#9 Rinse and repeat

Rinse and repeat

A car wash near me has nailed its marketing, finally, lo-fi style. For a while, they've had a massive red sign with a looooooong-arsed arrow declaring:

VALETING LTD VALETING LTD

HAVE MOVED HERE MOVED HERE

<––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Not the clearest message in the world for lots of reasons.

First, the weird repetition. Then the questions, including but not limited to:

• VALETING LTD – Who? What do you do? Why should I care?

• HAVE – Should it say ‘has’ not ‘have’? Am I missing the difference between HAVE MOVED HERE and MOVED HERE? Twice.

• MOVED - Why tell me this again? Have they moved since the first sign?

• HERE – Here or here? Oh, I thought the arrow was just underlining the point.

As it happens, they’ve been HERE on this spot for ages... we're talking years. But the MOVED message has stuck in time – a bit like a DFS sofa sale.

I expect most passers-by (while also WTFing why it repeats) have given up noticing the notice. BUT now some crafty carwash FULL CAPS expert has handcrafted a new sign that says:

HAND CAR WASH

HAND CAR WASH

<––––

Imperfectly typeset on a wonky board and stuck on the grass out front. Same message, twice, in stencil and spray can. No expense spared, because sometimes the big red sign could do with a Ronseal sibling, repeated (again).

These signs are a sign that repeating stuff can work for you and against you at the same time. Which got me thinking about how it works in golf, life, copy and advertising. So, this golf lesson does a double-take at repetition.

Repetition just doesn’t wash

Here's a quirk of repetition – it never really repeats. Every time you do anything again, the context has shifted. You're slightly different, the world's moved on, the course conditions have changed, you’re better at doing it with practice and Palace have finally won a cup.

What looks like a re-run is actually another micro-experiment about what works and what doesn't. A recalibration and a remix though it might look and sound very similar.

Our car wash friends know the consequences of repeating the wrong message. MOVED HERE expired long after anyone cared about their relocation story. What now needs hammering home the simple fact that they wash cars, placed at eye level. Twice.

Repetition’s sell-by date

Advertising has always been built on repetition, but marketers know the difference between repeating a message and repeating a formula. Think of every jingle that's wormed into your brain, every slogan that's become cultural shorthand. "Just Do It" works because Nike repeats the core idea while constantly refreshing how they say it.

The psychology is solid. But there's a cliff edge where familiarity turns sour fast. That earworm starts to grate. The catchphrase runs out of road. The big red sign saying MOVED HERE is old, seriously old, news. And you’re still telling me twice.

Most effective campaigns repeat what works while staying awake to what's changing. They understand that context shifts even when the message stays the same. Like Patagonia's "Don't Buy This Jacket" campaign works differently now that sustainable fashion has gone mainstream and conscious consumption is a category, not just a Patagonia thing. That’s when ads become real-world slogans.

Inconsistent to a tee

Golf is a game of chasing consistency. To achieve that means repeatable processes. Grinding out the perfect swing through thousands of practice shots until muscle memory takes over. Building a routine that holds up under pressure.

Except some of the greatest players have been walking contradictions of this theory.

Seve Ballesteros had a swing that looked like no other. Unorthodox, flamboyant, often unpredictable. Some days it produced pure Spanish magic. Other days it sprayed balls into the car park. Among modern-day players, Jordan Spieth is just as waywardly challenged, yet brilliant. His swing seems to change depending on which way the wind's blowing, but his scrambling is second to none.

Then there's Scottie Scheffler. World number one who just won his last two tournaments at a stroll including another major, the PGA Championship. He’s easily the most consistent approach player on tour. (FYI approach play is the shot to the green and the bit most amateurs struggle with that's also why par 3s are generally the hardest holes on any course.)

Yet, Scottie swings like he's about to break an ankle or topple over. Beautifully awkward, devastatingly effective, and utterly unrepeatable with all its moving parts.

What they all embrace/d is the fact that you can't repeat the golf swing exactly – the human body isn't a machine. At least not yet, although the Enhanced Games is heading that way. Instead, they double-down on something much more valuable and attainable; Seve’s recovery game, Spieth’s scrambling mindset and Scheffler’s control plus his uncanny knack for avoiding bad misses.

They adapt in the moment and repeat the approach, not the mechanics. They treat every shot as a new puzzle, even when it looks exactly like the one they just solved.

Careful what you repeat

I like that the car wash folks have eventually taken a different tack – simple, direct, repeated at the exact moment when people need to see it. Same goal, different method. The story I’ve told myself about the signs’ evolution makes me chuckle when I drive passed.

It turns out that repetition is doubly double-edged. Appearing to be the same thing when it’s not. Waymarking different paths to the same goal – that are easier to find the more you follow them (and your instincts). Teaching you that learning what works is what matters, because nothing’s ever the same twice.

Every swing feels different, every car wash misses a bit, everyone is unique right now and every minute we're flitting from old to new.

Good things bear repetition, but only if you're paying attention to how they land. So, if you hear someone shout “Fore!”, duck. And if you hear it twice, it’s probably too late.