The Invisible Gorilla in Your Content: Stop training your audience to ignore you

Imagine this:

You spend weeks crafting the perfect campaign message.

It’s clever.

It’s insightful.

It’s exactly what your audience needs to hear.

You launch it…And nothing.

It’s not that your idea wasn’t good. It’s that no one saw it.

Ever heard of the Invisible Gorilla experiment?

Back in 1999, psychologists Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons created one of psychology's most famous experiments to demonstrate that our minds don't work the way we think they do.

They showed participants a short video of students passing a basketball and asked them to count the passes made by the team wearing white t-shirts.

Try it:

Did you spot it?

Midway through, a person in a gorilla suit walked into the scene, thumped their chest, and walked away.

But half of the participants never saw the gorilla.

Their attention was locked on something else - counting passes.

So their brains filtered everything else out—even something that should be impossible to miss, like a gorilla in plain sight.

What This Means for Your Communication

This isn’t just a quirky psychology story.

It’s a mirror for how we write, design, and share messages at work.

Because the same thing happens in corporate communication every single day.

Too often, we assume that dropping a brilliant line or insight in our corporate communication is enough to make it land.

It’s not.

Because if the surrounding context is dull, cluttered, or distracting, people won’t notice your brilliant idea.

Modern B2B Examples of Invisible Gorillas

We all do it:

🦍 You have an amazing customer transformation story, but it’s buried in a 30-page PDF with stock photos, dense paragraphs = invisible gorilla.

🦍The killer stat that proves your solution cuts costs in half. But it’s slide 37 of a 60-slide deck = invisible gorilla.

🦍 Leadership announces a bold new direction in an internal memo but the subject line says “Operational Update Q2.”  = invisible gorilla

🦍 Product descriptions that should show a breakthrough, but it's surrounded by 40 complex features = invisible gorilla.

🦍 You’ve got a bold differentiator but your web copy is full of industry jargon and buzzwords = invisible gorilla.

When our audiences' brains are wired to filter out the noise, the question to start your communication strategy isn’t just “How do we make this message amazing?”

It should also be: “How do we design the environment so people can actually see it?”

How to Train Your audience to see the Gorilla

People don’t just “see” what’s there.

They see what their brains are primed to notice.

Here’s how you can do it yourself or ask me to design your message to stand out instead of vanish:

1. Clear framing:

   Lead with the big idea. Don’t bury it in the middle.

   Your content should tell them where to look before they start scanning.

   Put your boldest point up front, in the subject line, in the headline, in the opener.

Don't do this:

A whitepaper that opens with three pages of “market context” before revealing the killer insight:

Try this instead:

Put your big insight up front and center.

For example:

• Subject line: “How we cut onboarding time by 40%”

• First slide: “One change saved us 500 hours per quarter”

• Blog opener: “Your onboarding process is costing you 3x more than it should. Here’s why.”

  
  

Your audience now knows what to look for — the gorilla is in plain sight.

2. Anchor in the Familiar:

   Tie your message to something people already care about: their daily frustrations, common fears, goals, or even industry inside jokes.

People don’t process content in a vacuum. They pay attention to what they can relate to: Anchoring in the familiar can make your content feel personalised.

Don't do this:

“We optimise synergies across multi-stakeholder environments…” Nobody talks like this.

Try this instead:

• Sales email: “Ever spend 6 hours in a meeting only to leave with nothing decided? That’s what most teams do with their project software.”

• Internal comms: “If you’ve ever rolled your eyes at another 50-slide strategy deck… this new approach is for you.”

• Website copy: “Yes, you can stop babysitting spreadsheets at midnight.”

3. Set Emotional cues:

   Our brains pay extra attention to things that stir emotions, Surprise, urgency, and curiosity are your content's natural highlighters.

Don't do this

“Quarterly revenue increased by 3%.”

 Try this instead:

• Curiosity: “One unexpected factor drove 80% of our revenue growth last quarter.”

• Urgency: “Every day you delay, you’re losing $500 in wasted effort.”

• Surprise: “Most teams think X is the problem. Turns out, it’s actually Y.”

4. Design Attention rhythm:

   Design your communication for readability.

   The human brain looks for contrast and patterns.

   Break up walls of text into digestible beats: headlines, bullet points, visuals, vary pace, and create moments of pause..

   Contrast makes the gorilla visible.

Don't do this:

A 1,000-word internal email that’s just a single block of text.

Try this instead:

• Use headlines to signal shifts in ideas.

• Use bullet points to surface lists or steps.

• Add visuals like charts, icons, or even bolded stats.

• Write short sentences next to longer ones — the change in pace wakes the brain up.

For example:

❌ “Our new platform improves efficiency, enhances collaboration, and reduces costs for enterprises.”

✅Here’s what changes with the new platform:

• Projects run 30% faster.

• Teams stop chasing each other for updates.

• You save roughly $500K per year.

The Takeaway: People’s brains filter out

Dropping brilliance into your content isn’t enough when the surroundings are boring, distracting, and generic.

Your job as a communicator is to train your audience to see you, because it isn’t enough to just have a gorilla—you need to make sure people can’t miss it.

If your messaging is getting stuck, I can help you build one that creates movement.

🎯 Hi, I'm Vivien,

I work with Heads of Communications, CMOs, and B2B internal and external comms teams who desperately need messaging that:

• Sticks

• Travels accurately

• Gets repeated and remembered

• Ticks internal alignment

• Creates momentum in buying committees

• And moves decisions forward

  
  

See how I can help you