This week, NASA released a new book entitled Touch the Invisible Sky. It is a 60-page tome with embossed images of various heavenly bodies, accompanied by large-print and Braille text, thus making astronomical study available to the visually-impaired and blind.
The author, Noreen Grice, had worked in the mid-1980s at a Boston planetarium. One day a group of blind people attended a planetarium show. After the show, Ms. Grice asked the group how they liked the it, curious about their reaction. “This stunk,” they said, and left the planetarium. Thus began her mission to share astronomy with the blind. Two books later, the doors to astronomy have been opened to the blind and visually-impaired thanks to Grice.
The lessons to marketers and communicators are abundant:
Inspiration: Grice’s passion for astronomy forced her to find a way to share her field of study with others. With almost evangelistic fervor, she figured out a way to get it done. If there is any one thing that must underlie the creativity and technical requirements of our business, it is passion. If an in-house marketing department or an agency is not passionate about a product or service, it will show: predictable creative; muted enthusiasm; cleverness without purpose. On the other hand, if the passion is there, the audience will catch the contagious energy.
Translation: There is always a way to speak in the language of your audience. It takes listening. It takes hearing “This stunk!” so many times that you finally figure out a way to get through to folks. You have to be humble enough to stop talking and start listening. After all, we have two ears and one mouth…
Tactilization: OK, I made that word up, but think about it: Grice got her readers to literally feel the constellations. In our digital, flat screen world, the more we can help an audience feel the brand—through experiences, humor, smell, sound, touch, risk, taste—the more people will see what you’re trying to say.
Ambition: I guess the most wonderful thing about Grice’s work is her sheer unwillingness to accept that astronomy was off-limits to the blind. It’s the kind of ambition that animated all the great innovators.
So when a communications or marketing challenge seems truly impossible, chances are you’re closer than you think.