The addictive figure that sold us all on junk food

Advertisers rely on the paean, a candy-coated, highly addictive war cry. You can use it to stop eating junk!

The orators in ancient Greece and Rome noticed that the rhythm of an expression could bend the souls of an entire audience. Marcus Tullius Cicero was especially fond of the most powerful rhythm of all: the paean.

We think of the paean today as a song or poem that praises, gives thanks, or celebrates a triumph. But it first meant words that healed. The original Paean was a Greek god who served as official physician to the immortals on Olympus. He became associated with language that warded off evil or injury. Soldiers would chant paeans as they went into battle, asking Apollo or Thanatos, the god of death, to spare them.

For maximum appeal, a paean had to be expressed with prescribed rhythms. Cicero wrote that one kind of paean began with a long syllable followed by three short ones: Stop doing it. Get on to it. Press down on it. Another kind consisted of several short syllables: Beaten them all; clatter of hooves. Combine the two and you have a convincing spell. Given its ability to stir the blood, soldiers began using the paean as a rhythmic chant to gin up their courage as they marched into battle. They called this particular war-cry paean a slogan.

While the rhythms in Greek and Latin seem foreign to us, our brains have changed little over the centuries. Cicero called the paean a “heroic” rhythm, quoting Homer’s description of Apollo: Golden-haired far-shooter, son of Zeus. You could almost imagine classics majors chanting that in a basketball game.

We can still find English versions of the slogan-style paean in the nerdy college football chant, Repel them, repel them, make them relinquish the ball! Activists are especially fond of the protest paean: What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now! And you can hear it in the empowering song: Hit the road, Jack/ Don’t you come back no mo’!

Neuroscientists have yet to study the paean’s effects on our brain. But there must be a reason that the device pops up over the millennia in languages around the world. The paean seems to make an excellent command: Hey you. Pay attention! In some settings it can come across as noble. And in our own capitalist economy, paeans worked their magic to foster whole industries, including the vast snack-food market.

Lay’s potato chips: Betcha can’t eat just one.

This classic paean starts with three short syllables, then applies the brakes with three long ones. The hugely successful slogan seems creepy today given America’s addiction crisis, not to mention the snack food industry’s deliberate approach to making its products addictive. With its Lay’s potato chips, Frito-Lay actually bragged about it. Lay’s, the gateway snack! One chip will get you hooked!

When Pringles came along, its agency’s copywriters saw a good thing in the competition. They came up with Once you pop, you can’t stop. This rhyming paean—three short syllables, then another three—tells consumers that popping the vacuum sealed lid of a Pringle’s can opens a delightful Pandora’s box of addiction. Do these slogans make all that much sense? No matter. Lay’s sold four billion dollars’ worth of unstoppable chips in 2023. Pringles took in one and a third billion. Pure magic.

Hershey: Sometimes you feel like a nut. Sometimes you don’t.

Oh, how I love this one. Besides its paeanesque rhythm, the slogan forms an antithesis: Sometimes this, sometimes the opposite. The colloquial grammar skips the having in “Sometimes you feel like having a nut” and then sets up a pun that triggers cognitive ease. Hey, you’re a nut sometimes. Aren’t we all? The jingle sold millions of Almond Joy and Mounds candy bars, implying that you might want to keep both kinds handy for when you feel like a nut and when your mood is more…mound.

M&M candies: Melts in your mouth, not in your hands.

Note how those two phrases have an identical length, composing the same rhythm as Beethoven’s Fifth: Bum-bum-bum-bahmmmm, bum-bum-bum-bahmmmm. While technically not a Ciceronian paean, the slogan seems to carry the same charm-power. Imagine how a food scientist might have described the tiny confection’s benefits: The hard protective layer has a melting point twenty point six degrees above room temperature, enabling the consumer to handle the product without the discomfiture of liquefaction.

The M&M slogan, a version of which first got crafted in 1949, begins each phrase with a crisp “T” word (melts, not) and ends with a slower word (mouth, hands). The two parts are isometric, forming what the Greeks called an isocolon, balancing one phrase with another. The device allows the speaker to weigh things side by side. In this case the advertiser makes a contrast—not-this-but-that—creating an antithesis. The figure makes a bite-sized summary of product benefits that melt in the brain and ooze a preference for M&Ms over messier sweets. All of which shows how much persuasive goodness a copywriter can pack inside a glossy figurative coating.

The New York Times: All the News That’s Fit to Print.

Another paean. It also composes an isocolon in two balanced phrases: “All the news,“ then a “That’s” for a fulcrum, followed by “fit to print.” This worthy expression has stuck around since 1896, when it won a contest held by owner Adolph Ochs. The slogan beat some alliterative competition, including “News, Not Nausea” and “Fresh Facts Free From Filth.” There’s a lesson here. Mediocre writers often turn to alliteration when they feel desperate for a bit of wit. But alliteration is one of the weaker figurative elements. It can help you remember a concept, but not to believe in it. Rhythm and repetition have a more unconscious sticky effect. “All the News That’s Fit to Print” arguably affected the company’s entire ethos by implying that the Times was the newspaper of record, the first draft of history, encompassing all that was happening—minus the nauseating and filthy.

Nike: Just Do It.

The three short words employ sharp consonants, coming down hard on the action verb. It cuts Cicero’s first kind of paean by skipping the last syllable; he probably would have preferred “Just Conquer It.” But the slogan follows Aristotle’s advice to make the first step of any enterprise seem easy. The “Just” is a trigger. No thinking. Take the plunge. Marketing historians point to a grim origin for this slogan. Legendary ad executive Dan Wieden got the idea from the murderer Gary Gilmore, who in 1977 became the first person in ten years to be executed in this country. Gilmore faced his firing squad and said, “Let’s do it.” And so this murderous drifter coined three of the most famous last words. Wieden used it to craft the greatest command in advertising history.

Why spend all this time on the paean? And how on earth could you and I come up with the sort of war cry that earns brilliant marketing minds the big money? Granted, the best slogans are not easy to make. But, combined with repetition, they can inspire a team or sell whatever addictive product you have. In my upcoming book, I show how figures like the paean can lubricate our habits and enforce belief in our goals. If a few rhythmic words can conjure up whole junk-food empires, think what they can do for you and me.

One way to craft your own paean is to imitate an existing one. Take the M&M’s slogan with its Beethoven beat. The short-short-short-long rhythm can serve as a reminder motto to keep you focused. And its antithetical isocolon—two equal clauses that express opposite things—can correct your form in any physical activity. I use this paean to adjust my terrible posture: Head on a swivel, not in my lap. For some reason (my unhealthy profession most likely), I look down when I walk or run, and my head tends to droop lower as I go. The slogan puts my head in the right place, both figuratively and literally. The antithesis—do this, not that—can be annoying. But the rhythm lets you bounce past the command and right into action.

The more traditional paean (Golden-haired far-shooter, son of Zeus) can push you past your natural inertia, especially first thing in the morning. Isaac Newton might as well have been thinking of my state of mind in the still-dark morning when he wrote his First Law of Thermodynamics. An object at rest (me) tends to stay at rest (in bed). These days, habit alone gets me up. But a good old-fashioned paean can jumpstart the habit: Just one foot, on the floor, then stand up! No, the paean does not have to inspire. It need not be pretty. Nor—and this is the beauty of it—does it even have to make much sense.

A paean can also help improve an eating habit. First the nutrition, then the junk. Note how this follows more than the rhythm of the get-out-of-bed paean. The “then” sets up a sequence that, combined with the rhythm, begins to seem inevitable after you repeat it a few thousand times.

If you feel up to it, try ginning up some paean-esque slogans of your own. Use the Beethoven beat, short-short-short long. Maybe craft an antithesis (Do it like a hero, not like a chump!). Think about a habit you struggle to stick with, and use a paean as a kind of motivational glue. Or craft a paean that focuses on the consequences. Booze makes me miserable, think of the mor-ning! And don’t try to make your slogan poetic or even literate. It will sound natural once you develop a habit of repeating it. Say it aloud in a singsong voice or sing it silently in your head. Then give it time. Let the charm work its magic.

You’re beginning to think rhetorically.