Watch any great comedian’s Netflix special, and you’re seeing the polished end result of months (sometimes years) of refinement.
But here’s what you don’t see:
The same joke told hundreds of times in comedy clubs across the country.
The comedian doesn’t write a new punchline every night. Instead, they take the same core bit and test it relentlessly. They adjust the timing, emphasize different words, read the room’s energy, and listen to where the laughs actually land.
Through repetition, they discover what makes it truly funny.
Which is basically what we marketers should be doing with our messaging. But we rarely do.
The stale messaging myth
Most marketers I know are terrified of repetition. They think saying the same thing twice makes their brand seem boring or predictable.
So what happens? Every marketing piece gets completely rewritten from scratch. Every ad campaign is rediscovered, every landing page starts with a blank screen, every sales enblement material says something different.
But here’s the thing: you’re not making your message more exciting this way. You’re actually making it fuzzier.
When you avoid repetition, you never get to dive deeper and discover what actually resonates. You abandon each approach before it has time to teach you anything.
The testing laboratory approach
What if, instead of avoiding repetition, you used it strategically?
This is exactly what I do with clients when we’re building messaging frameworks. We start with a solid foundation—your core message, your “bit”—and then we test it systematically:
Tell it to different audiences. Present the same core message to prospects, existing customers, and internal teams. Notice what questions come up, where people get confused, which benefits make their eyes light up.
Listen to the objections. When someone pushes back on your message, they’re giving you gold. They’re showing you where your argument isn’t clear or compelling enough. Use that feedback to strengthen the foundation, not abandon it.
Vary the delivery. Try telling your story in 1 minute, then 5 minutes, then 20 minutes. See which elements survive the compression and which need more space to breathe.
Emphasize different elements. Highlight the efficiency benefits to operations folks, the growth potential to executives, the user experience to product teams. Same message, different emphasis based on what matters to each audience.
Through this process, something magical happens: you start discovering aspects of your message you never knew existed.
Beyond rehearsal to discovery
This isn’t just about getting smoother at your elevator pitch.
It’s about using repetition as a clarification tool. Each time you tell your story, you’re running a small experiment. You’re learning which parts land, which parts confuse, and which parts you’ve been taking for granted.
The comedian doesn’t discover the perfect punchline by writing different jokes every night. They discover it by telling the same joke until they truly understand what makes it work.
***
Your message isn’t a disposable asset that loses value with use. It’s a foundation that becomes more valuable the more you build on it.
Stop treating repetition like creative bankruptcy. Start treating it like strategic intelligence gathering. The clearer and more aligned the messaging is, the stronger it is. When you have that, repetition is just a smart way to lead with your strongest weapon.
The clarity you gain from saying the same thing well is infinitely more powerful than the novelty of saying something new poorly.
Clarity matters,
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🤿 Diving deeper
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