The Earth takes 365 days, 5 hours, 59 minutes, and 16 seconds to revolve around the sun.

The moon takes 27 days, 7 hours, and 43 minutes for its journey around Earth.

It takes a baby about 40 weeks to grow from conception to birth.

I’ve discovered a natural order with time as it relates to branding. Or, as Roy Williams calls it, “Bonding”.

Bond-focussed advertising follows a trajectory around customers’ minds, similar to celestial bodies.

Unfortunately, most owners don’t have the patience to see the voyage to its completion.

North American and European Space Agencies spent $3.26 billion to launch and monitor Cassini-Huygens spacecraft mission to Saturn.

It took 8 years to get there.

They knew it took eight to get there. They didn’t quit in the 7th year.

Many business owners abandon their marketing expeditions too soon. They get worried. They don’t see results. They look at shinier, more promising options to try to grow sales.

This is why I think this happens.

We live in a NOW economy.

Information is at our fingertips.

Dates are a swipe away.

We buy our dinner with an app, tip the driver with a click and book a hotel with a touch.

Time is a commodity, and companies like Amazon are speeding up delivery times to win the hearts of their customers.

The desire for instant gratification isn’t new.

Coca-Cola started quenching our thirst more than a hundred and twenty years ago.

McDonalds has satisfied our hunger since the 50’s.

“We can’t afford it” has been replaced with, “We’ll figure out how to pay for it later”.

Customers want it now.

You want to sell it now.

But here’s the problem.

As your desire to sell outpaces customers’ desire to buy, you become more aggressive with prices and big events.

Over time, these tactics create less opportunity so you squeeze even harder. Just like an orange, no matter how hard you squeeze, once the juice is out, you’re left with an acidic peel.

Instant gratification cheats a natural order. It destroys things and causes chaos in buying cycles and purchase behaviors.

Let me explain this natural order with two personal examples.

December 13, 2006, I started my first restaurant. December is the worst month to start a restaurant. Employees don’t want new jobs. Vacations are planned. Customers are in a hurry and impatient with new, untrained employees. December flows into the slow months of January, February, and March. Customers overeat and overspend at Christmas, so they detox through January, swinging their purchases in the opposite direction. With the exception of Valentine’s Day, the natural tendency for customers is slow purchases in the first quarter of the year.

We were scared the bank was going to ask for the deed on our house at any moment.

With no other choice, we continued to focus on food quality, speed and service. We smiled. We laughed to cover the growing fears of failure as April slid into May and May into June. July was supposed to be the crowning glory. It wasn’t.

Then BOOM. August blew up. Customers lined out the door. The message bomb went off and continued to blow our expectations for the next 2 years.

It took 39 weeks before our work paid off.

9 months. The same amount of time for a baby to be born.

I witnessed the phenomenon again in 2018. I bought a bankrupt business. The previous owners didn’t understand the profit margin. We fixed the cost side of the business and infused wizardly messaging into the radio ads. 39 weeks later, comparative sales were positive again.

There’s magic around the number 39.

Have you ever started an advertising campaign and decided to quit before the nine-month mark?

What if the orbit of your work was coming to a full circle just prior to you pulling the plug?

Patience is the key to anything worth doing. Measure it out. If you’re saying the right things enough times per week, then time is your only factor.

It’s a natural law.

Let’s call it the “Law of Patience”.

I read that 40 was used in the Bible to explain a long time.

  • Jesus spends 40 days in the wilderness with the devil.
  • Noah floats around for 40 days and 40 nights.
  • Moses wanders the desert for 40 years with the Hebrews.

Three titans in the Bible, all working with an allusion of 40 in time.

My experiences may be a fluke.
The Bible could be metaphorical.

Is it 39, or is it 40?
It’s not 5 weeks or 12.
It’s about the same time it takes for a human to be born.

Another reference to 40 is Hasbro’s game of Monopoly.
Go around 40 spaces and collect $200.
YOU COLLECT MONEY BY WAITING OUT 40 SPACES.

40 weeks can feel like a long time for sales to catch up to a consistent bond-focussed message.
There is a natural order with advertising and time in the first 40 weeks.
Respect it and win.
Abuse it and risk wandering the desert with inconsistent messages, instant gratification tactics, and incongruent media usages.

“All we need is just a little patience, mm yeah”.

Guns N’ Roses

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