Here’s a foolproof way to incinerate your campaign budget: declare that your issue affects every human on the planet, write a message for "everyone," and watch the entire internet scroll right past you.
It is the oldest trap in the activist playbook. You are working on a massive, vital issue. You look at the data and think: Honestly? Everybody needs to care about this.
Maybe they do. Unfortunately, “everybody” is a terrible target audience for your campaign communications.
When you try to create campaign comms that speak equally to everyone, you end up with campaign messaging that is broad, generic, abstract, and so aggressively beige it could double as interior paint for a dentist’s waiting room.
Bottom line: If you try to have a message for everyone, you end up having a message for no one.
The curse of the eight-billion-person audience
Imagine you’re campaigning on power prices. Almost everyone buys electricity, right? Households, small businesses, retirees, parents running three loads of school uniforms a day. THIS IS RELEVANT TO THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE.
So, paralyzed by the sheer scope of humanity, you write this absolute masterpiece of generic fluff:
Power prices are rising and Australians deserve affordable energy.
Perfect. Safe. Inoffensive. Memorable as a wet cardboard box.
Now, flip the script. Stop trying to serenade the entire census. Speak directly to a cafe owner whose electricity bill just jumped by a grand a month. Suddenly, you aren't talking about abstract market forces - you are talking about razor-thin profit margins, whether they can afford to hire another barista, and if keeping the lights on will bankrupt them by Tuesday.
Same issue. Completely different emotional gravity.
Now talk to pensioners trying to manage air-conditioning bills on a fixed income. Again: same campaign, completely different lived experience of the problem.
Once you understand that everyone experiences your campaign issue differently, you've unlocked the key to campaign marketing, padawan - you can zone in.
Now you know who you’re talking to, you know how to talk.
Ditch the ‘marketing persona’
Instead of starting with arbitrary demographics: "Our audience is women aged 25–44," ask yourself: Whose life is actively, painfully, or urgently colliding with the problem we are trying to solve right now?
Real people don't need to be invented. If you’re fighting to keep a regional hospital open, you don't need "Sarah, 37." You need the parents living 10 minutes away who literally cannot drive two hours to a maternity ward in an emergency. If you’re fighting power prices, you don't need a yoga enthusiast - you need the small manufacturer running cold storage units who is one bill away from shutting down.
Once you identify whose life actually intersects with the issue, demographic traits only matter if they directly dictate relevance:
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Geography: If a regional service is getting shut down, locals matter infinitely more to your comms than someone 2,000 kilometres away.
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Profession: New red tape might affect the whole economy, but your target is the tradies, farmers or small-business owners whose lives are being upended by it - talk to their reality.
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Life Stage & Income: These only matter when they dictate how hard the problem hits and what language will land.
Find people with an immediate stake in the issue. Use demographics to pinpoint and reach them. Then watch it snowball: tradies know tradies, farmers know farmers. You get the point.
The pre-flight reality check
Before drafting your next ad, email, landing page, etc, ask:
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Who is most affected by this specific part of the problem?
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Who is already primed to see this as urgent?
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Where do these people hang out?
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Are we trying to force one message to do six different jobs?
If your draft tries to convince a student, a CEO, a farmer, and a suburban mom in one sentence - kill it and start over.
Broad movement, narrow lens
Your overarching campaign can be for the whole country. But your daily communications? They need to look a human being in the eye and answer the most selfish, beautiful question:
Why should I care?
Not society. Me. Right now.
A parent cares about a policy because of their kids' future. A small-business owner cares because of their balance sheet. A regional worker cares because their local infrastructure is falling apart while the capital city gets a shiny new train.
Those can all be true at the same time. But you can't cram three stories into one 15-second Facebook ad. That's three ads, capiche?
Campaigns don't have infinite budgets, staff or public attention spans. Make your comms count: aim before you fire.
Your campaign might ultimately matter to everyone.
Your targeted messaging shouldn't.