What Most Brands Get Wrong About Messaging

Have you ever played a game of telephone as a kid? It's been a long time, I remember it well at camp. You whisper a message to one person, they pass it to the next, and by the time it reaches the last person, the original message has transformed into something completely different. What you experienced was a real-world demonstration of one of the most fundamental principles in communication science: lossy transfer.

The Beautiful Imperfection of Communication

Think about your last important presentation. You spent hours crafting the perfect slides, rehearsing your delivery, and anticipating questions. Yet when you finished, did every audience member walk away with exactly the same understanding? Nope! Each person filtered your message through their own experiences, attention levels, and cognitive frameworks. Some information was lost, some was transformed, and some was enhanced with personal meaning.

Every communication channel, whether it’s a conversation, an email, or a marketing campaign, has a maximum amount of information it can reliably transmit.

The AI Revolution: Compression with Purpose

Claude Shannon’s principles are more relevant than ever. The 2024 State of Marketing AI Report from the Marketing AI Institute says AI adoption is accelerating among marketing professionals, with many saying they use AI in digital tools in their daily workflows and “couldn’t live without AI.” But here’s what’s truly exciting: AI isn’t just automating our communication, it’s making our lossy transfers more intelligent.

Modern AI systems use information theory to determine which information to preserve and which to compress or discard. When you use AI to summarize a lengthy report or when Netflix recommends movies based on your viewing history, you’re witnessing sophisticated algorithms that understand the value of strategic information loss.

The most effective campaigns don’t try to communicate everything, they strategically choose what to emphasize and what to let fade into the background.

The Psychology of Lossy Transfer

Why does this matter for your business? Because understanding lossy transfer is the key to creating messages that actually stick. Our brains are constantly filtering information, deciding what deserves our attention and what we can safely ignore. This isn’t a flaw, it’s a crucial survival mechanism that prevents cognitive overload.

When you craft a brand message, you’re not just competing with other brands. You’re competing with every stimulus vying for your audience’s attention: the notification that just popped up on their phone, the conversation happening at the next table, the mental to-do list running in their head. Your message will lose some information in this transfer. The question is: which information do you want to preserve?

Your logo, tagline, and core messaging aren’t just information packets, they’re coherence anchors that help your audience reconstruct your brand’s meaning even when other details are lost in transmission. Nerd language for keep it simple, keep it poignant!

The Strategic Advantage of Intentional Loss

Here’s where it gets really interesting: the most successful brands don’t fight lossy transfer, they embrace it. They understand that when someone encounters their brand, only a fraction of the intended message will make it through. So they design their communications to ensure that fraction is the most important part.

Think about Apple’s marketing. Their campaigns could include detailed technical specifications, comparative performance charts, and comprehensive feature lists.

Instead, they focus on a single, powerful idea that survives the lossy transfer: “Think Different,” “It just works,” or “Designed in California.” Everything else is strategically sacrificed to ensure this core message reaches the audience intact.

Questions That Transform Your Communication Strategy

As you consider your own brand communications, ask yourself: If 80% of your message gets lost in transmission, what’s the 20% you absolutely need to preserve? What single idea would you want someone to remember six months after encountering your brand?
These aren’t just philosophical questions, they’re strategic imperatives. In our information-saturated world, the brands that thrive are those that understand the mathematics of attention and the psychology of memory.

The WYNN Advantage: Engineering Meaning in a Noisy World

This is where strategic expertise becomes invaluable. Understanding information theory is one thing; applying it to create compelling brand experiences is another entirely. At WYNN Experience Design Agency, we don’t just create marketing campaigns, we engineer meaning that survives the lossy transfer of real-world communication.

Our approach combines cutting-edge insights from psychology, AI, and information theory to design experiences that work with, rather than against, the natural limitations of human communication. We understand that your brand message is like a song played through a scratchy radio and we know how to make sure the melody still comes through clear and strong.

What messages are you losing in the noise, and what would happen if you could guarantee the right ones got through?