Over the last couple of months Robert Peston, the business editor at the BBC has been everywhere. When I get up in the morning he’s on the radio and he’s on Newsnight most nights. I’ve even started reading Pestons’ blog and have subscribed to his RSS feed to get a more regular fix.

His blog is actually really easy to understand and is in the same tone as the radio/tv content that he’s been involved in. And its this which makes it so compelling - you can see his intonation in the content from the blog. From a marketing perspective this one of the hardest things to do - especially in a large organisation. Having the same tone, constant messaging, constant meter, constant sense of humour etc is important.

If you read the content on some websites you’ll see that the tone changes. I guess if I believed in NLP I’d say that this was ‘breaking the state’ - customers were thinking about buying and the change of tone of voice distracted them (it doesnt need to distract them much just a tiny little change) and BOOM! you’ve lost them. The same way as I may just have done (poor sentence structure causes problems too - Yoda would be rubbish at keeping one state).

The same thing happens with spelling mistakes its just enough to distract the visitor from the job in hand. And that’s why I’m a Pestonphile - every day I read, hear or see big Rob on TV his messaging and style is consistently constant.