How Much is Too Much?

by Andrew Michaels

I’m walking down a very long hallway at an airport—I’m sure this setting is familiar, given that it seems like all airports are nothing but a series of long hallways. As I stroll quickly by I see one poster after another lining the walls. You need to fill that space up with something, after all.
I move from one section of the airport to the next and see more and more of those posters, only they seem to be repeating. There are maybe seven or eight posters as most that just recycle over and over again. I pass by the same poster maybe five, six times at least.
Now, one could view this situation from two different perspectives. The first is that the repetition of the posters helps to make sure the topic of it sticks in my mind. The purpose of poster printing is to help a person remember a company name by seeing the color poster each time they go someplace.
But on the other hand I have to admit being a bit annoyed by the constant nature of the repetition. In the span of maybe ten minutes I’ve seen this poster five or six times. I’m finding myself being turned off by the constant poster views than anything else. And to confirm the point, no, I can’t remember the names of any of those companies, so you could say the poster didn’t do its job.
Now the difficult question needs to be asked: how much is too much? Had they put up only three posters instead of seven or eight in that airport would they have had a better chance of me taking interest? Are there some people who just need to see the poster that many times before they’ll finally remember the message?
There is no single answer to this question, and each industry is likely to be quite different. This means research is the only way to have a good feel for what will work for you and your poster printing.
A full color poster is going to be great at grabbing the eye, but when a person then sees the same poster in a short span of time five more times you might literally erode the initial interest they had. You’ve made your poster commonplace by too much repetition.
At the same time, even the most interesting poster can be forgotten if the person doesn’t see the company’s name enough.
My point here is less about giving you a solid answer, because as I said before, each industry will be different. However, knowing the issue exists is always going to be the first step towards finding a good answer. The next time you decide to get some poster printing done try to research how many posters will be needed to do the best job without being overkill.