If The Audience Doesn’t Understand Your Premise, It Won’t Connect With Your Content
Every ambitious digital creator can learn from Chris Rock
To reach a mass audience, you have to dumb things down.
Most people just can’t handle too much thinking.
So let’s not confuse them with complicated ideas.
This a pretty common view in digital creator communities, and it’s one I believe is completely wrong.
Why is it wrong?
Well, let’s consider legendary standup Chris Rock.
Chris talks about difficult topics like race and gender in front of thousands of people, without dumbing down his message. He gives us nuanced, provocative takes on current events — all while appealing the the widest possible audience.
How does he do it?
He makes sure we understand the premise.
Hammer it home
When Chris introduces a subject, he doesn’t just start talking about it. He lays out the basic premise — and then hammers it home several times.
Check out this clip of him talking about relationships: the content is complex, and potentially dicey.
His argument (rightly or wrongly) is that women get more attention in relationships than men. But that’s actually not such a simple idea to communicate.
For the audience to go along with it, Chris first needs to establish the basic premise:
“Relationships are hard. For a relationship to work, both people have to be on the same page. Both people have to have the same focus.”
But he doesn’t stop there. He goes on:
“And we all know what that page is, we all know what that focus is. In order for a relationship to work, both people have to the save focus. And what’s that focus? The focus is all about her.”
The effect isn’t just to build tension; it also clarifies the concept. Jumping straight into the joke would risk losing something in translation, and some segment of the audience might get left behind.
But by hammering home the premise, Chris is able to explore a complicated, thorny idea — and have a theatre full of people come along for the ride.
Digital creators can learn from this; by making your premise crystal clear, you can create content that is far deeper (and therefore more valuable) without the risk of alienating an attention-short audience.
How to clarify your premise
We’ve established that you need to make your premise clear. But how do you know what your premise actually is?
This is a challenge for many content creators. You might have six different ideas in a particular piece of content, but no idea which is most important.
The truth is, the true premise of you content might not actually have been articulated yet. That might actually be the problem: the key insight that pulls your content together has yet to be brought to the surface .
So let’s be really clear:
Your premise is the central insight from which everything else flows.
It consists of a topic (e.g. ‘relationships’) and your particular slant on it (e.g. ‘one party gets all the attention’). It can usually be boiled down to a single, clear sentence. And sometimes, a piece of content will contain multiple sections — each with its own premise to be articulated.
The important point is the audience needs to understand this premise in order to connect with your content. If they don’t take that initial leap with you, the rest won’t have an impact – and might not even make sense.
If you are ever working on piece or content, and struggle to put your finger on what exactly the premise is, here are a few questions to consider:
- What does the audience need to know to understand your argument?
- What is the core idea you want the audience to takeaway from the piece?
- What makes your perspective in this piece different from most takes on the subject?
If you’re anything like me, the moment your premise crystallises will be very obvious. You’ll feel a sense of relief — like the fog has lifted and everything is suddenly very clear.
How to make it clear
Once you have established your premise, you need to make it clear to the audience. Every creator will do this in their own way, but here are three guiding principles that I find useful:
1. Put the premise front and centre
A lot of creators hold off revealing their big insight until the end of the piece. But the sooner you can establish your premise — and start hammering it home — the better.
The lesson is simple: establish and support, don’t build and reveal.
2. Don’t be afraid to repeat yourself
Restating your premise can feel clunky; you might think you’re going to start boring people. But it’s better to lose a few folks up top than leave the entire audience behind.
If the premise itself is rich, people won’t mind hearing it a few times.
3. Circle back and add to it
Every time you extend your idea — or add another point on top of it — start by restating the premise. This will help anchor everything to the core argument, and make clear to the audience how it all fits together.
The premise continues to be relevant, so you can keep hammering it home.
