The power of spaced learning

Within two days of learning something new, we only retain ~1/4. This includes products and brands. Spaced learning is an incredibly powerful tool to combat this.

The adult brain processes 70,000 thoughts a day and can hold the equivalent of 2.5 million gigabytes of information (standard MacBooks come with 512 GB 🤯).

Unfortunately, despite our brain’s incredible capacity, memory loss is prevalent.

Enter the “forgetting curve” (coined by German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus): It is the natural state of information loss a person experiences, with a gradual decrease in knowledge retention over time.

See below - the forgetting curve estimates that after two days, only ~1/4 of information is retained (sounds about right 😒).

Brands and products are not excluded from this phenomena: (potential) customers are more likely to forget a brand / product as more time passes since their last interaction / exposure to it.

Here’s where “spaced learning” or “spaced repetition” comes in: It is a learning technique that involves increasing intervals of time between subsequent review of previously learned material to enhance memory retention.

What does this mean for brands and products specifically?

If (potential) customers regularly hear from you with a consistent brand messaging even with increasing intervals, they will remember you for a long time.

To make it more specific: This graph from Gwern implies that if (potential) customers her about / from you at 1, 10, 30, and 60 days, the majority will remember you for years to come.

The positive impact of spaced learning on memory retention can't be understated.

It not only improves recall but also solidifies the brand or product's place in the customers's memory, making it more likely to be chosen when the time to make a purchase decision arrives.

Not only does this phenomena rarely appear in attribution analysis, but it is also an underutilized tool / framework when thinking about creating a memorable and desirable brand.