Message to desired action: A communication effectiveness model Available to Purchase

This paper argues that communication is successful only if it overcomes each of six hurdles: reach, attention, understanding, belief, recall and action. The authors then map the saliency of ten academic disciplines: demographics and psychographics from marketing; persuasion and information processing from psychology; linguistics, writing and design from communication; and sociology, anthropology and economics from the social sciences. Effective practitioners must possess a basic understanding of the bodies of knowledge in all of these fields and be able to apply them in their everyday work. Thus, the intellectual breadth required of the public relations practitioner is extensive. Acquiring and maintaining sufficient knowledge of these and other fields should be the aim of a practitioner’s undergraduate and graduate education, and a career‐long programme of professional development. The “message to desired action” model updates and builds upon an earlier model, originally published in PR Reporter in 1992 and since cited in numerous public relations textbooks.