Say Again?

Recently, I had a conversation with a friend of mine, who began our chat by (lovingly) chastising me for not having told her that I had a new job.  I (just about as lovingly) informed her that, strictly speaking, I had not started a new job – I had spun off from my former employer, and was in the midst of launching my own company (Nexus Partners – NexusPartnersmi.com, which would represent several firms, including said former employer.  I also reminded her that I had told her all of this, during the course of a presentation which I had given to a group to which we belonged in common, and that my description of my new endeavor even had had a visual element; namely, my new business’ logo, along with an explanation of what I planned to do.  She congratulated me, and we moved on to other topics.  (Confession:  Initially, I was a bit irritated about the fact that we she had not remembered; after about a day, I was over it.)

From that conversation, the sequence of events stayed with me, and, the more that I thought about it, the more fully I grasped an elemental truth, as it relates to how we communicate and interact with others:  whatever message we want to impart, we had better be prepared to do it more than once, and, in some cases, via more than one method.  We are bombarded with so much information, and from so many different sources, that no one can possibly be expected to retain everything that she sees and hears.

Businesses repeat the same message, over and over and over again.  They don’t do this because of some deep-seated love of repetition.  No.  They do it because they realize that not everyone remembers everything (I wish that I could remember what I had for lunch today).  They do it because they have figured out that, much more often than not, for a message to stick…and resonate…it has to be given again and again.  Along this line, it is no wonder that, when a marketing campaign proves to be a bonanza, the business will keep on mining that vein ‘til there ain’t no more gold left.

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