Experts Need to Master the "Billboard Effect"

I travel a lot for work. 

Doesn’t matter if it’s Greenville, Seattle, or Dodge City—on the ride from airport to hotel, there’s one constant on nearly every single highway in America: a never-ending parade of personal injury lawyer billboards.

At first glance, those advertisements are a dumpster fire of biblical proportions for anyone who cares about visual storytelling: shiny suits, folded arms, totally contrived, shit-eating “trust me” smirks on their faces. 

As a photographer, I want to throw up and cry at the same time looking at these damn things. But here’s the thing—none of that actually matters.

Those billboards aren’t about winning creative awards. They’re about one thing: relentless, repeated exposure. This is no accident, and it’s not laziness—it’s a centuries-old psychological principle at play called the mere exposure effect.

Psychology’s Secret Sauce for Attention

Here’s the science in a nutshell: The mere exposure effect says that the more often we see something, the more we tend to like, trust, and choose it. 

We mistake frequency for trustworthiness and recall for authority. It’s not about being the most talented, the most credentialed, or the most creative. It’s about being the most present—being there every single day.

All these lawyers, lining up along the highways, know most drivers won’t need them today—or even this year. But one day, when they do need a lawyer, who are they going to call? The person whose face has been forcibly etched into their brain on every highway exit for years on end.

Ask yourself: how many brand jingles can you sing right now, from insurance companies to snack food and fast food? How many times do you buy the same product at the store over the other fifty lookalike options? 

For better or worse, repetition is a shortcut to “market of one” dominance.

“Brand Recall” Isn’t Just for Propecia —It’s for People, Too

Big brands have leveraged this principle for generations. 

Television commercials in the 1960s hammered the same tune and slogan into your head between every episode. Today, you hear the same sponsored podcasts and YouTube ads pushing men’s grooming or meal kits until you finally tap out and, ultimately, punch in that discount code, because, apparently, you can’t live without it anymore. 

Repetition isn’t simply a marketing hack, it’s compound leverage over time. 

It’s not about one photo or one ad going viral—it’s about the slow, steady drip, the drumbeat, the accumulation of trust that makes you the unmistakable choice when opportunity arises.

Being chosen starts long before anyone picks up the phone. 

The sale is won or lost well before the conversation, often in a place as mundane as a highway billboard or a LinkedIn scroll. Each point of exposure is an unspoken peg in the board that quietly stacks the deck in your favor.

Experts: This Is Your Playbook Too (But Smarter)

If you’re an expert—speaker, coach, consultant, trainer, author—here’s the kicker: you need to leverage the mere exposure effect too, but with style, variety, and strategy.

Not by flooding LinkedIn with the same headshot on repeat. Not by becoming a one-photo wonder or recycling a single “smile with crossed arms” over and over.

Instead, you do it by creating curated visual diversity. 

You rotate between behind-the-scenes moments, dynamic “in-action” shots of you delivering your transformative message on stage and in the boardroom, and your work before the work, day-to-day activities that show up in a hundred different ways. 

The consistency is in your presence, your essence, and your message—even as the surface details and images shift. The common denominator is that you’re still illustrating who you are and how you help others.

This variety multiplies your mere exposure effect: people see you everywhere, doing your thing, in a way that always feels fresh yet unmistakably you. 

You become the “billboard” of your niche—maybe even the only one who matters there.

The Choice: Repeat or Retreat

Here’s the truth—if you’re only showing up once, or relying on a homepage or a single “viral” keynote video, you’re losing before you begin. 

No one buys, books, or trusts what they rarely see. The market forgets the invisible.

Strategic, repeated, visually-varied exposure is how you become the obvious choice.
Your expertise deserves more than one-and-done. 

Let yourself be seen.

Ready for your visual storytelling to become the “billboard” your market remembers?

What would change for your business, your audience, and your impact if you finally showed up everywhere—repeated, unmistakable, and top-of-mind?

Let’s map out a strategy that turns your expertise into the visual “market of one.”
Book your Visual Storytelling Strategy call now.