Observed

Want to be better remembered?  Interested in getting the most out of your advertising dollars or the other ways you invest in communicating with your markets?

Then think about two words:

Consistency

and

Repetition

The former is one of the keys to effective branding.  The Marlboro Man, UPS, Apple…ad infinitum.

The latter has been around since the ancient Greeks.  In fact, the title of this post represents one of at least nine ways Greek rhetoriticians codified the repetition of words for emphasis.  (I used epizeuxis — also known as palilogia — literally the fastening together of words.)

So what?  In addition to more engaging writing, repetition figures into how we might deploy what we write.

If, for example, you have an unreadably long something or other you’ve written for clients and the like.  Long as in way over the 250 to 300 word threshold most of us have before we get bored, distracted or multi-tasked onto something else.

A solution? Serialize the main ideas into two or more shorter parts.  Send them out, say, 7 to 10 days apart.  With the same or similar headings, art and the like.  (See Consistency, above.)

Or, if you’re producing Web or blog content, cannibalize the long copy.  Create a new page or a new sub-headed section or a new post.

In addition to being better-remembered, repetition creates a sense of anticipation.  And then, you make your readers part of a conversation.

Part 2?  The Seven Impressions Rule.