Ask a successful agent for the three most important words in real estate, and you’ll get the answer: “location, location and location.”
Ask a successful communicator for the three most important words in public relations, and you should get the answer: “repetition, repetition and repetition.”
Just as the geographic landscape is littered with properties that suffer for their poor location (especially in today’s market), the communication landscape is littered with public relations efforts that fail to leverage repetition to engage important audiences successfully.
Whether the goal is to sell products, mobilize employees or build a reputation, the need for repetition is constant. A fundamental related principle, of course, must be that the story is authentic, told by fluent storytellers, and measured for maximum effectiveness by continually reading the audience. You can’t be selling the communications equivalent of swampland if you expect to succeed.
Yet even smart communicators who understand “location, location, location” fail to appreciate the benefits of consistent (and repetitive) communication. Here are five reasons why repetition is the key element to successful, authentic public relations:
It’s noisy in here! Whether you are trying to engage a dozen employees, or a public of hundreds of millions, cultural “noise” bombards us. Chirping cell phones, chiming e-mail, the TweetStream on your iPhone, traffic, billboards, street noise, and hundreds of other demands on our attention act as communication speed bumps for your message. Without sophisticated and authentic repetition, your message may be heard only in part, if at all. You can’t share it just once.
That’s why they call it public relations! Just as a personal relationship begins with a mutual dialogue, a trying-out period in which the participants build trust, so it is with successful public relations. Whether the audience is employees, skeptical journalists, or consumers, a relationship is built through a series of interactions that establish for all parties involved that it’s OK to continue the conversation. Successful public relations cannot be achieved through a series of one-night “message” stands, press conference “drive-bys” or social media gimmicks.
We shall honor no reputation before its time. For a company and its products, a reputation is built over time, not in a week or a month. That’s why sustainable PR activities — news on hires, promotions, product success stories, executive speeches, community initiatives, etc. help build reputation and educate audiences about an organization’s values and commitments, as well as the benefits of its products or services.
Don’t take my word for it, ask Oprah. Our skeptical culture is not only cluttered with information, but burdened by a complete breakdown in the old means of determining which information is important. We need guides to help us cut through the morass of messages. That’s why credible, respected figures such as Oprah Winfrey carry such clout. Though many seem to think reading is on the decline in this country, the truth is we are publishing and reading more books than ever before (when you consider how much reading all of us do electronically, the literacy we aspire to is truly staggering). Even with all that information out there, it’s impossible to figure out which books deserve our attention. That’s why Oprah’s book club is so successful — we hunger for guidance we can trust and we look to opinion leaders we respect to provide it. Successful public relations engages trusted opinion leaders as advocates, to lend credibility to important communications.
The weight of the evidence is compelling. In our cluttered culture, with competition for attention and a skeptical distrust of many messengers, audiences intuitively seek confirmation of what they hear and see from multiple sources. If a CEO says he’s committed his company to the environment, that’s not good enough for most audiences (including employees). But if the company wins an environmental award, is praised by the leader of an independent environmental group, and is the subject of a fair but positive profile in a national news outlet, the audience is much more likely to believe what the CEO says — the claim can easily be evaluated because there is plenty of evidence that the statement is accurate.
Is repetition the only important concept for successful public relations? Of course not. But just as breathing is essential to life, repetition is an essential element in successful public relations. Is it possible to enjoy long-term PR success without repetition? Maybe. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.
