Using Marketing To Study

As a student understanding information and memorising it is very important. Many times we sit down studying yet don’t understand nor remember anything we just read. I thought there had to be a better way and decided to draw inspiration from my marketing backgroundn finding the answer in multiple encoding.

In the fields of consumer behaviour and IMC (integrated marketing communications) memory and recall is a big thing. It’s what makes one brand come to mind when you reach the store. So naturally, marketers have given the idea a lot of thought. One of the methods used is called multiple encoding. This is, sending a message to the customer using different mediums and different formats. For example, a marketer may produce an ad for television, radio, digital media, and print. All with the same message. That message then gets stored in the customer’s mind in multiple formats and in different contexts helping it stick. 

So I tried this approach to my studies and used different methods to remember content. My ‘media outlets’ were reading, summary writing, drawing, and presentations. 

1. First I read the content, without fighting to understand or remember it. But rather reading like I would a magazine or blog article.
2. Skimming through, I then summarised the information in my own words being as simple and concise as possible. Using paper without lines, I mapped out my summaries and how they related to each other. Almost like an infographic.
3. Thirdly, I went through the page drawing a small doodle for each chunk of information, capturing the essence of it(e.g. a Gorilla talk to a guy about cheese for guerilla marketing). 
4. Finally using the page I made a presentation to an imaginary group being as realistic as possible, speaking out loud, engaging the ‘audience’, and giving my opinion on topics. 

The results were astonishing. The information and ideas were almost engraved in my memory and recall was not a problem. In exams remembering content and context was a breeze. 

It may be tricky implementing this method for technical subjects like math. But the idea is to take more than one approach when memorising content. Because when we can relate to a topic in more than one way and context, we are more likely to remember it. It’s also important that marketers don’t forget these bits of theory when marketing our brands and try to communicate our messages in different formats.