What’s Weird and Wonderful?

Coca-Cola. I think we can all agree that’s a pretty good brand name, right?Ever think about why?It’s not just the billions of ad bucks behind it. It’s all the K sounds — three of them in quick, cute, clever succession — not to mention two soft A’s. In other words, Coca-Cola is a name bubbling over with mnemonic devices: alliteration and rhyme.The two devices may seem kind of … hokey. An ad guy I once talked to about this sniffed that “from the creative standpoint, it’s not a real accomplishment to come up with something like that, to be proud of.”Oh yes. What creative director could possibly be proud of Tony the Tiger? Hamburger Helper? PayPal? TikTok? Or how about that silly little chain Jamba Juice? Or Dunkin’ Donuts, which competes with Krispy Kreme?The fact is, alliteration is an amazing memory aid, possibly the oldest on earth. Beowulf was written alliteratively sometime around the year 1000 — “Beowulf bode in the burg of the Scyldings” — before poetry even rhymed. Yep, alliteration came first. And now comes new evidence of just how powerful alliteration is.A psychology professor at Macalester College, Brooke Lea, has studied how the mind retrieves words and ideas. He explained, “Our cognitive system is sensitive to overlapping sounds.” He and his colleagues even came up with a way to study that “sound sensitivity.” They buried a simple word, “barn,” in a free-verse poem. Several lines later, the experiment participants were asked whether “barn” was part of the poem.The ones who’d read it in a sentence filled with alliteration — “all along the way-winding road, wary whispers of the old barn” — were much quicker at remembering it if they were asked about it right after they read another phrase with lots of W’s. (“The wooden willowy warp of wildcarrot leaf.” Hey — no one said it was great poetry.)What happened is that one sound reminded them of another and brought the whole thought right back. In other words: a simple, familiar sound worked recall magic.So why doesn’t alliteration get more respect? Possibly because people still tend to associate it with childish things, thanks to all those nursery rhymes: Wee Willie Winkle, Baa Baa Black Sheep, She Sells Seashells. Yet the fact that those ditties have lasted centuries does not prove alliteration is for tots. It proves how universal and catchy it is — and how long it stays in the brain. (Quick, how many peppers did Peter Piper pick?)Nowadays we’ve got all these great new ways of communicating — podcasts, Reels, YouTube shorts. But we’ve forgotten how simply humans are wired. Good grief — think of M&M’S. B&Bs. Lululemon. TED Talks.And rhyme works the same way alliteration does, making a name or idea easier to remember. Lea says there’s even more concrete evidence of rhyme’s power. Students given a list of unfamiliar aphorisms that rhymed (“Woes unite foes”) rated them far more “true” than students given sayings that didn’t rhyme (“Troubles unite foes”). That’s because rhymes go down easy, said the professor. “And stuff that’s easy to process, you think is right,” he said. My personal bugaboo is “stranger danger.” I wonder if we’d be as afraid of each other if that phrase was a little less catchy.The point is, if you want someone to remember your idea, name or product — or believe in your cause — the oldest tricks in the book are still there, powerful as ever.Got it, genius? Good to go?Then see you later, alliterator.Creators.com

What’s Weird and Wonderful?

What’s Weird and Wonderful?

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