Creating memorable messages is utilizing effective communication to move people to act. Memorable messages are the cornerstone of effective marketing messages, whether they are TV commercials, marketing campaigns or product designs. Memorable messages are those that give us confidence in some politicians, authority leaders and products, while we remain distrustful of others. Messaging is the communication of the details on a product or issue that will compel the audience to act on the information received.



A model of communication that is popularly followed is the 4C model. This is a communication and marketing tool that was initially aimed at the assessment and evaluation of advertising. Basically an assessment of how memorable advertising messages were. The 4 Cs model covers comprehension, connection, credibility and contagiousness. These four elements are considered to be the foundations for a marketer wanting to create a message that is easily understood, and that gets in peoples heads in such a way that they are compelled to act.

Whatever your area of communication, be it business, political, entertainment or marketing, by using the 4Cs you have a blueprint for succeeding in creating optimal communications or memorable messages. So to get you started, lets go through a quick rundown of what each of the four elements means to the communicator.

Firstly, lets look at comprehension. As you will see with all the 4Cs, this is a straightforward concept that is just what it seems. This simply means does your target audience understand what you are saying. If you discover that your message is ambiguous or that the audience does not understand what you are saying then you need to consider how you can increase audience comprehension. Easy tips to follow for this are to make sure that the message is short, sharp and straight to the point, do not get caught up with explaining everything, just provide the basics and tell the audience clearly. Following that make sure that the message is repeated, as it has been seen that repetition can aid in comprehension.

The next of the 4Cs is connection which refers to the process of creating an emotional response to your message. When the audience gets your message in this way they experience an emotive response stemming from the fact that the message resonates with them. By invoking emotion in your target audience you have the ability to connect and this means that the audience will be more likely to act on the message.

The third of the 4Cs is credibility, which establishes your audience trust. Credibility is when the audience seeks to know who is communicating, what is being said and how the messenger is saying it. Once you have engaged the target audience on the comprehension and connection levels you can still lose them if they do not see you as being a trustworthy or credible source. This is one of the most difficult and most important of the 4Cs.

The last of the 4Cs is contagiousness which relates to the catchiness of the message you present to the audience. This means that the audience attention is caught by the message in such a way that they discuss it with others, repeat lines from it and in the most powerful cases the message passes over into the common language of the broader community. When you have developed a message that achieves this successfully then you have achieved the ultimate goal of spreading your word.

Once you have mastered these 4Cs of message communication you can apply this in your day to day communications. For a business this means that you can utilize these tools for not only advertising, but also in communication of your business goals to other employees in your organization. Remember these tools are about memorable messages, and if you are targeting internal members these can also be applied to company memos, employee emails, your blog and even PowerPoint presentations. The 4Cs of memorable messaging will give you the edge you are looking for in communications across all levels.