I don’t often talk about this, but I used to be the president of my fraternity about 3 years ago back at university.
(The uni/student culture in Belgium is quite different here, so it’s not exactly a fraternity—a lot more “professional” for one—but that’s the best explanation I can give in just a few words, so let’s stick to that terminology for now)
One of the events we organized was a mentorship-type program where (close to) graduating students get in touch with working professionals in the field to help them figure out what to do and where to go after graduation.
A lot of fun and a lot of help for many students.
Anyway.
During this event, the alumni would start by giving a quick elevator-ish pitch about who they are, where they work, and what they do.
One guy we invited (and accepted) to join as a mentor had started his own company where he builds software infrastructure aimed at helping other maritime transport businesses digitalize the tracking and monitoring of their supply chains.
He gave his pitch in a very corporate and professional manner—almost like a consultant would present his solution presentation to his clients.
Another mentor who joined the event was one of Belgium’s leading experts in explainable AI who, at that time, still worked in the IT department of one of the biggest Belgian banks.
His pitch was the exact opposite of the first guy.
Instead of going for the professional and consultant-like approach, he went for the informal and student-culture type of talk—cracking jokes, making fun, talking about the exciting trips and after-work parties (which may or may not involve lots of drinking).
And this made me think.
At the end of the day, they both share the same type of information (who they are, what they do, where they work). But the way they presented themselves and, by extension, the type of person they were talking to, they were completely different.
Same information, different target audience.
Now I’m not saying one is better or worse than the other.
It all depends on who they were speaking to and what they hoped would happen. Maybe the first guy wanted to attract high-quality profiles to hire for his own while the second guy simply wanted to attract a wide range of students to get a recruitment bonus.
Or maybe I’m completely wrong on that and it was nothing more than the personalities of both those people.
Who knows?
What I do know is that there’s always a million ways to position the same (and I mean the EXACT same) information to a thousand different audiences.
And if you’d like to learn more about how to speak to your target audience, specifically through email, then you might want to check out Email Valhalla.
Click here for more information: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla