How To Be Everyone’s Cup Of Tea*
I’ve been trying to drink a bit less coffee lately. That means drinking tea, a product so dull it makes me feel like stabbing myself in the thigh with a pocket knife to check that I’m still alive.
I’ve been through boring regular tea, tedious green tea, nauseating fruit-flavored ‘infusions’, and arrived at the least worst of the teas, the African Rooibos tea.
As you’ll see from the pack above, it’s just perfect for… well, pretty much everyone in the world.
In marketing and communication, the more you try to appeal to everyone, the less any given individual is going to care about you. Do sports people want to drink tea that’s ideal for babies or grandfathers?
I’m not feeling particularly special because I fit into one of the categories on that list, which would cover around 4.8 billion people at a guess. Non-parent adults should avoid Rooibos tea.
That’s the problem you face when you’re printing a package. Economics dictate that you have to print two years worth of packaging, and you can’t customize it for anyone.
Presentations are different. You can customize them with a few keystrokes and make them so much more special for each audience. You can make in-jokes about your audience’s industry. You can illustrate your message with case studies that are genuinely relevant. You can talk about stuff that few people outside the room would understand or care about, but those who get it will love you for it.
This ability to infinitely customize is one of the great things about presentations as a communication medium.
Don’t waste that opportunity by delivering the same templated speech to every single audience.
*Hi Americans, do you use that term ‘not everyone’s cup of tea’? If not, add it to your list of handy expressions when you meet people from the tea-drinking Commonwealth countries.
Tags: Coffee, customization, Presentations, Roobos tea
Ian Whitworth believes passionately in the power of live communication, without the buzzwords and bullet points. He works as a creative director and principal of agency A Lizard Drinking. He is also one of the founders of audiovisual company Scene Change. Ian is an ex-professional presenter and long ago, ex-audiovisual technician. For non-presentation stuff, try @ianwhitworth. 
