It's not the meat, it's the publicity

Sheesh. I was so good about posting at least a couple times a week for the first few months of this blog, and now I've gone nearly a month without writing.

It's the middle of barbecue season and with a new barbecue cookbook out, I'm caught in the whirlwind of a big publicity tour. Since the second week of May it's been incredibly busy, with media interviews, book launch events, cooking classes and workshops and on top of everything I'm gearing up for my big pre-conference session at the IABC international conference here in Vancouver next week. And, of course, I have lots of work to do on the communciations side with my consulting clients. It's all really fun, but I'm feeling a little worn out.

Did you know that the weeks leading up to Father's Day are second only to Christmas for the book industry in terms of sales volume? That's why I'm doing all the book publicity right now -- trying to get some momentum as we move toward June 18. My publisher's got me doing media and public appearances in the biggest market, Toronto, in the week before Father's Day. Excellent strategy...if it doesn't kill me.

There's a profound lesson for employee communicators to be learned from the world of publicity. A rule of thumb in advertising says that it takes at least seven exposures to any new idea or product before the public even starts to pay attention. I talked to one record company publicist who said in this digital age it's more like 20 to 40 exposures to make any kind of an impact in an overcrowded, cluttered information marketplace.

Last week I scored a bit of a coup by appearing on a Vancouver morning TV show five days in a row leading up to the big May long weekend here in Canada. The repeated exposure quadrupled the visits to my Web site and in the days that followed it seemed as if every person I knew had seen at least one segment of the TV appearances. Not surprisingly, the books are moving off the shelves.

How many times do we, as employee communicators, figure our job is done if we get one story out, just one time? Yes, we might publish it in several different vehicles -- a longer version in the print newsletter, a short blurb in the daily e-letter, a story and a few links on the Intranet site. But I think most of us don't think enough like publicists. If we really want to get an idea across to our audience, we should be thinking in terms of how many dozens of times we can get the information out there over a period of time. But for so many of us, myself included, it's on to the next story, the next program, the next deadline, without stopping to think about whether any of what we're doing is sinking in.

What do you do to repeat messages and sustain momentum in your communications? And, if you don't, why not?

Comments

[Craig Jolley]

>>But for so many of us, myself included, it's on to the next story, the next program, the next deadline, without stopping to think about whether any of what we're doing is sinking in.<<

I think you are right, and a publicist/PR/marketing mindset needs to be infused into employee communication. I suspect that many, instead, have a "journalist" mindset brought about by training or previous careers working on daily deadlines and the next piece of "news."

The problem, of course, is that communicators tire of a topic far quicker than the audience as a whole. Your stats are worth remembering, especially as it might help a communicator realize that while they may be sick of writing a story for the 7th time, it may only be the 1st or 2nd time those in their audience are reading it.

I remember a marketing class in college that dealt with the same topic. Our professor made of point of that fact that one of the most successful marketing campaigns at that time was Marlboro cigarette's cowboy campaign, noting that it had been running on the same theme for more than 25 years.