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Say It Again: Messages Are More Effective When Repeated

Research proves messages are more effective when repeated. Yet financial marketers abandon their ads, slogans and brands too soon and much too often.

Have you heard the following expressions?

      
            Got milk? 

            (starting in 1993)
          
            Just do it.
          
            (starting in 1988)
          
            What happens here, stays here.
          
            (starting in 2004)
          
            Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.

            Tastes great, less filling.
          
            (used since the 1970s)
          
            Where’s the beef?
          
            (starting in 1984)
          
            Good to the last drop.
          
            (starting in 1917)
          
            Melts in your mouth, not in your hands.
          
            (starting in 1954)
          
            Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.
          
            (starting in 1989)
          
            Breakfast of Champions.
          
            (starting in 1927)
          
            Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is. 
          
            (starting in 1971)
          
            Don’t Leave Home Without It.
          
            15 minutes could save 15% or more on car insurance.

Depending on your age, most of those advertising catchphrases should sound familiar. You can probably name the company/product associated with every slogan in the list. Some you may have heard hundreds if not thousands of times. The companies behind these marketing messages had to sustain multi-million dollar investments for years and sometimes decades to make them stick in consumers’ brains.

In advertising, the term “effective frequency” is used to describe the number of times a consumer must be exposed to an advertising message before the marketer gets the desired response, whether that be buying a product, or something as simple as remembering a message.

Marketing experts like to debate the “right ways” to calculate effective frequency. Some say repeating a message three times will work, while many believe the “Rule of 7” applies. There was a study from Microsoft investigating the optimal number of exposures required for audio messages. They concluded between 6 and 20 was best.