I wonder if you caught an entertaining piece in the press about the ‘power of three’? It is well worth some thought if you need to write persuasive copy for your business or if you’re doing some public speaking.
Writers have long deployed ‘threes’ to build up an argument: think about how the three adjectives ‘tall, dark and handsome’ work much better than ‘tall and handsome.’
Likewise, ‘vini vidi vici’ (I came, I saw, I conquered and about as much Latin as many of us have ever conquered) rolls off the tongue.
How to sell Rice Krispies
In fact research from UCLA, California, suggests that to get what we want, we naturally write/speak in threes. Kellogg’s copywriters twigged this generations ago when they came up with ‘Snap, Crackle and Pop’ to sell Rice Krispies.
Or what about the legendary Mars Bar slogan: ‘Work, Rest and Play’? Note how ‘Vorsprung Durch Technik’ is three words, suitably mysterious and clever sounding, with that hint of futurist technological promise.
I bet you can easily think of more examples. Take the Olympic motto, ‘faster, higher, stronger.’
As we’ve seen in the examples above, the magic trio idea works for adjectives (the Olympics), nouns (Rice Krispies) and verbs (Mars.)
The best things in life are three
As a piece in the London daily Metro notes, the best things in life are three and we have grown up with the idea: The Three Blind Mice. The Three Little Pigs. Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The Three Musketeers. The Bee Gees (though I might take issue with that last one.)
I’ve heard comedian and consummate wordsmith Stephen Fry talk about how threes have long been used as a powerful rhetorical device in politics too. Speechwriters are akin to conjurors in this.
Learning from Sherlock
Think of it like a trick, unfurled in three stages:
• the set-up
• the follow-through
• the prestige = the moment of revelation
Derren Brown, the movie Now You See Me and indeed the latest series of Sherlock (I can’t wait to find out how Moriarty did it) can give us some masterclasses here.
Copywriters’ tip: less is more
What is fascinating about the UCLA research is that in underlines a principle that I always tell my clients: less is more. It is tempting when writing about your business to include everything and the kitchen sink (I’m using a cliché here for effect). You want to make sure your clients have absolutely every possible reason to hire you or buy from you, but you may instead end up boring or confusing them, losing your key message in a welter of blether.
The UCLA team found that too many ‘persuaders’ are actually off-putting. So a dating ad claiming to be ‘kind, cute and funny’ was more appealing that one claiming to be ‘kind, cute, funny and intelligent.’ The second version just went one adjective too far.
Get your message across
I hope my thoughts on threes will be a help next time you have to get your message across on paper or online. I hope they will reduce your ‘blood, sweat and tears.’
And if you would like a professional hand with copywriting, do give me a call. Make it today!
Written by Lesley Hussell
