Bored with Your Own Company’s Messaging? It’s Probably Just Starting to Work

November 29, 2016

One of the biggest challenges we face as marketing consultants is hearing from organizations that are bored with their own messaging and inclined to change it just because.

“Stop.” “Wait.” “Let’s think this through,” we typically counsel, while trying to keep calm in the face of motivated clients!

Oftentimes, just when a CEO gets bored with his or her own company’s messaging, the messaging is just starting to take hold among the targets. Thus, it could be the worst possible time to change it… and certainly a CEO’s boredom is no reason to change it.

What matters is whether it’s working in a brand marketing or sales context.

John Lilly, a principal at Greylock Partners (the Silicon Valley venture capital firm), said as much in a recent New York Times interview:

“I didn’t understand the role of simplicity and messaging early on. One of the things that happened at one of my start-ups was that I would get bored saying the same thing every day. So I decided to change it up a little bit. But then everybody had a different idea of what I thought because I was mixing it up.

“So my big lesson was the importance of a simple message, and saying it the same way over and over. If you’re going to change it, change it in a big way, and make sure everyone knows it’s a change. Otherwise keep it static.”

How right John Lilly is.

-Cary Brazeman