad (or good?) habits that affect us.

When they read a boring headline, the scroll-further habit kicks in.

When they see a PowerPoint deck, the boring-PowerPoint-lets-check-Instagram habit kicks in.

When they read a generic first paragraph of a blog post, the this-is-irrelevant-lets-just-skim-over-it habit kicks in (or maybe even the lets-check-my-phone-and-get-lost-in-social-media-instead routine).

Habits are a big deal because they take over our audience’s brains (more or less) automatically. Once someone experiences a trigger (e.g. the boring headline), the habit kicks in.

The most effective way to avoid this behaviour is to avoid the trigger. And that’s why it matters to a) find trust in your own voice and b) understand what matters to your audience.

If you speak about what matters to your audience in your own distinctive voice, the just-like-everything-else trigger doesn’t fire and so your audience’s attention remains with you.

Top of mind

So, you’ve done a great job at communicating your idea. People are pumped. What you said is the #1 topic during the coffee break.

But then … what? What happens the next day?

How do people put in action what you told them? How do they even remember?

Speaking for applause is a completely different goal than speaking for change. For change you don’t just need to get into people’s minds. You need to stay there. People need to be reminded of your input at a time when they need that input. So, if change is what you seek, you don’t want your audience to only think of you while you speak to them, but also – especially – when you are not present?

One way to do that is to weave in triggers into your speech. Triggers that remind your audience of you when they encounter that trigger. Like in that famous “KitKat and coffee” campaign that boosted KitKat’s revenue because it reminded people of KitKat whenever they had a cup of coffee. For example, when I teach my clients how Moleskine set itself apart as a brand by becoming “the notebook of creative people”, they are reminded of that whenever they see a notebook – and thus, reminded of who taught it to them.

So, what could be a trigger for your audience that people frequently encounter that make them think about you?

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