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Did it work for KFC? By most accounts, not really. The company partially reversed course four years later, restoring the name to several locations, and sales did not receive the anticipated boost. An Ad Age editorial took KFC further to task, pointing to the fact that it is one thing to change your name, but another if the name change infers that there was something inherently wrong with what the company was selling, and leaving customers to question what the brand now stood for.

Another recent three-letter acronym rebrand attempt is JC Penney, or as the sticker on my weekly newspaper delivery indicates, “JCP.” The acronym here is an attempt to run away from the brand association consumers have with the name, that of a bland, low-price bin of goods that probably held more appeal before the Walmarts and Targets of the world began selling clothing in earnest. By most accounts, this rebrand is an epic fail of massive proportions. In this case however, JCP has gone far beyond condensing its name to three letters. Led by Apple retail guru Ron Johnson, the plan was to use parts of the Apple Store model in JCP stores. If only button down shirts had the sizzle of iPads — a $427 million Q4:2012 loss and evidence that JCP’s repositioning has not only failed to resonate with new customers, but alienated and confused core customers leaves the company with a deep hole to climb out of.

Some organizations don’t even bother to shorten or “acronym-ize” their name during a rebrand, and instead simply change uppercase letters to lowercase. British broadcaster ITV recently rolled out a multi-million dollar rebrand anchored by a new lowercase logo, and the effort was quickly pilloried by their viewing audience. Here is a company that issued a press release to announce a new brand that includes a dazzling combination of “capital and lowercase letters” as well as putting part of its name in boldface! My god, your customers will hardly be able to recognize you anymore!

Probably my least favorite rebrand of all time is Radio Shack. First things first – there is no doubt Radio Shack needed to rebrand. Radio sounded out of touch and highly limiting to the products it wanted to sell. But to spend hundreds of millions of dollars at launch time to switch to “The Shack” was a head scratcher – especially since it was purportedly done to try and seem more hip and cool. If I surveyed teenagers on what words they associated with “Shack,” cutting edge technology would probably not make the list. More likely they’d associate the Shack as a place to go smoke after school or buy some batteries for a flashlight.

Rebranding as an exercise can be valuable, but many organizations stumble by not poring as much time and resources in the message backing up the new logo (the steak) as they do in the design and strategy for the logo (the sizzle). Additionally, organizations often focus on a rebrand path to reach new customers, without first assuring that existing customers will not be turned off in a rebranding effort.

Noise is relevant in other areas of communications, and in my opinion can play a hand in common yet easy to fix mistakes that PR professionals often make. Here are five ways noise is negatively impacting the effectiveness of PR efforts, and why they are easy to fix.

Eliminate Noise Pitching HARO

Help A Reporter Out (HARO) needs little explanation at this point. It can be a tool for PR professionals to find out about media opportunities they might now have otherwise uncovered. But my guess is that 95 percent of PR folks follow the exact same template: 1) spot a query that looks relevant to a client, then submit a pitch along with the hundreds of others doing the same thing. That’s fine; there is little choice in this case to pitch into the noise, understanding that most of the time you will be drowned out.

But instead of only reaching out to reporters when a query is posted, how many of you take note of the types of stories a reporter is posting on, and then use that data at a later point to pitch a related angle at a time when the reporter won’t be slammed with pitches? If a reporter HARO query is about, for example, predicative analytics and your client is more focused on data visualization, investigate to see how wide the reporter’s coverage extends, and if relevant, pitch an article related to your client during a time when the entire HARO world isn’t also clamoring for the reporter’s attention. Even if you aren’t 100% sure the reporter will find your pitch on target, by referencing the initial HARO query you can at least provide credible context that you pay attention to what the reporter writes on.

Eliminate Noise With Speaker Submissions

We’d like to believe that each speaker submission is given equal attention – no matter if the submission is received the day after the call for speakers is posted or on the final submission day. But of course that is often not the case; submission reviewers aren’t just going to twiddle their thumbs during the speaker entry period and then wait until after the submission close date to plow through everything. They will no doubt feel less pressured and have more time to evaluate submissions on the front end of the submission period when the volume is lighter. It would not be outrageous to speculate that 60 percent or more of submissions come in during the final few days or week of the submission process, which means that judges and organizers have less time to devote to latter entries.

Eliminate Noise At Press-Attended Events

How many times have you showed up for an event where perhaps media are sitting on a panel, leading a topic discussion, or just attending to cover the event content? And how many times do you end up in a single file line behind other PR professionals who are forced to cram several minutes of conversation topic into 30 seconds of introductory chitchat? If you have a previous relationship with the reporter great, but if not, these events are terrible places to try and make an introduction. The environment is literally noisy, there is competition for the reporter’s attention, and there is pressure to try and have a meaningful conversation while several other people are impatiently waiting for their turn.

I’m going to add a caveat to this one, because I get the appeal of showing up at events where desired press is attending. Even if you can just spend a couple minutes dropping your name so that the next time you send an email or call there will at least be some recognition, there is potential value there. As opposed to trying to establish a first connection via emails and voice mails (which the reporter can easily ignore), an in-person exchange ensures you can at least get on his/her radar. But I’ll stick to the belief that beyond a name drop, these events are not well suited to have deeper conversations about your clients or pitches.

Eliminate Noise Around Social Media Efforts

We all have at least one person or organization we follow on Twitter that basically social media vomits all over our Twitter feed. It’s absurd, and highly ineffective. Too often, PR professionals and clients equate volume to engagement. In other words, the belief that the more an organization, tweets and Facebook posts, the more engaged consumers and customers will interpret it to be. Social media noise exists when the organization uses popular channels to spew out content devoid of strategy, or content that does little to spark conversation or engagement. Yes, it is important to prevent social media profiles from going stale with outdated content, but too much content – particularly content that is of little value to the online community – is equally damaging.

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