Here’s the challenge: your association has plenty of great ideas and has done some fantastic research, and you want to share this with your target audience: members, congress visitors, partners, and so forth. How will you do it? A main lecture at the annual congress? An article in your Journal? A news page on the web site? A mailing to everyone in your database?
Let’s stop and think about this for a moment… what do we want to achieve? We probably have something of value to communicate, something that’s worth learning about, something people should remember the next time they do this or that. But will they? Will they actually remember? Forget it! Most people don’t. Not unless you make them remember. And how do you do that?
There was this clever chap way back in 1885, called Hermann Ebbinghaus, who discovered “the exponential way of forgetting”. He argued that over time people forget what they learned, unless you remind them, time and again. Complexity of the material does play a role for sure, as does someone’s memory capabilities, but the general principle holds: if you remind people, they will remember more. A student learning from a school book will typically only remember 10% after 3-6 days. That means that 90% of what was learned is forgotten. But Ebbinghaus argued that the initial phase of “forgetting” is stronger than later phases. In other words, forgetting is not linear, it doesn’t continue simply till all is lost. Some parts of what was learned will be stored in long-term memory and this is very stable. So make sure that you capture more in the long-term memory.
Much of our forgetting occurs right away. That’s why many public speakers use the “tell, tell, tell” technique: in a presentation of, say, 30 minutes, they first explain what they are going to be talking about (1st “tell”), then they tell the story (2nd “tell”), and in the end they briefly repeat what they said (3rd “tell”). But one can use this technique also for the non-spoken word: repeated visuals stick longer in memory, written key words and key phrases that keep coming back will stick too.
So the lesson is simple: if you want people to remember what you communicate about, use techniques to repeat the message. And this of course slots in very nicely with consistent communication techniques that associations should use: if you pick a theme for your annual conference, make sure that all your marketing material refers to it. If you build the contents of your programme, explain how it links in with the theme. At the opening session, refer to it again. And so on. It will stick. And the same goes for key messages on your web site, ground-breaking articles in your journal, freshly published research, etc. Repeat the key messages.
People will remember. People will learn. And they will recognise your association as one that contributes to their development. And that’s an unforgettable experience…
Jurriaen Sleijster
Executive Vice President
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