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Tomasz Tunguz

Venture Capitalist at Redpoint
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Why You Should Repeat Yourself, A Lot

Posted on 2021, Oct 05 2 mins read

If you're part of a management team, repeating yourself is a key to
success.

When I worked in online advertising, we measured the performance of
marketing campaigns in a particular way called aided and unaided
recall.

Imagine I send you a survey with two questions:

 1. List the names of all the venture firms you're aware of.
 2. Review this list of venture firm logos. Which ones do you know?

The first question is an example of unaided recall and the second is
aided recall. A quantitative brand marketer for Redpoint might send
this survey before and after a campaign to measure the impact of the
campaign. Great brands score very highly on unaided recall.

The typical audience increases its unaided recall to a brand after
roughly 7 impressions [1].

When selling a company, a product, or an idea to customers,
employees, investors, candidates, repeating a consistent message
several times embosses the message upon the individual's memory. It
establishes clarity: Redpoint is a leading venture capital firm.

Great leaders coalesce their messaging around memorable, oft-repeated
words. At Looker, Frank, the CEO, declared the Year of the Hound when
the company's strategic priority shifted from one buyer persona to
another. Within the company, at board meetings, at our user
conference, Frank and the Looker team talked about the year of the
hound. All those brand impressions focused the company toward a
single goal.

That's one example of using this principle to align a team. But it
works just as well externally. Content marketing, brand advertising,
videos, events, sales pitches, all hands, candidate interviews. All
of these are opportunities for the next brand/message impression to
reinforce aided/unaided recall.

Repeating yourself improves brand recall. A simple message reiterated
again and again is a powerful thing.

[1] In practice, the number varies quite a bit. Researchers have
modelled different patterns and Google employs dynamic frequency
capping, which limits impressions, to maximize yield.

Categories: management, marketing
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