Just as people often have a tendency to want to blurt out exactly what’s on their mind, so do companies seem to want to tell you, in their slogans and straplines, exactly what they want you to know about them, and in the least poetic, least inspiring, most pedestrian language possible. The unfortunate result of this bad habit is a surfeit of boring offical utterances like “The world’s local bank” (which at least has an idea in it) or “The simple plumbing solution” (simple and solution are always in extremely heavy rotation; I wish I held shares in those two words!).

The missing ingredient, in a word, is musicality — just, quite plainly, the way the words sound. Rhythm. Cadence. Tone. Timbre. Vibrato. Phrasing. When it comes to a slogan, these things matter not as much but MORE than the content. They are the forgotten criteria of sloganeering.

In his book You Are The Message, Roger Ailes gives an anecdote about Mark Twain which illustrates my point. Twain, trying to get dressed one morning, pulled out three shirts in a row that were short a button:

Twain flew into a rage, swearing like a stevedore. When he was through, he was startled to see his wife standing at the door, fuming in her own way at his intemperance. Carefully, slowly, and without a trace of emotion, she repeated every obscene word just uttered by her husband….When she was through, she stood impassive and silent, hoping her display would shame Twain. Instead, with a twinkle in his eye, he puffed his cigar and said, “My dear, you have the words, but you don’t have the music.”

There you go: it’s what you say and the way that you say it.