Kicking K: the impact of alliteration
I was seventeen years old, sat in an eighteenth century manor house and receiving the sort of English lesson normally reserved for twelve year olds.
The first day of an A-level English literature course ought to have been a baptism of fire. At least the way they used to teach it. Shakespeare was a given but Pope, Eliot (T S not George) and Bronte would demand close reading and F R Leavis would show us how.
That wasn’t how it started.
After a brief appraisal of literary terms our teacher decided to start again. This time at the very beginning.
Sweeping us through basic rhyme structures; iambic pentameter, sonnets, even limericks, it was clear he was aghast at the lack of basic knowledge. How could we be expected to comment on the beauty of Tennyson if we couldn’t hear the meter? How could we understand the literary wit of Pope if we didn’t know bathos from pathos?
So for a week, my English teacher treated us like children.
As someone who has never needed an excuse to keep things simple knows, being treated like a child wasn’t such a bad way to start the year.
Covering Topsy and Tim may not have been on the hastilly rearranged syllabus but I remember discussing how to rhyme swan with stone. Pop quiz: anyone know which poet did this and why?
Then we began on onamatopoeia, to the joy of children everywhere. As insulted as those who understood these terms ought to have felt, the simple pleasure of a refresher course as given by an inspiring A level teacher was hard to beat. I still maintain that going back to basics is essential. Certainly it could help many a marketing ‘guru’ escape from their own overwrought terminology.
Then the teacher said something that could have led me to the side of Hughes and Heaney. Instead it led me to David Abbott, Tony Cox and a school of copywriting brilliance far older and more brilliant than me.
What, he asked, can’t you do to a Knirps?
Straightaway I sat up.
“K-nacker” I said. Just like that: k-nacker.
The most effective way to introduce alliteration was through an advert. It stuck in the mind.
Because the most effective way to make a brand of umbrellas stick in the mind was through alliteration.
Advertising is like talking to children.
Make it kick, make it stick.
That's great.
How the line came about was me explaining what a mnemonic was to Paul Grubb.
(A young airbrush artist from Sheffield who wanted to be a copywriter.)
I wanted him to write a commercial so I said the brief was apparently, 'stuctural integrity'.
Grubby said, what's that?
I said, “It'll bend but it won't break.
So we need a strapline that says that, but we have to lock it into our brand.
No one knows the names of umbrellas, so we need a mnemonic.”
Grubby said, what's a mnemonic?
I said a catchy device to make the name stick in your memory, a verbal gimmick.
Grubby said, like what?
I said, I dunno something like….er….you can break a brolley but you can't k-nacker a K-nirps. Do something like that.
Grubby said, what's wrong with that. I like that?
I said, you can't do that, it's swearing.
Then I thought, hang on, maybe he's right.
Great to hear you still remember it 20 years later.
You've made my day
Well that's amazing – I didn't realise you had written that. It's a great line. You have to be proud of work like that.