You will hear time and time again in the advertising world ‘frequency, frequency, frequency’. This simple phrase is becoming more and more important as years go on and as an individual’s time and attention is spread more and more between different mediums and advertising avenues.

Unless you are advertising in a program that is tuned in to by the masses (eg. a sports final, a ceremony of national or international importance) and are already a nationally or internationally recognised company, a one-off ad on any broadcast medium is not likely to help your business or advertising budget. Even the businesses and companies that advertise in this type of programming are gambling that their target market is tuning in at that particular time and not running off to grab a drink, go to the bathroom or generally not paying attention. This can be a very expensive lesson to learn. The truth is, in order to get your target market’s attention, you need commercial repetition.

A study of people’s memory retention was performed in the late 1900’s by a German researcher named Hermann Ebbinghaus. Ebbinghaus’ study showed that most people forget new information within the first few hours of receiving it unless they revise or are presented with the material again. The more repetition, the easier the information is to retain in their long term memory. Interestingly, this graph which is made up of memory-loss versus time, also showed that forgetting does not continue to decline until all of the new information is lost. At a certain point, the amount of forgetting levels off which indicates the banking of information in long term memory. This study may sound like it states the obvious… ‘the more you learn something, the easier it is to remember’. However, this rule is often ignored when it comes to advertising and brand recognition which not only affects results, but budget too. If you apply this observation to your advertising campaigns, you’ll find that it will only be a matter of time before that repetition banks itself into your target market’s long-term memory and your business, and its messages will become more and more powerful. This doesn’t mean you need to broadcast the same commercial again and again. However, being present in the mind of your target market and keeping a consistency in your business’ core messages will instill your audience with confidence and acknowledgement in your brand and product’s merit.

If you would like to discuss how we can best utilise repetition to promote your business within your advertising budget please feel free to contact us on (02) 62622439 or email us at info@nimic.com.au.

Nimic Productions – A creative marketing partnership with one thing in mind… your success.