Resonance builder 2: Consistency

You may find it annoying to see the same messages, brand, or positioning day after day. You may find it annoying to regularly repeat yourself. You may wonder why it is better to stick to a message and reiterate it rather than aligning yourself to something that’s new and fresh. All of these assumptions are predicated on one idea: that people hear you when you communicate and that when they do hear you they remember. Reality is sadly very different.

Human brains are incredible processing machines. They take in vast quantities of data from many different sources, process that information and then arrive at a decision: remember it, do something then forget it, or just immediately put it aside. With so many facts, decisions and demands for attention every day the human brain is hard wired to forget most information with roughly exponential speed. Most information, is, after all, not that useful. Sales for items you don’t need, reminders for events you don’t plan to attend and adverts for TV shows you don’t watch. Remembering all of that information would make it impossible to prioritise your thinking. From an evolutionary perspective, remembering where every rock you own is placed is less useful than recognising a the sound of a hungry predator nearby that wants to call you dinner.

Memory is also designed to change with time. Short-term information is processed differently from details that need greater recollection. Have you ever parked a vehicle in an airport car park without paying much attention to the bay you’re in? At the time you tell yourself ‘its ok, I’ll know it when I get back’ but two days later as you’re wandering rows of similar vehicles you’re kicking yourself for not noting it down. Memory decays faster and faster the longer the time that passes. Firm memories only accrete when the brain makes connections between established ideas and new inputs. This leads to the concept popular in management practices that you have to repeat information 12 times for it to be remembered. Whether data suggests it is seven, twelve or twenty – I’ve seen data for all of these numbers – the message behind this important to internalise. You need someone to see a message many times before it will build resonance. Recognise that someone has to see your message 12 times: do not assume that simply because you target someone with a campaign that they have actually seen your content. Email spam filters act as intelligent gatekeepers protecting the sanctity of inboxes from low priority junk, marketing and sales enquiries much the same way as the human brain discards useless data. Advertising similarly is not perfect – prospective customers may not check their social media feeds as regularly as you assume, they may employ ad blockers to filter unnecessary content or may just simply scroll past any ad they see before it loads. Alternatively you may simply be spreading your budget so thinly that it would take months or years to fully saturate your target audience once, let alone 12 times. And, of course, if you’re refreshing your ad creative or CTAs faster than your audience can engage with them you’re most likely spending marketing budget on value-less work.

The goal of consistency is to reinforce your messages. Reinforcement is not the same as repetition. Repetition is saying the same thing over and over again whereas reinforcement is saying things that add to an existing, established idea. Repeating can be reinforcing, but it isn’t always. Starting with your core truth and build simple, tangible, unexpected, emotive narratives articulate it; then iterate, elaborate and elucidate it through different lenses. Thought leadership can provide a core of relevant, unique compelling insight and derivative content pieces can adopt, adapt and express this as components of the broader narrative. Audiences will exponentially forget these messages as time passes but with ongoing repetition these messages will reinforce the resonance. The principle of reuse and repetition both drives efficiency of the marketing operation by reducing unnecessary content, messaging and creative output that is developed in the name of teams being productive, while driving an increased resonance with the target audience.