People share what they can remember, and they remember what they can say in one sentence. The marketing rule of seven — the idea that a consumer needs around seven exposures to a message before it sticks — exists because most marketing says too much. These are not infantilising; they are compression:
- a jingle
- a tagline
- a mascot
The more you compress a message without losing its meaning, the more likely someone is to repeat it correctly to someone else. George Miller's 1956 research on working memory established that the human brain can hold around seven items at once — which means every word you add to a message competes with every other word for a slot that was already full. The same principle applies to product naming, onboarding copy, and pitch decks: if the person you are talking to cannot explain your product to a colleague in thirty seconds, your marketing has not done its job. Cut until there is nothing left to cut, then check whether what remains is still true and still interesting.
