With just three little words you can paint some powerful pictures. “She said yes” brings us a feeling of joy, an un-squashable smile and a shiny diamond ring; “We did everything” invokes doctors’ scrubs, a lonely waiting room and many tears to come; ‘Bus Replacement Service’ induces dread.
Advertisers are well attuned to this power. In the UK we grew up knowing to cross a road we must ‘Stop, Look, Listen.’ Aussies grew up having to ‘Slip, Slop, Slap’, and across the world most of us know that Nike wants us to ‘Just Do It’. Great speeches are full of three-word statements, whether it’s Obama with his ‘Yes we can’ or Shakespeare’s ‘Friends, Romans, Countrymen,’ These phrases that shape our culture are powerful for a purpose. Our brains have a craving for rhythm, simplicity and patterns. Tree, the smallest number required to make a pattern, is easy to digest, making us more likely to remember it.