Why Communicating More Isn’t the Key to Being Remembered (It’s Simplicity That Wins)

Every day, people are bombarded by advertising, emails, and updates, but end up remembering almost none of it. The average person encounters thousands of marketing messages in a single day—TV commercials, social media ads, slogans on buses, and billboards crammed into every corner. Yet most of these blur together and vanish in a matter of hours. Picture the feeling of scrolling through your phone: even after spending an hour online, you might recall just one or two things that actually made you pause.

There’s a simple reason for this: our brains are overwhelmed by input, so they defensively filter out almost everything except what is startlingly clear and easy to categorize. When someone receives a flood of complex or unfocused information, they either tune it out or misremember it. This is why well-known brands often anchor themselves in just one clear idea—'the real thing,' 'think different,' 'just do it.' It’s never a paragraph, always a memorable phrase.

Science backs this up. Cognitive overload research shows that the human working memory can efficiently process only a limited number of information chunks at once (usually around seven, per George Miller’s famous research). When a message is simplified and targeted, it slides past the mind’s mental filters and lands on the 'sticky note' of long-term memory.

So, if you want to be remembered, don’t try to say more—say less, more sharply. Find the one thing you want someone to recall and focus all your effort on making that message simple, concrete, and impossible to ignore.

To make your message stand out, start by thinking about what your audience already believes or expects. Commit to reducing your point down to a single, punchy sentence—try saying it aloud until it feels natural. Test this by running it past a friend or teammate; if they remember it a day later, you know you’re on the right track. Take a final pass to ruthlessly cut out any fluff or side-notes. You’ll be surprised how often what matters most emerges from what you remove, not what you add. Try this the next time you prepare to speak up or send a group chat—it might feel abrupt at first, but watch how much more people tune in.