“We’ve said that already. They know it now.”

Or perhaps: “We’ve told them already. Why aren’t they listening?”

I hear versions of this surprisingly often. And there’s a bias behind it that can stop perfectly good communication and campaigns working before they’ve really had a chance.

Here’s an example.

My friends and long-standing colleagues tend to roll their eyes when I mention that I worked at what was then called The Capital Radio Group. I can sort of understand why.

Working in that building in Leicester Square, where famous and influential people would routinely wander through and work alongside the rest of us, was genuinely eye-opening and inspirational to a former council house kid from South East London.

And I do have a habit of mentioning it when I meet new people, particularly now I’ve opened a new podcast and video studio in Brighton and have a whole bunch of creatives and businesses to get to know at PLATF9RM in the city centre.

To people who have known me for years, it can probably sound a bit like name-dropping. And yes, it is.

A bit.

Especially the story about how I caught a cold off The Corrs, but I digress.

The important bit is why I mention Capital. It’s shorthand.

In a world where time is precious, it very quickly says: “You’re dealing with someone who has been around this stuff for a while. I understand communication, production and what it takes to make something land.”

And almost universally, that’s how it’s received. It helps jump a few stages in the “getting to know you” process so we can get to the interesting bit: what are you trying to say, who needs to hear it and how do we make them care?

So where’s the bias?

My friends are bored of hearing the story. The person I’ve just met isn’t. They may never have heard it before.

And that’s exactly what happens inside businesses.

You and your team live with your brand every day. You’ve sat through the meetings, seen the campaign, approved the website copy and heard the message dozens of times.

Your audience hasn’t.

They might have scrolled past one post while waiting for a train, seen half a video without the sound on, opened an email and meant to come back to it, or heard somebody mention your company three weeks later.

They get snapshots. You get saturation. So when somebody says, “Do we really need to say this AGAIN?” Quite often the answer is yes. And probably several more times after that.

Repetition builds reputation.

And actually, I think that’s quite liberating, because it means we don’t constantly have to reinvent the wheel. If you know the important thing your audience needs to understand, you can concentrate on saying it clearly, consistently and in interesting, human ways rather than starting from scratch every week. The trick is knowing the difference between useful repetition and something that genuinely isn’t working.

Which is where measurement comes in.

Before changing a campaign, because everyone internally is fed up with it, look at what the evidence is telling you. Are the right people beginning to respond? Are enquiries changing? Are people repeating your language back to you? Are clicks, conversations, sign-ups or whatever matters to you moving in the right direction?

I’ve worked with people who were ready to change direction because, in their words, a campaign “wasn’t delivering”. When I looked at the numbers, it was actually only just beginning to work. Better still, the data showed that with one tweak to the landing page we could potentially capture around five warm leads every month. That’s 60 warm leads a year. Even if only one in five became customers, that’s 12 additional customers from something they were preparing to abandon.

Imagine all the hours that could have been spent inventing a replacement for something that was finally starting to cut through.

So perhaps the question isn’t:

“Have we said this too many times?”

It’s:

“Has our audience heard it enough times yet?”

And I’d genuinely love to know: what’s the one thing about your business that you think your audience really ought to know by now, but you suspect they still don’t? Or just going a little crazy saying the same thing all the time?

Feel free to email and tell me.

create@wideo.co.uk

Darren.