What is the message?

The answer to this question can vary: a new version of the Bible by Eugene Peterson; a text message sent via mobile phone, or; a greeting enclosed in Voyager 1 and 2 by NASA and sent to the furthest reaches of space.

For our purposes as strategic communicators, the message is the content of the communication process.

But to be effective, that message has to be sent and received with a minimal level of ambiguity, or “noise,” between the sender and receiver. Breaking a message down, as communicators do, we look for the three elements of rhetoric to determine if the message was persuasive: logos, ethos and pathos.

However, as audiences have become more and more sophisticated receptors of the deluge of messages aimed at them every day, the strategic communicator needs to develop a comprehensive plan for not only message development, but also placement of those messages.

Cacioppo and Petty conducted research looking at the Effects of Message Repetition and Position on Cognitive Response, Recall, and Persuasion (1979) and while repetition influences learning, the more exposure to the message over time showed an initial increase in persuasive result of the message, over time, that persuasiveness actually decreased (pg 105).

What does that mean? Get your message out there, but do not over do it? Or does it point to the need for messages to be a little more covert and not quite so obvious. The hero in the latest summer blockbuster movie sports a retro type of Ray-Ban sunglasses and always asks for a Coca-Cola. Is that message linking the hero with those products subtle enough to increase learning and liking and, thereby, drive sales for Coke and Ray-Ban? Was the message successful?

When I was Director of Communications for Boysville of Michigan, I was put in charge of developing a statewide billboard campaign, celebrating the agency’s 50^th anniversary providing successful child care and family reunification services in the State of Michigan.

Despite being a part of the social services industry in the state for five decades, knowledge of what the agency actually did was fairly limited to those who worked in the various state court systems who placed adjudicated children with Boysville. The average citizen may have had a positive associated with the name, but no real knowledge of what the agency actually did.

Determining what the goal of a statewide billboard campaign, at first, seemed elusive as everyone had their own idea of what information needed to be included on the billboards. At the time, the state was poised to open up placements to for-profit companies who had no track record with the various court systems. But the Boysville management team felt it was critical to use the billboard campaign to let everyone know how our agency helped children and families.

With the aid of a PR firm, I convinced the management team that the billboards should merely celebrate the 50 years of service (without specifically noting what service) and raise the level of awareness among Michigan citizens that we helped children and families. The longevity of the agency spoke to its expertise: an organization won’t be around for 50 years if they do not know what they are doing. And building on the positive name recognition that we do good work (help children and families) would help to position Boysville ahead of the newly-come-to-town for-profit companies who had zero track record with the citizens of the state.

We educated subtly. We raised awareness subtly. We appeared everywhere.

The billboard campaign, considered a success, was not the magic bullet that would solve all the organizations issues with new competition, but it allowed us to frame the context in terms of who was already in place, who had a proven track-record and even more subtly, we did it as a faith-based organization, based on our mission, not just in the pursuit of profits like the companies looking to move into the state that were essentially the same companies who ran prisons. In fact, we got all the billboards donated for the campaign, leaving the only expense on the creative design side and printing (yes, this was back in the day of actual paper sheet billboards, not the newer one-piece mylar material used today).

One of my favorite public relations practitioners, Leland K. Bassett, would often tell his team of new communication counselors and managers (including me), that the art of persuasion was often in concealing the art. That adage hold true today. The message does not have to be so ridiculously blunt and obvious to be successful. It needs to be present where people will see/hear/receive it, it needs to be consistent and it needs to be measured (before and after) to determine its success.

About the Author: David is a dedicated husband and proud father of a strapping fourteen year-old son and twin five year-old daughters. He has twenty years of professional communication experience, working in the public relations field. He has worked for public relations firms in Metro Detroit, hospitals and a state-wide faith-based social service organization helping at-risk children and their families. He grew up on a mid-sized Michigan blueberry farm, spent two years in Texas and now resides with his family outside Tampa, Florida. An avid reader and photographer, David also enjoys building furniture using recycled/upcycled wooden pallets.