While in the advertising major, I’ve learned that a big part of advertising is obviously writing to a specific audience, usually people that you want to do act in the way that you want them to. To my understanding, the goal of advertising is to get participants/consumers/customers to recognize your call to action and then do what that is: buy a product, come to an event, support a cause, etc. Although you pick a distinct demographic to target, the copy and tone of an ad or campaign is still supposed to be easy enough for someone outside of the target to understand. For example, a classmate and I were once given an assignment to create a campaign for uSell, “an online marketplace where people can sell used cell phones, tablets, video games, textbooks and gift cards to professional buyers.” We came up with a concept of a mobile device breaking up with its owner. This resulted in humorous print ads and commercials that were mainly relatable to people in their prime dating age but the idea was easily understandable even if you’re not going through a breakup yourself. Because of projects like these, I was under the impression that always when designing, you’re to speak to your audience but make sense to others.

While being part of the genOn team however, I’ve changed my idea on this a bit. While it’s always good to make sense to everyone, there are times that what you’re designing for won’t make sense to the public because it doesn’t need to. In the non-profit world, just as in any professional specialty, there are words and terms that are exclusive to non-profit work and organizations. Even some words that are used in different fields have different meanings in the non-profit world. Take the word campaign for example, the definition is: “an organized course of action to achieve a particular goal.” While the basis is the same, in the advertising world, a campaign is a set of ads (along with the design of, the concept of, and the different kinds of advertising used) that are trying to persuade you to do something. In the non-profit world, a campaign is usually a service initiative that volunteers are encouraged to get involved with. Learning about this distinction between language that’s used within a field and outside of it helped me when designing for internal matters. Sometimes, I would have to work on designs (infographics, email blasts, etc.) that would only be seen by generationOn or Points of Light staff which meant that I didn’t have to think about whether or not the audience would understand what was being talked about.

Specifically, at times working with text on designs for generationOn’s campaign the Joy Maker Challenge was easy because I didn’t have to explain the challenge to the people that originated it but other times, including what exactly Joy Maker is was space consuming.

By the way, Joy Maker is an annual campaign that generationOn facilitates connecting youth ages 5-18 to meaningful, hands-on service projects during the holiday season. For every kid and teen who volunteers throughout The Joy Maker Challenge, Hasbro will donate a toy or game to Toys for Tots. If you’d like to find out more, go here: generationon.org/joymaker

Overall, even though I might not have the chance to work on designs or ads exclusively for a specific field in the future, I’m glad I learned that there isn’t a hard and fast rule to choosing the language and tone in which you speak to your audience.