Introducing Comprise: Let Us Tell Your Next Story!

Reenergizing your public relations strategy

Too often, communications programs consist of a handful of one-off, disjointed tactics that assume audiences are always paying attention. Announcements jump from topic to topic with no planned storyline. To be effective, research confirms audiences need to understand each announcement in the context of a bigger picture.

In his book, “Actual Minds, Possible Worlds,” Harvard professor Jerome Bruner notes basic facts are 22 times more likely to be remembered when they’re part of a story. A Stanford University study confirms this: Test audiences were given a series of one-minute presentations, each with three statistics and one story. Just five percent of the audience members remembered any of the statistics, but 63% were able to recall the stories.

Recognizing from this research that people remember stories better than one-off announcements, constructing your company’s communications as a series of complementary episodes to increase in volume — uprise — is an effective way to propel your business forward.

Our recent rebrand to Comprise illustrates how utilizing the uprise communications strategy can effectively engage audiences.

Before the Announcement

Our social media team began trickling out posts about a month prior to our announcement date highlighting other brand reinventions, reasons businesses rebrand, how rebranding forces leaders to rethink their marketing strategy and more, using relevant hashtags to frame the conversation.

Day of Announcement

Putting the same news release on a wire service, on your blog and on your social media is simply lazy. Instead, we planned a series of blog posts to complement the release discussing rebranding from PR, creative, social media, and web design and development perspectives, dropping one on each day during announcement week.

After the Announcement

Instead of immediately moving on, we tapered down in preparation for our next announcement, continuing this conversation on social media and pointing to news coverage of our rebrand before transitioning to our next announcement.

Employing an uprise communications strategy can help tell any brand’s story more effectively than tired, overused tactics — but it requires thoughtful planning to tell that story to the right audience in the right way, thereby increasing your chances at a memorable campaign.

About the Author:

Doyle Albee is the president and CEO of Comprise, a full-service agency that delivers the compelling and comprehensive communications services clients need to move their businesses forward.