“If we only can message this better,” more than one client has said to me, “we can be more effective.”

It’s sure tempting to believe that the reason no one is buying is that we’re using the wrong the words to sell it.

Of course that is often true. The words you use to get a target audience to take a desired action — my definition of messages — are keenly important for causes to succeed. But when they fail, the fix might not simply be new words.

The Republican Party is facing such a failure. As parodied so well by John Stewart this week (see above), party leaders loath to adjust their policies. They don’t want to reflect on their organization’s core identity, either. So they hunt for new words to describe the old stuff.

What they forget is that messages, like brand identities, must be rooted in authenticity. Audiences catch on pretty fast, especially in our information-rich, deeply cynical age. Truth and clarity are so powerful because, sadly, they can be so rare.