Interview your audiences

In designing your agency, your purpose, your service offering, and your marketing — it's important to include the voice of those you want to work with.

The best way to do this is to actually go and listen to them.

But…

"If I asked people what they wanted they'd have said 'faster horses'"
— Henry Ford

It's important to ignore any entrepreneurial or marketing guru who rolls out this alleged quote — or at least ask them to point to the original source of it — because there is no evidence he ever said it. Yet it has passed into entrepreneurial folklore as an excuse not to listen to customers.

In reality, there is lots of evidence (including in his own words) that Henry Ford did actually go out and listen to and observe customers choosing and talking about cars. That's how he found out that price was a more important factor for a large and underserved part of the market than distinctiveness or colour.

And it's insights like these that are gold to us as we design our businesses — those slight 'twists' that connect our offer more solidly with clients' needs.

Who to interview

There are four types of interview that are great to do: