Defining the audience is an essential step in developing a media strategy.  This step lays down much-needed groundwork for the entire media strategy.  An EMB must know whom they want to target in order to be effective in their outreach.  This might seem too obvious to need doing: the audience is the electorate, of course. However, there are three reasons in particular why defining the audience is indispensable:

• In practice many EMBs do not follow the logic of tailoring their media strategy to their audience. Instead they take the easiest or familiar opportunities to communicate their message through the media, without considering whether they are really reaching the people they want to speak to, or whether the intended audience understands the message;
• Equally, many EMBs tend to talk not to their primary audience but to many secondary audiences – political parties, the media themselves – who are more demanding and often easier to reach;
• The audience is not a single undifferentiated mass. Breaking it down into its component parts will help EMBs to devise the different messages that are required by these different sections and identify the different media that should be used. It is easy to make assumptions about which media are the most ‘important’ in a given context. But audiences have markedly different levels of access to media, and taste for media, depending on their geographical location, gender, age, and other factors. For example in the Solomon Islands, one study found that most people in the capital have access to some form of regular news media, however outside the capital access varies enormously. Furthermore, the study found that economic and cultural factors – such as less mobility to go into town to watch television in a public place – mean that women tend to have less access to all forms of mass media than men.[i]

In general terms, then, defining the audience is not difficult. An EMB will wish to communicate information to the entire electorate at different points during the electoral process. The messages will vary, as will the means of communicating these, but this something to consider later in the planning cycle. However, it is useful to have a clear understanding of primary and secondary audiences as well as the sub-categories within each.  The primary audiences are voters, while the secondary audiences are those who will relay messaging to voters.   Sub-categories are defined by the fact that they either require different messages or can only be reached by different media than the main electoral audience as a whole.

Examples of important primary audience sub-categories:

• Voters outside the country;
• Voters with disabilities;
• Minority voters;
• Female voters;
• Illiterate voters;
• First-time or potential new voters;

In each of these examples it is clear that there is likely to be a distinct message, as well as a different medium to be used. Hence, for example, voters overseas will need information about casting a postal or proxy ballot. They may not be able to be reached through the national media of their home country, so other channels of communication will need to be found. First-time voters may require detailed information about registering to vote, as well as the mechanics of voting. They are likely to be reached more effectively through those media targeted at young people. And so on.

Examples of secondary audience sub-categories include:

• Candidates

• Political parties
• Media
• NGOs
• Donors
• Observer groups
• Government bodies

Each of these groups is classified as secondary, not because they are of lesser importance, but because they are a means of getting the message across to the primary audience and because there are specific messages that an EMB may wish to communicate to them.

What is most important is that an EMB Media Relations Department is aware of profiles of the various audiences at hand, where they are, their individual needs or circumstances, and understands how this factors into the overall outreach programme.  A clear understanding of this landscape will allow an EMB to craft effective and accurately targeted messages.