Why is message retention important when it comes to changing behaviors being competitive and innovative in the market? What is the science of boosting message retention in your content?
TruScribe’s Chief Innovation Officer, Eric Oakland, explains.
Retained for Change
When you send a message to someone on your team with a task, a new way of doing something, or a big change in direction, you hope they will change their behavior immediately.
Unfortunately, some opportunities to act don’t come immediately or can be delayed by outside factors.
But when action is possible, you want your team to be ready to take action – which means they need to remember your message.
Message retention becomes more important the longer the receiver waits before taking action.
Conversely, the likelihood of action decreases when retention of the message decreases. So what does science tell us about improving message retention?
Forgetful by Design
The first thing to realize is that the brain is trying to forget things.
Every second, your brain is receiving 40 billion sensory inputs and is conscious of 40 of them at any given time. The brain has to pick and choose what it keeps (i.e. remembers) and this happens during sleep.
So how do you get your message past the dream time chopping block?
How can you give your message the best chance of transferring to the receivers long-term memory?
Many Senses, One Message
You need to take advantage of as many sensory inputs as you can and align them behind your message, but you don’t need 40.
You already know that sight and sound are the biggest two sensory inputs, and creating content to address both isn’t difficult. We have access to more visual resources and professional narration than ever before.
What is important to understand about combining voice and visuals is Sync Frequency, or how often the narration is supported by meaningful visuals. The more often the voice and the visuals are supporting the same message, the better. Can you achieve the necessary Sync Frequency to boost retention using the usual suspects; talking head, powerpoint presentations, animations, whiteboard video?