A Companion to Composition by Hugh Rank http://webserve.govst.edu/pa | HOME |

| Purpose | Audience | Limits | Structure | Attention | Confidence | Explicit | Implicit | Response| Omissions | Welcome

The more you recognize how much attention is given by advertisers to identify and to analyze their audiences, the more alert you will be as a writer with your own concern about the audience.

Even though millions of other people may see TV ads, the advertiser usually directs an ad to a very specific target audience, the smaller segment or sub-group which is most likely to buy the product. Ads which might seem "stupid" to a spillover audience may be very cost effective with the target audience.

In exposition, writing is much easier if you have a clear fix on your intended audience. Writing directed toward "anybody" or "everybody" often ends up being read by nobody.

All writers should be concerned with audience knowledge, what their audience already knows about their topic: what needs to be explained, what can be assumed, or omitted; what vocabulary, examples, allusions, and authorities can be used.

Audience feelings (their emotional involvement or detachment) must also be considered. Ads often deal with deep desires, hopes and dreams, fears and nightmares. Ads can be analyzed not only for their information, but also for their emotional content.

Other writers often deal with controversial topics which stir many emotional responses in an audience. Even when the writer seeks to be neutral, the audience may have pre-existing intense emotional feelings about the topic.

Feedback is information returned from the audience or others which aids the writer in adjusting and revising in order to accomplish the writing goal. Commercial advertising spends billions on "consumer behavior" polls and surveys getting this feedback so that ads can be targeted better.

Individual writers have a variety of feedback techniques, ranging from the writer's own imagination, to family, friends, and teachers.