Understanding your audience is a crucial component of good copy. The poster below says (directly translated from Dutch): “You come from abroad and find it difficult to find a room/place to stay?”.

But what are the chances that your audience will understand the Dutch language if they come from abroad? That’s pretty ironic, right?

Understanding Your Audience — When Things Go Wrong?!

Sure, the audience may very well come from other countries (aside from the Netherlands) where Dutch is officially spoken. But what if they don’t?

The challenge is that copywriters are often expected to utilize two languages to effectively communicate the story (and on a very small poster with limited space like this one).

How to go about Understanding Your Audience?

It starts with basic research and cross-checking with others who may see something as pretty obvious as I did in this poster.

understanding your audience