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Will They Get Your Cultural Allusions?

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“Water, Water Everywhere” is the title of an article in the AARP bulletin. The subtitle reads “Supermarket aisles are flooded with all different types of bottled water.  Are any of them worth the money?” Author Andrea Wickstrom makes the case for eschewing the bottles and drinking tap water, citing growing evidence that microplastics negatively affect human health…

Cultural allusions

An allusion is a figure of speech that makes reference to a place, person, either an actual one or one found in literature. The expression “Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink” is an example of the latter – it comes from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 

There are three possible reasons, I explain at Say It For You, for using cultural allusions in content marketing:

  1. To get readers thinking about a product or service in a new way
  2. To get a point across without going into a lengthy explanation
  3. To cement a bond between the reader and the company or professional practitioner, based on shared experiences and knowledge

The problem is – will they get it???

Readers who do not happen to recognize the underlying story or reference point (in this case the Coleridge poem) are going to be puzzled rather than enlightened.  That means that we, as content writers, must gauge our readers’ level of education.  If we miscalculate their ability to recognize the allusion, the danger is that they’ll find our content frustrating rather than illuminating. (Due to the age group receiving the AARP Bulletin, the editors have made certain assumptions about their readers’ education level.)

 

Huh-Oh Titles

The “Water, Water Everywhere” title is an example of what I call the “Huh? Oh!” tactic. The first part (the “Huh?”) is there to startle and capture attention. The second part (the “Oh!”) explains what the text is actually going to be about. (In online marketing, that second part matches the content of the post with the terms consumers typed into their search bar.)

While, as content marketers, we need to know as much as possible about our target readers, you don’t have to qualify for membership in AARP to realize that there are titles of many types to attract readers of many ages and types!

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Do Your Titles Encourage Ear Reading?

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“We actually we read with our ears and our eyes, so we need to activate multiple senses,” the Integrated Learning Academy points out. In fact, as Psychology Today explains, “we don’t experience our senses individually. Rather, our brain meshes with our vision and hearing to create our conscious experience of the world.”

In reading through my copy of Kiplinger Personal Finance May 2025 issue this morning, I saw many illustrations of the power titles have to “catch” readers’ attention through sound.

In alliteration, a consonant sound is repeated. The words don’t need to be directly next to each other in the sentence, but when you read the line aloud, you “hear” the repetition. Three examples I noticed right away in the magazine were:

  • Staff Cutbacks reach the Social Security Administration
  • Walmart Woos Wealthy Shoppers
  • A Broad Bet on Innovation

The repeated sound can be a vowel, rather than a consonant; the term for that is “assonance”. In both these Kiplinger titles, the repeated sound is the “a”.

  • A Cap on Overdraft Fees Faces the Axe
  • Get Back on Track After a Divorce

Of course, I didn’t need to peruse that financial news publication in order to find alliteration and assonance – they’re everywhere. The title of an advertisement for children’s clothing at the Lunch Money Boutique, “Elevating Style and Celebrating Childhood” catches our ear with those “short E” and “long A” sounds. Many popular consumer product names are alliterative (think Coca-Cola, Dunkin’ Donuts, PayPal).

As content creators, we teach at Say It For You, we can take advantage of the sounds of words to make titles of posts and articles more “catchy”, tempting readers to use both their ears and their eyes to engage with our messages.

Take time to create titles that encourage ear reading!

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Content Statement Ceilings

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“Look up to be wowed!”, a piece in Haven Magazine about “statement ceilings” begins. After all, plain, flat ceilings are just…well, passé, and, for a home that inspires “oohs” and “aahs”, you need a cool structural element. Added height, uplighting, combining different materials, can all enhance your dining room, great room, or entryway, home buiilders explain. .

There’s a parallel here for content marketers: Grabbing readers’ attention is one of the most important lessons, as Marcia Hoeck of copyblogger emphasizes, because “no matter how brilliant your ideas are, you can’t offer them to your prospect unless you’ve made her look in your direction first.” What’s more, Hoeck adds, human focus is limited; the brain has to focus on specific information, choosing which input will enter and stay. We can’t succeed if our messages don’t break through the clutter to get people’s attention, Chip and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick, agree.

As content writers, our “ceilings” are obviously article titles. Are there certain words in blog post titles that are more likely “win attention? In fact, curiosity-stimulating words (or set of words) need not be the keyword phrases used to “win search”. Some examples out of one recent issue of a popular news magazine:

  • Finding….
  • How…
  • Could…
  • A new….
  • Things just….
  • The best…
  • The impossible…
  • The hidden…
  • Is it O.K if….
  • Don’t…
  • Who is….

What these subtle attention-commanding phrases do, I explain at Say It For You coaching sessions, is set expectations. The title words “finding”, “the hidden”, and the “impossible” might engender the expectation of discovery or of gaining a new insight. “Things just”, “could”, and “the impossible” hint at an opinion piece, even a rant. “The best”, “how”, and “don’t” imply that valuable advice and cautions will follow. “How” hints that information about the way a certain process works is to follow, while “Is it O.K if” suggests readers might be asked to weigh in on an ethical dilemma of some sort.

Making space both beautiful and functional is the challenge facing home builders. And, in a way, the challenge in blog content writing is  not only capturing readers’ attention, but maintaining it. We need to search for “sticky” ideas and concepts that have the power to maintain interest over time – and to propel action.

Statement ceilings are great for capturing attention, but but be sure the rest of the home lives up to that attention-getting promise!

 

 

 

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