YYMY

Experiment:

When you receive an email with a subject line that doesn’t quite make sense to you, do you open it? Does it make you curious? Or do you think: ‘never mind’?

It seems it’s the former 😉

YYMY stands for you – you – me – you. It’s a tool for determining at what point in your story you focus on your audience.

In the first Y, you describe the situation that your audience currently finds itself in. For instance:

Nurses in your organisation regularly administer risky medicines. In these cases, a second nurse double-checks the dosage. This is required by law.

In the second Y, you describe the problem that emerges as a result. Again: from the audience’s perspective.

This double-checking costs your employees time, while there is a huge shortage of nurses.

In the M, you explain how you solve this problem.

Nurses working at our service centre double-check the administration of medication via video calls.

The last Y describes how your audience can benefit from this.

Which means your employees have more time to help other patients.

I read in a book about communication that 75% of your story should be about your audience. The percentage suggests a precision and a one size fits all that I don’t believe in – however, YYMY aligns with this quite nicely.

Regards,

Arnaud