#BeSomebody Relevant

If you haven’t read the many news stories about #besomebody founder Kash Shaikh’s speech to Austin High School students and faculty and the resulting backlash, it’s worth a few minutes of your time.

To sum it up, Shaikh spoke to high school students about pursuing their passions by telling his own personal account of giving up a very successful, highly paid job, luxury car and world-traveler lifestyle to “go all-in” and invest $250,000 of his own money in something he truly believed in — the #BeSomebody movement.

Shaikh’s message is simple on the surface: everyone should go all in on his or her passion. But as every good communicator would ask, and what Austin High School said to Shaikh was, “How could this possibly relate to me?”

The result of Shaikh’s speech at Austin High, one similar to the ones he gives to students enrolled at four-year universities across the nation, left him looking out of touch and entitled, and some students and faculty even felt insulted and belittled — the opposite effect of what Shaikh had in mind, I’m sure.

To make matters worse, there was social media back and forth that got picked up by news media near and far, and through it all, Shaikh continuously blamed the students and faculty for not understanding his message.

At this rate and with this attitude, #besomebody may very well be on its way to being nobody.

If I had the opportunity to counsel Shaikh and his team, I’d take them through a process similar to our interactive Message Workshop. In these in-depth sessions, we help clients of all industries and sizes reach the right people with the right message. Some of the fundamental questions we ask are:

  1. What are you asking people to do?
  2. Who are the stakeholders you most need to connect with?
  3. What messages will resonate with each audience?

Specifically when it comes to #BeSomebody:

Define your ask.
I’m not positive if #BeSomebody is aiming for app downloads, more motivational speaking opportunities or just to be trending on Twitter. What is the call to action? How can I learn more? What do I do next? Think about what you want people to do and how you will define success.

Carefully define and prioritize the target audiences with whom you most need to connect.
High school students are not the same as attendees of a TEDxUWMilwaukee conference. Narrow down your target audiences by the characteristics that define your brand — age, education level, income, gender or anything else.

Craft your messages to relate to each audience.
Our workshops result in a message platform with overarching ideas for clients to tailor to each audience. What does going all-in mean for a high-school student vs. a 40-year-old working mother of two? Most high school students can’t relate to having a BMW to sell, but they can relate to having a passion and full life ahead of them to pursue it.

Passion is great — Shaikh just needs to articulate what that means to make it more powerful. In the end, you can’t expect your audience to do the work for you and figure out how they fit in to your brand — it’s your job to #BeSomebody relevant to them.