Effective or Toxic? What Makes Slogans Work.

The "movie-pitch effect" and how to craft phrases that work.

Apr 29, 2025

How do we craft phrases that work? How do we know when to bail on toxic terms and when to double down? I use the “movie-pitch effect” to break down Defund the Police, Green New Deal, Medicare for All, Democratic Socialism, and DEI, to explain what works and what doesn’t.

Much of this is from a post I wrote back in June of 2023 when I had very few readers, but it’s a super important lesson that features prominently in my training programs!

Scene from the movie Jaws in which camera zooms in on Roy Scheider as he recognizes a shark fin in the water. — Image from the original movie “Jaws” 1975

Double Down or Bail Out?

At a messaging workshop in a rural area, one participant said that they couldn’t use the phrase, “The Green New Deal” because some people didn’t like it. I said that if we stop using our phrases just because the Republicans or Fox News say bad things about it, we forfeit 100% of the control over what those phrases mean.

Their goal is to attach negative meaning to everything we say, not just to make us look bad, but to drive us away from using language that works. Instead of bailing out on our slogans, we need to double down on using them.

Later, someone asked about the term “Defund the Police.” I recommended never using the term, not even to refute your opposition’s claims. How do we know when a phrase is worth fighting for? What makes one phrase effective and another phrase toxic?

The “Movie Pitch” Effect

When Director Ridley Scott and movie producers pitched the film Alien to potential backers, they said it would be like “Jaws - in space.” Jaws is famous for building suspense with a terrifying creature that remains mostly unseen until the final confrontation. “Jaws in space” transfers that whole experience to the movie Alien in only 3 words.

I recently heard that the movie character John Wick is like “MacGyver, but for killing.” I have yet to see the movies, but I have a pretty good idea that John Wick kills people by making miraculously clever use of randomly available objects!

This “movie pitch” effect illustrates how we can transfer complex ideas and feelings to something by getting people to think about it in terms of something that already evokes those ideas and feelings. Slogans and phrases in the public debate work in a similar way.

The Rules

Because this effect is both automatic and subconscious, you can only use words and phrases that are:

FAMILIAR: Use words that people already know. You can’t trigger the activation of a neural network that isn’t there. It’s like referring to a movie that the person hasn’t seen.
LOADED: Use words that already contain the meaning and the feelings that you are trying to convey.
EXPRESSED: Use words with overt meaning. Don’t imply. Use full words that will evoke images and meaning in the brain. Don’t use acronyms. Letters don’t trigger anything.
UNAMBIGUOUS: never use the secondary meaning of a word that means more than one thing. The subconscious will always activate the primary meaning first.

When you find yourself having to constantly explain what you mean, you are likely to be breaking one or more of these rules.

How might we use this to judge potential slogans or phrases?

Good Slogan: each word means exactly what people expect it to mean and evokes the feelings that you want people to have.
Bad Slogan: the words evoke meaning or feelings that are not the meaning or feelings we intend to convey in this situation.

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The “Green New Deal”

Just because Republicans try to make our terms toxic doesn’t mean that they actually are. Often, they trick us into abandoning our terms because they are effective for us and dangerous for them!

There are few phrases in politics that evoke positive associations like the “New Deal.” We associate it with recovery from the Great Depression, an unprecedented effort by government to place people in good jobs by creating programs and projects that met people’s needs and benefitted society in ways we still feel today.

Here’s the movie pitch for the Green New Deal: “It’s like the New Deal, but for clean energy.” Unprecedented government effort? Check. Mass job creation? Check. Meet critical needs and benefit society? Check and check.

The phrase “Green New Deal” works. Positive feelings toward the “New Deal” are deeply rooted in the American psyche. It says exactly what we want to say about the program and does so instantly and subconsciously. That’s one reason why voters support the Green New Deal 60 percent to 29 percent.

You may support Green New Deal legislation or you may not, but there is no reason whatsoever to avoid using the term. As a phrase, “Green New Deal” is a flat-out winner.

“Medicare for All”

Medicare has a 67 percent positive to 23 percent negative rating among Republicans (74 to 19 overall). It is a shining example of reliable, high quality government services operating with an efficiency that the private sector can’t touch with a ten-foot pole.

What’s the movie pitch? “It’s like Medicare, but for everybody.” How much clearer could you be? Maybe that’s why it’s so popular. “Medicare for All” is supported by 69 percent of registered voters. Like the “Green New Deal,” it works because positive feelings toward Medicare are also deeply rooted in the American psyche and because it means exactly what we want it to say. “Medicare for All” is rock solid messaging, and has been effective even without our full-throated support. We should embrace it without hesitation.

These messages have inherently good qualities, qualities that no amount of Republican character assassination can take away. That’s why Republicans are so keen to scare us away from them.

“Defund the Police”

People using “Defund the Police” and “Democratic Socialism” are trying to change how people feel about words. This does not work. You can only subconsciously activate the meaning people already most strongly associate with a word.

To most people, defund means, “to shut something down by cutting off its funding.” That makes the movie pitch, “It’s like divesting from apartheid, but for the police.” That meaning is subconsciously triggered in people’s brains every time they see or hear the phrase “Defund the Police,” even if we’re trying to say we oppose it or explain that we do not advocate totally eliminating policing.

In cases like this, we should never use the phrase. It’s better to state what we do believe, using words that convey unambiguous meaning and clear moral judgment. There’s no way to misinterpret phrases like, “invest in crime prevention,” “build safe communities,” or “stop police brutality.”

“Democratic Socialism”

In the U.S., the word socialism has deeply rooted negative associations with WWII, communism and Russia, or to dictatorships from which many immigrants escaped. That makes the movie pitch for Democratic Socialism, “It’s like communist dictatorship, but with voting!” Like it or not, that’s how it plays at the subconscious level.

The idea of “Democratic Socialism” is appealing to many people. The term is still radioactive to far too many. We do not want our economic views associated with dictatorship. We need to find better terminology, a way to talk about economic fairness that says what we mean and resonates in American culture.

Risky Business: DEI and Equity

Novel terms are easily hijacked by the Republican noise machine.

We LOVE to use acronyms, make up new terms, or re-purpose existing ones. Unfortunately, using terms that are not already well established creates a strategic vulnerability; it allows the opposition to outcompete us in the race to define those terms by taking advantage of their greater capacity for repeat exposure.

Why did we start using equity instead of equality? Equality is a foundational American value. If we had called DEI programs equality programs, they would have been far harder for conservatives to attack.

The term equality resonates with the American public, but because conservative pundits were able to turn a few people in their own base against it, we stopped using it and switched to a word that we literally have to draw diagrams to get people to understand. Equity breaks the “rules.” People don’t know what we mean by it, and many think it has something to do with investments.

“Equality” is visceral: a matter of right and wrong. It means that no matter our differences, we are all worth the same. “Equity” has its place in policy as a means to achieve equality. Even then, people would understand us more easily if we just called it “removing barriers to equality.”

ANOTHER RULE: Values always pack a bigger punch than policies.

The Bottom Line

Political slogans work like movie pitches: they get people to apply the qualities of something they already know and may have strong feelings about to an issue or situation in the public debate. We have to be mindful of how that works at the subconscious level as we develop our language.

When our phrases are effective, Republicans try to scare us away from using them. In that case, we have to DOUBLE DOWN. We retain control over the meaning of our terms by using them twice as much as Republicans do, to reinforce the associations between the words that we use and the good things we know them to mean.

“Medicare for All” and the “Green New Deal” are highly effective slogans. Even in communities where they don’t already enjoy majority support, keep using the terms and making the case, because that is how you get those numbers to improve.

If our phrases misrepresent what we mean or have weak ties to their actual meaning, Republicans will seize the opportunity and use them to misrepresent our true intentions. Don’t use that messaging, not even to refute their claims.

In that case, reframe the debate using more effective, positive terms. Develop messaging that evokes the meaning we intend to evoke, by using words that already carry that meaning in our culture.

Thanks, as always, for reading and subscribing! I hope you are able to use this in your work and your activism!

In solidarity,

Antonia

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