To Get Your Message to Stick, Remember to Repeat, but Don’t Be Redundant

By Steve Johnson

While the actual stats may still be pretty fuzzy, research and experience tells us people don’t remember everything from their engagements and rarely do they recall most things – especially word for word. That memory blind spot means for us to get our message to stick, we need to get comfortable with repeating the message. Varying contextual storytelling allows us to do that without being redundant.

In 1885, Hermann Ebbinghaus hypothesized the Forgetting Curve – the decrease in ability of the brain to retain memory over time. The Forgetting Curve says five days out, people will recall only about 10-20 percent of a given engagement when there is an emotional component – and that is important. Other variables go into what and how much we recall:

• Meaningfulness of the information

• The way it is represented

• Physiological factors (stress, sleep, etc.)

People really only come away with that “net impression” – the collection of all the verbal, visual and vocal signals delivered that makes up the 10-20 percent. The net impression tells us if we want our audience to remember what’s most important, we need to be comfortable with being repetitive. But being repetitive doesn’t mean being redundant.

“Repetitive” means occurring over and over, but fairly neutral. It does not insist on tediousness. “Redundant” means stating the same thing superfluously. It sounds like I’m splitting frog hairs, but there is a critical difference. To be repetitive, repeat the critical information (your message), but consistently freshen it with new context – that’s where the strategic storytelling plays a role.

For the message to stick, storytelling – narrative, emotional language, descriptive word choices, etc. – is the glue. From a business perspective, it provides the context and it differentiates your organization or efforts from everything else out there. From a scientific angle, storytelling activates cortisol, dopamine, protein kinase C and oxytocin – hormones and chemicals linked to memory.

Hang around me enough and you’ll become very familiar with this phrase:

“HOW and WHY you state something matters more than the WHAT for real connection.”

I state the message often (a strategy that gets it from encoded memory to working memory), but I never let it sit by itself. I will always bring it to life with an example or anecdote or illustration – some strategic storytelling.

I might mention the time I worked with an NFL wide receiver. Next, I’ll reference my experience of overcoming language barriers when coaching Chinese nationals at a global chemical company. Maybe I’ll come back to that message again and support it with the time I gave some media counsel to a Grammy Award-winning singer.

So here I am repeating the most important element I want my audience to remember – my message. But by employing new context after every mention – painting a picture with granularity and emotional language – I am providing glue and avoiding redundancy. That gets me from working memory to storage.

That 10-20 percent – the “net impression” – becomes my measuring stick. Nothing else. So, I make sure I am prepared with the best storytelling to share…and I get comfortable with the uncomfortable practice of being repetitive.