You need a simple idea
According to some reports, we are exposed to 3,000+ marketing messages a day. That is an insane amount of ideas that we have to parse, process, or simply ignore. As you can imagine, most of those messages fall into that last category.
We remember the things vital to our survival. Other messages that are relevant to us may get absorbed. Messages beyond that have a greater likelihood of slipping away.
Repeated exposure to a message can help with retention. This is a phenomenon studied by Hermann Ebbinghaus over 100 years ago and which led to the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve. It also explains why an often-cited statistic is that we need to expose people 7x to an idea (or our brand) before they remember us.
But even repeated exposure is not enough. The message needs to be meaningful and refined to the simplest form.
What it means for your prospects
In the old days, you could pummel people with a message to drive retention of an idea. Today, we are faced with an ever-increasing deluge of information. From the book Big Audacious Meaning – Unleashing Your Purpose Driven Story, "One estimate suggests that the average person today is exposed to an amount of information each day that is equal to what a person in the 15th century was exposed to over his lifetime."
This is such an important idea that Chip & Dan Heath led with it in their Book, Made To Stick: Why some ideas survive and others die, "The more we reduce the amount of information in an idea, the stickier it will be."
People don't want to adopt a new idea. They have too much in their head already. You have to have something meaningful to say. And you have to find a way to keep it simple.
What it means for your team members
You can try to dictate that employees adopt an idea. Which means you may get some percentage of that population to repeat it back to you. But it will fade quickly without further demands to remember it. And honestly, demanding employees remember the idea is no way to get them excited about adopting the idea. And it's far, far away from them ever becoming champions for the idea. Whether that's your brand purpose, your mission, or your values.
If you're asking everyone to memorize these things, you're fighting a losing battle. It needs to be effortless for them. It sticks because it makes sense. And it's meaningful. And, dead simple.
Get to that point and you'll have something that everyone remembers. And owns.
It's just that simple.