Peanut butter is the reason your ad campaign is forgettable
Marketing professor Jonah Berger studies why some ideas keep getting talked about for years after launch. One factor beats the rest for staying power.
Say the word "peanut butter" out loud. Chances are "jelly" showed up in your head within a second, unbidden. That automatic pairing is what Wharton professor Jonah Berger calls a trigger — an everyday cue that keeps a product or idea top of mind long after the campaign budget runs out.
Berger's research, the basis of his book on why things catch on, found that a clever ad can generate a burst of buzz and then vanish within a week, while a duller message tied to a daily cue keeps getting mentioned for years. A candy brand linked to Friday keeps getting talked about every single Friday. A charity tied to a specific, frequent moment gets remembered every time that moment recurs. Cleverness fades. Cues repeat.
Most marketers chase the first kind of moment because it's the one you can put in a highlight reel. The boring cue that fires fifty times a year usually does more work — it's just never the thing anyone puts in the pitch deck.