10 Exposures

     Let's say you've decided to go workout at the local gym.  You pick up one of the free weights in your right hand.  You lift it, and curl your arm.  You relax it, and put the weight down.  Then you leave the gym since your workout is over.

     Not much of workout.  If that was your routine, how long do you think it would take until you see results?

     Then why do many schools send out "a" mailing, and then wonder why it had no effect?  Or put up one billboard on a seldom traveled road, and wonder why no one calls the school?  Maybe the one billboard is close to a well travelled road where the speed limit is 50 miles per hour.   Here's the conversation in the car - "Hey, there's a billboard for that Catholic school.  Let me write down that number.  Honey, can you write that number down since I'm driving?"  "Um, I don't have a pen handy, but the number is 453-3..oh, we passed it."

     Hopefully, those interested parents will travel that road again.  But what if they went down that road, and when they turned on to their street, there was a lawn sign advertising your school.  Then, when they got to their front door, there was a cardboard hanger there announcing the date of your open house with your phone number.  The next day, their mailbox holds that mailing for your school

     After those four exposures, you might have that family call the school.  But if they're pre-disposed against your school, it'll take another six exposures just to maybe get them to change their minds.

     It used to take about three exposures to something new to do that - of course, that's when there were only three or four television stations in the average market, and things like cell phones and the Internet didn't exist.  In recent times, that number has increased to five, then to seven, and the most current figure that is thought to begin a change in mind is nine exposures.

     Research has shown that it takes about nine repetitions in order for an action to become a habit - that could have something to do with the nine exposures theory.

     So go one better - make it ten.

     Close to 20 years ago, I worked for a leadership training company.  Their training programs were six to twelve weeks long.  Each program contained between three and six cassettes (remember those?) with weekly lesson on each side of the cassette.  Every weekly lesson was 30 minutes in length, to be listened to once in the morning, and once in the evening (it was suggested that listening be done on the commute to and from work).  That means each lesson was listened to 10 times a week.  I think they were on to something...

     Going back a little further, there was a television show about 40 years ago that had a song which was sung while doing push-ups.  Its first line: "Push up every morning - ten times.  Not just now and then."

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