Mastering the 7 Cs of PR is a specialist skill – but there are some key elements any budding PR professional (or B2C business owner) can learn to help them gain greater exposure for their brand.

That’s why we put together this simple guide based on one of the seminal works of our vocation – ‘Effective Public Relations’ published in 1952 by professors Scott M Cutlip and Allen H Center. Inspired by the 7 Cs of Communication – a playbook employed by PR gurus for over half a century – this article provides a comprehensive run-down of what’s needed to expand awareness for your brand and support your reputation online and offline.

Mastering the 7 Cs of PR is a cheat sheet for appreciating the fundamental aspects of any successful PR campaign. Understanding these essential skills and why they are needed is doubly important in the B2C arena, where leaving reviews is more common, the market can be more crowded, and there is less opportunity for referral marketing like there is for B2B businesses.

For this slightly updated version we’ve chosen clarity, context, consistency, credibility, creativity, channels, and courtesy. In this article, you’ll discover:

• Why effective communication and reputation are crucial in PR
• How the 7 Cs contribute to a successful PR strategy
• The link between strong communication and building a positive reputation.

With increasing pressure on B2C brands to ensure perfectly delivered communications every time, learning the 7 Cs of PR could be a quick win to help you navigate the complexities of Public Relations with more ease and clarity. Which brings us to our very first C:  

1/ Clarity

Given the fast-paced and often overwhelming nature of the digital age, confusion is incredibly common. Our attention is constantly being commanded by various devices and platforms; we’re often busy, rushing and distracted. That’s just one of the reasons why focusing on clear communication is absolutely essential in PR.

Essentially, good PR is all about understanding. It’s about getting brands in front of people who will love them, and then helping them to understand enough about the brand so that they come to that conclusion independently. Clarity enhances the understanding of your messaging – through establishing a connection quickly and conveying key pieces of information effortlessly.

Achieving clarity in the delivery of your messages can be deceptively difficult. In fact, businesses themselves often overcomplicate their content and messaging in an attempt to attract too many audiences at once. Think quality over quantity when considering clarity. It’s not about trying to say as much as possible in one go – it’s about saying the single most important thing that’s going to attract attention. 

The copywriting techniques you employ can also aid the clarity of your message. For example, using straightforward language to build trust or cleverly arranging words to trigger an ‘aha’ moment.

Ensuring your message is easily comprehensible to your audience needs to be a top priority. It requires time, effort, and careful consideration. Also, don’t forget design when considering clarity, as visuals can complement and further clarify any written content they accompany.

2/ Consistency

Consistency is one of the cornerstones of building relationships – whether it’s between friends, two love interests or a customer and a brand. Lack of consistency is a real weak spot for many businesses – who just can’t understand why they’re struggling with low engagement, poor take-up of new products and dwindling likes on posts.

Consistent messaging is what builds strong, solid brand reputations. It’s partly what’s driven the success of mega-brands like Amazon and Apple – because people know what they’re going to get. They can trust and depend on that brand – because they’ve adopted a consistent approach when it comes to messaging and maintaining their brand voice. Another thing these brands do well is ensuring that they align this messaging across various platforms and channels – which is no mean feat when you consider the many different mediums available now when it comes to enhancing visibility (more on that later though).

There are two essential ingredients needed here to ensure a successful approach. The first is an understanding of who your audience is, and how your brand fits into their world. After that, repetition (with patience) is key – because the benefits of consistency can only really be seen over a protracted period of time. Essentially you need to keep saying the same things in the same way, with enough variation to keep your audience interested. Reinforce those key messages and essentially allow your audience to get to know you and build a connection with you. Addressing inconsistencies and their potential consequences is also important – so be sure to spend some time during the planning stage reviewing your strategy and creativity with a clear and consistent approach in mind and quickly remedy anything that doesn’t quite fit. 

3/ Credibility

Authenticity and credibility have never been more crucial in the PR space. In the old days, PR had a reputation for being an industry with a talent for truth-bending (or, at the minimum, truth-polishing). This is ironic because, in fact, the opposite is true. In reality, PR is about effectively communicating a brand’s real benefits to help it reach more people and ultimately build a loyal, committed customer base.

Establishing trust involves reliable and authentic communication that highlights the benefits of your brand. These messages can then be easily verified or believed because they are true. There are various approaches you can take to further cement your status with consumers, such as impartial industry accreditations that will be of interest to your audience (such as certified organic, vegan, halal). Highlighting specialised credentials and expertise of specific interest to your audiences is also a powerful strategy in the case of both individuals and brands.

Beware, however, of trying to ‘cheat’ your way to a positive impression online, or thinking a quick fix approach will get the job done. Because we live in such a connected culture now, consumers can easily sniff out inauthenticity. On top of that, they approach new products and brands with an air of cynicism- instead of ‘Oh that looks great’, now the conversation has switched to ‘What’s the catch?’ or ‘Is that claim really true?’ This doesn’t mean that they’re trying to catch you out – it just means you’re selling to a smarter, savvier audience. And that isn’t a bad thing for genuine companies who care about their communities! Brands can’t simply make big claims – they need to back up those claims with tangible evidence, embody their values, demonstrate alignment with company culture and accept relevant negative feedback graciously and transparently.

Handling negative information and feedback in an open and genuine manner is also crucial in order to maintain credibility. Some of the biggest reputational turnarounds have come from brands who held their hands up and issued an honest admission or sincere apology when they got something wrong. Getting this right may even require a rethink of your company values. Think of qualities you’d find in a person your audience would admire, then apply them to your brand and ensure they inform everything you do.

4/ Creativity

This may seem obvious – but it’s easy to get so bogged down with the technical, strategic elements of PR and forget this is an industry with creativity at its heart. Creativity is one of the key elements that drive PR campaigns and successes – it’s what makes them memorable, inspiring and influential. When science and creativity come together, that’s when you can deliver killer PR with remarkable results.

A PR team is usually comprised of a number of creative professionals who work both independently and together to produce marketing collateral which makes a meaningful impact. This will include specialists such as graphic designers, copywriters, and creative experts. Whether you’re employing in-house or outsourcing to an agency, careful selection of your creative team is crucial in order to secure PR success long-term.

Harnessing the power of creativity doesn’t just mean investing in individuals with creative talent – it means adopting a creative approach to all that you do within your wider PR strategy. Your teams need raw, natural talent of course – but part of the skill of digital PR also involves the integration of creative techniques such as storytelling and innovative approaches to engage your audience.

5/ Channels

Choosing the correct communication channels is an absolutely essential (and often undervalued) aspect of great PR. In years gone by, there were significantly fewer ways to get your brand in front of target customers – and in some ways, this made getting exposure more straightforward. In the infancy of advertising this process was so simple that securing space in a publication sometimes became more important than the actual method and content. At the same time, this straightforward approach made PR expensive because scarcity dictated that the platforms of the day charged extortionate amounts for a half page advertorial or 2-minute slot on their show. 

Now we live in a time when exposure has never been more accessible, which is excellent news for start-ups and smaller companies – but it’s also more complex to acquire than ever before. We now have hundreds of channels, mediums and tools out there to choose from – and way more competition to deal with.  

This is why part of the skill of a great PR company is evaluating your brand, your audience, their needs, and then pinpointing key channels which will enable you to connect with them. Identifying the most effective channels for your target audience isn’t easy – and for best results you need to focus on more than one. On top of that, you need to diversify and adapt your message to ensure that it is optimised for each platform and is primed to make a meaningful connection with your audience there.

Using a blended approach incorporating both traditional and contemporary digital channels is still a best-practice technique for most brands. Be sure to also monitor and analyse the performance of your chosen channels continuously to ensure that they are still relevant and delivering ROI. With the emergence of new social networks, publications and promotional platforms every single day, it’s crucial to keep revisiting and refining your list of channels for continued success.

6/ Courtesy

Courtesy may seem like an old-fashioned concept – but it’s essential in PR. At Smoking Gun we’re bold and not afraid to break the mould – but a courteous approach still underpins everything we do.

So what does being courteous involve exactly, and why is it important within the world of PR? Being courteous is taking a friendly, open and honest approach to your communications and message. It’s about meeting your audience on their level, speaking their language and ultimately building rapport. The brands we love the most make a positive connection with us – we feel as though they understand us and can fulfil a need in some way.

To ensure courteous communication, pay close attention to tone of voice (also known as TOV) – this is the manner in which you speak to your audience. Use language and messages they understand and can get on board with, and avoid bamboozling them with jargon or patronising them with lengthy, complicated copy. It’s worth mentioning that being courteous doesn’t mean you can’t shock or challenge your audience – as long as you treat them with respect. This begins with keeping your customers’ viewpoint in mind, and if you’re going to challenge it, ensuring that you’re empathetic and sensitive when addressing the worldview you’re trying to change.

We’ve touched on this towards the end because in lots of ways, being courteous is a sum total of the six other Cs. Ensuring appropriate context and creativity, staying consistent, communicating with clarity and credibility and choosing the correct channels are all essential in order to extend courtesy to your audience at all times.

7/ Context

Considering context in communication is important because the same message can be interpreted in a number of ways. Humans are subjective creatures – we make sense of things based on various factors including our age, upbringing and life experiences. This means that whilst we can categorise audiences and get a feel for what makes them tick, we still need to be mindful of context and cautious in our messaging approach.

Understanding context begins with awareness. Awareness of your audience and their feelings and opinions; awareness of different cultures and their sentiments; awareness of current events and trends which may challenge usual perceptions. One of the major skills of a global PR team is adapting key messages to satisfy the cultural and societal context of the territories they operate within. This is a sensible approach even if you only operate in one country and think you know your audience well – as context applies to the channels you select, too.

That’s because context affects the perception of your messages. This is how a well-meaning social media post can quickly turn into a spiralling PR nightmare – or how swathes of fans can quickly turn on an unsuspecting celebrity who said the right thing in the wrong way. In the digital age, we tend to process information very quickly and make snap judgements based on one piece of content or its delivery – which is why understanding context and cultural sensitivities across different genders, age groups and communities is perhaps more essential now than in previous years. Spend some time considering your audience and always evaluate your campaigns and creative with context in mind to avoid misunderstandings and misinterpretations.

Bottom line

You should now be acquainted with the deceptively simple-sounding 7 Cs of PR. Implementing the 7 Cs can enhance your overall PR strategy by deepening your understanding of the essential elements needed to connect with your audience. You can even use the 7 Cs as a bit of a checklist, running your concepts and campaigns through each one to ensure you haven’t missed anything.

Because of the digital age we live in and the continuous evolution of PR, understanding the 7 Cs and keeping them in mind can simplify your strategy and serve as a foundational springboard from which every campaign is developed and delivered. It’s important, of course, to stay up-to-date on the latest industry trends – but underpinning PR strategies with these fundamental elements is a great place to begin.

Not got time to learn the 7 Cs of PR off by heart? Then get in touch with our team today and we can help.