The Lingering Effect of Words

Stick and Stones and the Lingering Effect of Words

The nursery rhyme stick and stones will break my bones, but words will never harm me. Is reported to have first appeared in the Christian Recorder of March 1862, a publication of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Given the audience and date of this publication it is telling that those reading it may have found some comfort in these very words, given the climate of racism in America at that time.

It is indeed a strange contradiction that nearly 150 years later I still remember this rhyme. So one could easily argue that words do have staying power and that they can as Rabbi Berg suggests have energy and traction.

Words are singularly the most powerful force available to humanity. We can choose to use this force constructively with words of encouragement, or destructively using words of despair. Words have energy and power with the ability to help, to heal, to hinder, to hurt, to harm, to humiliate and to humble. Yehuda Berg

Keep Calm and Carry On was a motivational poster produced by the British government in 1939 in preparation for the Second World War. The poster was intended to raise the morale of the British public, threatened with widely predicted mass air attacks on major cities.  Although 2.45 million copies were printed, and although the Blitz happened, the poster was never publicly displayed and was little known about until a copy was rediscovered in 2000. It has since been re-issued by a number of private companies, and has been used as the decorative theme for a range of products.

In 2000, Stuart Manley, co-owner with his wife Mary of Barter Books Ltd. in Alnwick, Northumberland, England was sorting through a box of used books bought at auction when he uncovered one of the original “Keep Calm and Carry On” posters. The couple framed it and hung it up by the cash register; and it attracted so much interest that Manley began to produce and sell copies. Other companies followed suit, and the design rapidly began to be used as the theme for a wide range of products.  Mary Manley later commented, “I didn’t want it trivialized. But of course now it’s been trivialized beyond belief.”

This trivialization is telling in that it shows how words used in one context can come to be so readily and easily applied in another. What can of course be problematic is the mere fact that its intended purpose and history can and often get lost.

Imagine if you will how another powerful phrase – work will set you free (arbeit macht frei) which began its life in a very different context, stills holds in spite of passing time and a very powerful and painful history.

“Arbeit macht frei” is a German phrase meaning work makes (you) free”. The slogan is known for having been placed over the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps during World War II, including most infamously Auschwitz,  where it was made by prisoners with metalwork skills and erected by order of the Nazis in June 1940.

The expression comes from the title of a novel by German philologist Lorenz Diefenbach, Arbeit macht frei: Erzählung von Lorenz Diefenbach (1873), in which gamblers and fraudsters find the path to virtue through labour. The phrase was also used in French (“le travail rend libre!”) by Auguste Forel, a Swiss ant scientist, neuroanatomist and psychiatrist, in his “Fourmis de la Suisse” [“Ants of Switzerland”] (1920). In 1922, the Deutsche Schulverein of Vienna, an ethnic nationalist “protective” organization of Germans within the Austrian empire, printed membership stamps with the phrase Arbeit macht frei. It was adopted in 1928 by the Weimar government as a slogan extolling the effects of their desired policy of large-scale public works programmes to end unemployment. This use of the phrase was continued by the Nazi Party when it came to power in 1933.

So then what about the economic impact of words? How do commercial ventures profit and remain in the public eye with the right selection of words/slogans. Here are some examples – see if you can name the businesses?

1. Just do it
2. You’re in good hands
3. Where’s the beef
4. Melts in your mouth not in your hands
5. Don’t leave home without it
6. It takes a licking, and keeps on ticking
7. Taste great, less filling
8. Think different
9. Let your fingers do the walking
10. Good to the last drop

Answers:

1. Nike
2. Allstate
3. Wendy’s
4. M&M’s
5. American Express
6. Timex
7. Miller Lite
8. Apple Inc
9. Yellow Pages
10. Maxwell House Coffee

Well how did you do, let me guess, 8/10, which one was hard to recall? How many of these products have you used? And was it because of the lingering ability of a string of words? Do you recall seeing it in print, perhaps on a billboard, maybe on the radio, or likely on television? More than likely is that its memorable weight is due to the fact that you would have witnessed its appearance through a variety of different media

So just what makes words linger? Is it the media, is it the grammatical arrangement of them, or perhaps is it a particular context that cajoles and persuades? In order for a series of words to have a lasting effect it would be advisable to think of the multiple contexts it could preside in……in other words, location, location, location! On what page of the newspaper should it be placed, in what magazine, where in the city should that billboard or bus stop ad be, and during which television commercial should we witness it. These choices all help to ensure a long and healthy life for any slogan.

Another important way of considering how words and phrases take on a long life is in the notion of turn of phrase; quite simply using words in an interesting and often unique way. For example the phrase, war of words – how is this different than an argument? What about a train of thought – a series of thoughts coming or brought together. When words are used in this playful and ironic way they do more than bring clever images to mind, but they allow for the flexibility of language.

Familiarity may breed resentment, it can however create a new way of thinking about old words and phrases. The Economist slogan, Great minds like a think, is like the proverbial elephant in the room, if we know the saying great minds think alike, then it becomes easy to remember this play on words making it more accessible and obvious.

In the language of aesthetics – how we look, we know that warm colours move towards us, like a hot beverage on a cold day. We also know that often, ‘less is more’ that something simply presented can maintain its presence and grasp our attention in a world of omnipresent imagery.

Consider the Smarties ad, how does the colour help or hinder this presentation? I believe the green is in fact is too cold, and perhaps the use of orange or yellow might enhance this typographic ad. Its clever use of product might be just that – clever, but not memorable.

The Wonder Bra ad however in its simplicity(less is more) and its bold and simple use of colour follows the design adage ‘ form follows function’. The beauty of this ad is that its typographic forms easily conveys how the product is used!

Inlingua the international language school’s ad easily conveys the scholastic sense of learning by opening two pages, with two words; one in English, the other in French. Here simplicity suggests that learning a new language might not be as difficult as we think.

Adding simple symbolic cultural clues, as in the billboard ad for China Eastern Airlines, the viewer puts these easy puzzles pieces together to remember, what it is the advertiser is trying to promote. If seen enough times…..opening a fortune cookie, might have different symbolic recognition.

As discussed before, by playing with common terminology and adding another unique layer, the presenter(advertiser) has both won the battle and the war. In the Absolut ad All that glitters is gold, the brain is provoked to remember the phrase in a new but glittering visual way.

These design choices that we have discussed – are really just the tip of the iceberg

As blogger Rick Baker suggests – We observe people’s actions. We observe their vocal actions, their body language, and the wide variety of their other physical actions. Yes, to various degrees we have hunches – intuitions – which allow us to sense things beyond their actions. Regardless, for the most part, our perceptions of people are based on our observations of their actions. And, that’s like looking at the tip of an iceberg.

I think this is equally true of good advertising, whether it be a print ad, online, a billboard or bustop ad; it must be active rather than passive conveying a wide range of ideas, so simply presented that we do not recognize the visual strategy, but remember the product, idea, or event being presented.

By consulting with visual strategists, whether it might be your local team at FASTSIGNS or a big corporate marketer, one should always try to work towards a presentation that has a lasting and lingering effect.