Last week I was listening to an archived podcast of a great interview with rock god Keith Richards, who was touting his memoir on NPR’s Fresh Air program. Host Terry Gross asked him about his approach to songwriting in the early Stones days and he said that he didn’t just aim to write songs but aimed to write songs for Mick Jagger to sing because he knew so much about what Mick was capable of.
“I write songs for Mick to sing. You know? That’s what I do,” he said. “You don’t get Midnight Ramblers out of nowhere. You don’t get Gimme Shelters out of nowhere. I’m writing because I think, man, I know this guy can handle this and nobody will ever be able to handle it any other way. What I do is write songs for Mick to sing. And if he picks up on it [snaps his fingers], baby we’ve got it and if he doesn’t, I just let it sit on the shelf.”
That last bit about sitting on a shelf conjured up the age-old image from our industry of all of those unread, unwanted and unacted-upon research reports that are gathering dust in research departments across the land. Why are they there? There are surely many reasons but one of them might be that the author or authors need to approach things a bit more like Keef does. Namely, keep your end user in mind.
I realize the analogy is a bit strained but bear with me here. When you’re writing up that final report, or crafting some highlights or PowerPoint slides, think about how you can best serve the needs of the person or people who will be using the data. Are you writing for a brand manager, who has to disseminate the findings to a skeptical internal audience? Are they headed for a busy CEO, who has about three minutes of attention to give to them?
No matter their final destination, if you can take some time to consider how and by whom your reports will be used, your chances of cranking out hit after hit, like the estimable Mr. Richards, will rise accordingly.