The Power of Three
A friend of mine is always reminding people of the power of the three-word tag as part of business branding. In fact he’s positively evangelical about it. He says we’re all pre-wired to remember things in threes. Any business that doesn’t use a three-word slogan is – in his view – missing a trick.
A quick look up and down the high street – or at least the out-of-town retail park – shows he may have a point. Test your friends with these:
- every little helps
- have a break
- Beanz Meanz Heinz (a giveaway that one)
- never knowingly undersold
They don’t even have to be in English – Vorsprung durch Technik anyone?
Sainsburys has the rebellious ‘try something new today’, and therefore (according to my friend) deserves everything it has coming to it. Though it redeems itself slightly by having a premium line called ‘taste the difference’.
I read in today’s Media Guardian that ads are having to get cleverer.
It’s something to do with the audiences getting more sophisticated, completely contradicting the argument for dumbing down.
I wonder where this leaves the power of the three-word tag or slogan. My suspicion is that it will never go away. Threesomes are so powerful they have been used for centuries, so I can’t see them disappearing just because Asda decides to spot patting its bum.
Winston Churchill used the power of three all the time in his speeches. Even when he didn’t that’s the way we remember him. Blood, sweat and tears was actually ‘blood, toil, tears and sweat’.
The earliest example I can think of is Julius Ceasar’s ‘Veni. Vidi. Vici.’ (I came. I saw. I conquered.) After all, he could just as easily have said ‘I came. I conquered’. Just ‘I conquered’ would have conveyed the meaning, especially to the poor sods he’d just slaughtered.
And he was a man who understood the importance of branding.
Posted on 16 April 2007
