How to Make a Memorable Mnemonic Like McDonald’s “Ba Da Da Da Bah”
Let your audience “complete the circle.”
We imagine patterns where there are none. That’s why we hear melodies in the wind and see faces in the clouds.
In John Maeda’s, Laws of Simplicity, he explains that “Gestalt psychologists believe there are a variety of mechanisms inside the brain that lend to pattern-forming.” For instance, if I were to draw three-quarters of a circle with one pen stroke, your mind would complete the circle and imagine it closed. And the same mechanism influences the way we hear. For example, can you finish this tagline? “The best part of waking up…”
Our ability to complete the circle is, in part, based on our ability to process large pieces of information into smaller memory chunks. Research into Memory Chunking by Bell Labs and Professor George Miller led directly to the phone format we use today, NNN-NNNN. The dash breaks the numbers into smaller chunks of three or four units that are easier to remember.
Call and response
Companies like Folgers, McDonald’s, and Farmers Insurance take advantage of this pattern forming ability of ours by composing mnemonics in two parts and attaching a melody to them. And since exposure to their sound is consistent and frequent across their advertising, they only need to play the first half of their mnemonic because their audience will finish it for them— “Folgers in your cup.”
“We remember best that which asks something of us.” —Eli Altman, author of Don’t Call It That
A memorable interruption
The second way to engage your audience’s pattern forming abilities is by introducing a question — e.g, “What would you do (Oo-oo), for a Klondike bar?” When we’re asked a question our social training causes us to respond. This is known as the Zeigarnik effect that says we remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks.
Participation is a pleasure
Not only are interrupted or incomplete tasks better remembered, but they can bring us pleasure by encouraging us to participate. Elizabeth Margulis, the director of the Music Cognition Lab at the University of Arkansas and author of On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind, explains that by knowing what is about to happen next, we begin to imagine it before it occurs. “This kind of listening ahead builds a sense of participation with the music.” And this act of participation taps into our human desire for shared experience.
If you’re designing a mnemonic, break it into chunks or pose a question. You increase the likelihood that your message will stick with your audience. What do you have to lose?
Jared Kinsler is a founding member of Soundnoodle, a made-to-order music agency in Austin, Texas. If you’re interested in music design, consider following the Sound Advice publication to receive updates. Thank you for reading 🎩👌
