Public Expert Archetype #3: The Advisor
It's shocking how effective you can be by putting your audience first.
Note: See some of the main differences among the Four Public Expert Archetypes in this spreadsheet.
Most people don’t have time for new research.
That’s because most new research doesn’t have time for them. It isn’t about them—about their felt needs.
At best, new research is about something that researchers think people should be concerned about but aren’t, or aren’t sufficiently. (A long and ever-growing list.)
At worst (for communicating the research, anyway), new research is about filling a research gap.
So research goes, and always has. But it begs the question: Why does so much research communications start with a new piece of research instead of with what the audience cares about? And then oversell the research’s findings or their applicability so they appeals to an impossibly large audience? Does that seem like a road to impact?
Why not start instead (like all other communicators do) with a real audience—a real community or community of interest? One that shares specific, pressing and evolving questions and challenges that you’re plugged into? And find the data and evidence that applies to those questions and challenges—whether it’s new or settled?
Of course, research communications is too often designed to market individual pieces of research newly produced by institutions. Not to build relationships and trust with real communities.
And, of course: Researchers almost never have to think seriously about audiences outside of their professional community to achieve professional success.
All this adds up to terrible communications practice.
We could learn a lot from the stunning successes of The Advisor, possibly the most impactful of the Four Public Expert Archetypes (more on those at the link below).
Introducing the Four Public Expert Archetypes
Advisors: Deep Understanding of a Community, Paired with Objectivity
Of the four archetypes (The Translator, The Explainer, The Advisor and The Advocate), Advisors are unique in that they always aim their public work at a particular community—e.g., prospective college students and their parents, or climate philanthropists, or corporate water sustainability officers, or university administrators and faculty trying to understand how AI will disrupt and change research .
The Advisor is committed to their target community and its success. Their work as a public expert is to deliver research-based insights and advice that directly help that community—help it navigate its particular challenges and achieve its particular goals.
The most effective Advisors have a sense of mission to their target communities. They provide that community with high-value content, full of objective, research-based insights. They also learn as much as they can about the community, to keep their insights keen and relevant. This simultaneous insider/outsider position regarding the target community—deep understanding paired with objectivity—fuels the community’s trust in The Advisor.
This simultaneous insider/outsider position regarding the target community—deep understanding paired with objectivity—fuels the community’s trust in The Advisor.
Economist Emily Oster is an Advisor. She’s built a small empire by giving evidence-based advice to parents and expecting parents through her books, podcast, newsletters, social media accounts and ParentData.org resource hub and community.
Management professor Ethan Mollick is an Advisor, too. He’s rocketed to prominence over the past two years by becoming one of the leading voices on how to use AI for business purposes, using Substack, Twitter, LinkedIn and his new book, Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI, to share AI prompting tactics and strategies for entrepreneurs and managers as well as which specific AI disruptions specific sectors should be anticipating and preparing for.
Oster and Mollick share one priority most researchers engaging with the public don’t bother with: They put their chosen communities first, instead of the research.
This week, Oster just put out a newsletter Q&A in which she finds data and evidence to answer questions from parents on
whether dolls help prepare children for a new sibling,
whether you should worry about waxing and waning fetal movement early in a pregnancy,
whether zinc helps build immunity against colds, and
whether a few glasses of wine during pregnancy could put your child at risk of heart defects.
Sure, she has a team. But she does a similar Q&A every week. Imagine any of the “public intellectuals” you know showing that much commitment to the concerns of any particular community, as opposed to whatever pops into their heads.
But that’s why people have time for what Advisors say—because Advisors have time for them.
More next week on the distinct values and behaviors of The Advisor. Meanwhile, send me a reply or hit the comments and let me know what you think.