speech

It is a hard and fast rule in sales and politics:

The more you repeat a phrase or idea, the less attached to reality it becomes.

This doesn’t mean that the phrase or idea can’t be true, only that a clever salesman or politician can coin it to their advantage by associating it with whatever “truth” they wish to create. When you repeat something over and over again, all you do is remove that something from reality and prompt people’s brains to associate it with something else. Then you can either

1. Let them decide for themselves what it means, which can be dangerous (e.g. “No strings attached!” “No strings attached!” “No strings attached!” …Are you starting to wonder where the strings are? Nobody has explained how or why no strings are attached.)

2. Associate your phrase with an idea, which can be powerful (e.g. “Coke is refreshing because it’s cold and it tastes good. Don’t you want to feel refreshed? Here’s a Coke can. Looks refreshing, doesn’t it?”)

In Julius Caesar, Mark Antony uses a single description, “honorable men,” to turn the minds of the Plebeians (all five of them!) against Julius’ conspiring murderers–to whom the phrase is applied–simply by repeating it over and over. In between his repetitions, he outlines all of the curious contradictions that seem to punch holes in the conspirators’ cause against Julius, but he never directly disagrees with that cause. Rather, he allows the association between wrongful action and the phrase “honorable men” to congeal in the Plebeians’ minds, resulting in the natural conclusion, those conspirators were not honorable men. In Act III Scene 2, Antony uses the word “honorable” a total of ten times. After the eigth time, a Plebeian uses the term when he speaks out against the conspirators. Seems he caught the mind virus that Antony planted. Clever, clever Antony.

This tactic is employed by marketers and politicians around the world, skilled and unskilled alike. You can tell whether the author of the message was skilled or unskilled by your own reaction: do you question his motives because he is repeating himself too much, or do you grab a hold of his fabricated mantra, catch the mind virus, and let a new idea crawl into your brain?