I used to think the best message was the one everybody could like. Then I spent a week building two fictional people, and my idea of good communication fell apart.
The first is Maya, a 17-year-old high school senior who edits her school’s broadcast and wants to start making real work as a freshman. The second is Dana, her mom, who is helping pay for college and wants proof that a media degree leads to a paycheck. Both are “customers” of Gaylord College at the University of Oklahoma, the client I chose for my persona project. Both want to hear from Gaylord. They just want to hear completely different things.
why you have to pick a target stakeholder
A message for everyone lands with no one. When I started, I wanted to list everything great about Gaylord in one place: the No. 1 national ranking, the student-run agency, the studios, the scholarships. It sounded impressive and said nothing to anyone in particular.
Picking a primary and secondary stakeholder forced me to decide what mattered most to whom. Maya needs to see work make by students like her. Dana needs to see cost and outcomes. Once I knew that, the channel, the tone and the proof for each message became choices instead of guesses. Targeting is not about leaving people out. It is about making the people you do reach feel that you were talking to them.
what research you actually need
Good personas come from evidence, not imagination. I started with the basics:
- Who is in the audience?
- How old are they?
- Where do they live?
- Are they the first to go to college in their family?
Then I dug into what they value and how they behave.
A few findings changed my thinking. In one survey, 59% of Gen Z students said they follow prospective colleges on Instagram, so that is where Maya is likely to meet Gaylord first. On the parent side, a 2026 survey of more than 2,500 parents found that 57% have used AI tools to compare colleges, and that they care a lot about internships and job outcomes. Another survey found 62% of parents expect to significantly influence the college choice. That is why Dana is a stakeholder at all.
I also tried social listening, reading what people say about Gaylord online. I found mostly official posts and very little honest student or parent conversation. That gap taught me something too: if people are not talking about you, you do not know what they think.
How your audiences react is the whole game
Research tells you who your audience is. Watching how they react tells you whether your communication works.
Take Gaylord’s “No. 1 media program” ranking. To Maya, a ranking is only exciting if she can see what it means for her, like a video made by a student who is only a year older. To Dana, it is a claim she cannot check against a salary. The same fact, shown the same way, lands very differently. That is why the words, the images and even the design have to change with the audience. A clean cost breakdown might reassure Dana while a loud Reel makes Maya stop scrolling. The only way to know is to test: compare two versions of a post, read the comments and ask few real people what they noticed.
If I were Gaylord, I would stop asking, “How do we tell everyone how great we are?” and start asking, “What does Maya need to see, and what does Dana need to read before each of them can say yes?”
what i’m taking with me
Identifying a target stakeholder felt limiting at first. it turned out to be freeing. Once I knew who I was writing for, every decision got easier. Who is the one person you are really trying to reach with your next message?
References
Tallo Data Insights: How Gen Z feels about integrating social media and education – Tallo. (2021, December). Tallo. https://tallo.com/updates/data-insights/how-gen-z-feels-about-integrating-social-media-and-education/
EAB. (2026, August 3). More than Half of Parents Use AI to Research Colleges. GlobeNewswire News Room; GlobeNewswire. https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/08/03/3337445/0/en/more-than-half-of-parents-use-ai-to-research-colleges.html
CollegeWell. (2024, February 13). Survey finds the majority of parents expect to significantly influence, contribute financially to child’s pursuit of higher education [Press release]. Business Wire. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240213239042/en/Survey-Finds-the-Majority-of-Parents-Expect-to-Significantly-Influence-Contribute-Financially-to-Childs-Pursuit-of-Higher-Education
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