Strategy Note 7: The Boredom Problem

Consistency builds recognition. Changing your message every time you see something new that works for someone else builds confusion.

I understand the temptation.

You see a competitor's post perform well and wonder if you should try their approach. You read advice about pivoting your positioning and wonder if yours is wrong. You get bored saying the same thing and assume your audience must be bored too.

They are not bored. They are barely starting to hear you.

This is one of the hardest truths in brand building. The repetition that feels tedious to you is just beginning to register for your audience.

You see every piece of content you create. You live with your messaging every day. You are saturated in your own brand to the point where it feels stale, obvious, worn out.

Your audience catches fragments. A post here. A mention there. A half-remembered impression from weeks ago. The thing you have said a hundred times, they have heard maybe twice—and not clearly enough either time to retain it.

It takes far more repetition than you think before your message penetrates. Some studies suggest people need to encounter a brand seven to ten times before they remember it. Others put the number higher. The exact figure matters less than the principle: you are nowhere near the saturation point you think you are.

Every time you change direction, you reset the clock.

The new message needs its own seven to ten encounters. The momentum you were building evaporates. Your audience, who was just beginning to associate you with something specific, now has to start over with a new association.

This is why brands that change their positioning frequently never build real traction. They are perpetually in the early stages of recognition, never reaching the point where the association becomes automatic.

The brands that own space in their audience's minds got there by saying the same thing, the same way, until it became impossible to think of what they do without thinking of them.

This requires discipline that feels counterintuitive. When you are bored with your message, when you crave novelty, when you see others trying different approaches—stay the course. The boredom is a signal that you are approaching the threshold where repetition becomes recognition.

Find new ways to say the same thing. Tell different stories that illustrate the same principle. Create fresh content that reinforces familiar positions. Variety in execution, consistency in substance.

Your audience does not need you to be interesting to yourself. They need you to be recognizable to them. Those are different goals with different requirements.

Say the same thing, the same way, until it becomes impossible to think of what you do without thinking of you.

Then keep saying it.

Stay Curious,