What is the effectiveness of your message?

There is an old proverb that goes. "Half of the advertising is wasted - it's just that no one knows which half"

It is very difficult to understand that when you talk about marketing and advertising, at least when things can be directly measured by sales.

If you sell a product, the experiments are possible. You can run a campaign in the media market of Cleveland and try something else in Denver, and then compare their sales in both markets.

You can not do with public relations.

First, there is no way to ensure the same cover in two different markets. Not if you earned on the public service announcements and media.

Second, you do not sell widgets. There is a direct consequence of the action.

However, there are things, new ways to think about what works and what does not learn.

Rex Briggs and Greg Stuart in his book, the glue that we know some things, and that science and exact figures are much more effective than the anecdotes and tradition.

Briggs and Stuart point out that when a public receives the same message in three different places - in the newspaper, radio and television - as if in the same media message is to be repeated much more effective, three times.

Other studies show that you do not have to change the courier. Do the same messenger to say something three times as effective as three different people say the same.