Novelty and familiarity: how to strike a balance and seduce your audience

Innovation is key in today’s ever-changing market. Every entrepreneur, executive, and thought leader knows this. And communicating innovation is what allows us to bring it to the market effectively and with impact.

But there’s a problem. The same people we’re trying to engage, our clients, audiences, readers, are wired to resist change.

It’s not laziness. It’s biology. As humans, we’re creatures of habit. We like what we already know. We build mental shortcuts, emotional attachments, and safe zones around the familiar. When something appears too different, it activates a threat response. We push it away.

This is the paradox: we must innovate to attract attention, but our innovations must not be so unfamiliar that they repel the very people we want to engage.

That paradox is at the heart of Hit Makers, a remarkable book by Derek Thompson. In it, Thompson explores why some ideas, stories, products, and personalities succeed while others, often just as good, fail to connect.

His answer? Success doesn’t lie in pure novelty. It lies in the sweet spot where novelty and familiarity meet.

Thompson calls this the familiar surprise, the kind of innovation that feels new enough to excite, but familiar enough to feel safe.

And here’s where his analysis becomes useful. Thompson outlines five principles that help us strike this delicate balance also in personal branding:

1. The exposure effect

The more we see something, the more we like it. This is a well-documented psychological principle. Repetition breeds familiarity, and familiarity breeds preference. Great communicators and personal brands use this subtly: they repeat core messages, maintain recognisable elements, and create rituals or symbols that become part of the audience’s mental map. Even the most original message needs anchoring points that the public has seen before. Think of Edward R. Murrow, the American journalist portrayed by David Strathairn in the film Good Night, and Good Luck. His repeated sign-off phrase "Good night, and good luck" became a signature element of his broadcasts. It conveyed reassurance and gravitas, a ritual that audiences came to expect and trust. Repetition, used intentionally, builds authority and emotional connection.

2. The novelty paradox

We say we want the new, but only in small doses. Our brains crave surprise, but only if it is wrapped in a structure we already understand. This explains why many bestsellers are genre fiction, why pop songs use familiar chord progressions, and why new ideas spread faster when they are framed within cultural references people already know. For personal brands, it means showing up with a recognisable tone, format or aesthetic, even when pushing fresh content or ideas. This is something the late Blake Snyder understood very well. In his influential screenwriting guide Save the Cat!, Snyder explains that in Hollywood, new scripts are rarely pitched as completely original. Instead, they are introduced in relation to previous blockbusters or framed within a known genre. He went as far as identifying ten fundamental genres and advised aspiring screenwriters to stick to them. Audiences, he argued, want to know what kind of emotional journey they are about to take, and only then are they open to surprises along the way.

3. Processing fluency

We like what we can easily understand. Thompson shows that fluency, how easily we process something, impacts whether we trust it, remember it, and ultimately accept it. That’s why overly complex messages often fail. Strategic narratives must use clear language, familiar metaphors, and structures that help the audience connect the dots. If it takes too much effort to decode your message, people will simply ignore it. This is where categorisation plays a crucial role. Eleanor Rosch, a pioneer in cognitive psychology, demonstrated that we rely on categories to simplify how we perceive and make sense of the world. Her principles of categorisation explain that we do not treat all members of a category as equal, but we form 'prototypes': central examples that represent the most typical instance of a category (a chair, fruit, a rocket: we have basic ideas of these categories that we use to understand their varying manifestations). These prototypes make it easier for us to recognise, classify, and relate to information. In the context of storytelling for personal branding, using recognisable categories and prototypes helps the audience grasp who you are and what you offer with minimal cognitive effort.

4. The exposure advantage

It’s not just what you say, it’s how often, where, and with what reach. The most successful ideas often win not because they are better, but because they are seen more. Thompson reminds us that distribution matters as much as innovation. If your novel idea doesn’t show up in the right spaces, with enough frequency and credibility, it won’t stick. Politicians understand this deeply. During election periods, they relentlessly seek visibility across all available channels, knowing that repetition and ubiquity are key to staying present in the minds of voters. Visibility, placement, and timing are essential components of any narrative strategy.

5. The power of cultural nostalgia

Audiences love what reminds them of something they already love. Thompson shows how hit songs sample old ones, how fashion revives styles from past decades, and how marketing plays with collective memory. Nostalgia is not about looking backward, it’s about creating emotional anchors. When crafting your story, don’t be afraid to echo structures, tones, or visuals that people already associate with meaning. The familiarity creates an emotional bridge to the new.

The implications for personal branding are profound. If you want your message to resonate, if you want to lead change, you can’t rely on novelty alone. You need to guide your audience step by step, offering enough familiarity to comfort them, and enough surprise to excite them.