Topical Guide 444
Mark Dorset
Persuasion: Slogans and Sloganeering
Reservations Recommended, Chapter 2:
Matthew stops here, thanks to some residual self-censorship, but at home, when he had read the article, when he was alone, he ran on with the impressive logic of his idea. He wondered why no one had seen this logic before. Why hadn’t anyone understood that if the poor had money, everyone would be better off? He began running that over in his mind, making a slogan out of it.
If the poor had money, everybody would have money.
If the poor prosper, everyone prospers.
If you want to get rich, invest in the poor.
Lift the least and you lift yourself.
If the poor were rich, you would be, too.
Ivan De Luce, “From ‘Got milk?’ to ‘Where’s the beef?’, here are 15 of the best slogans and taglines in advertising history,” Business Insider, July 18, 2019
“Think small.”
“The pause that refreshes”
“Good to the last drop”
“Where’s the beef?”
“M’m! M’m! Good!”
“Sometimes you feel like a nut. Sometimes you don’t.”
“The best a man can get.”
“The breakfast of champions”
“A diamond is forever”
“Got milk?”
“Just do it”
“The Ultimate Driving Machine”
“They’re gr-r-reat!”
“Fly the friendly skies”
“All the News That’s Fit to Print”
A slogan is a memorable motto or phrase used in a clan, political, commercial, religious, and other context as a repetitive expression of an idea or purpose, with the goal of persuading members of the public or a more defined target group. … A slogan usually has the attributes of being memorable, very concise and appealing to the audience. … Slogans vary from the written and the visual to the chanted and the vulgar. Their simple rhetorical nature usually leaves little room for detail. … “Sloganeering” is a mostly derogatory term for activity which degrades discourse to the level of slogans.
The Ministry of Truth—Minitrue, in Newspeak—was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, 300 metres into the air. From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
See also: Marketing: Persuasion TG 415; Manipulation and Persuasion TG 138
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