Watching the 98th Academy Awards this past weekend, I realised something interesting about the winners: success at the box office or a sweep at the Oscars doesn’t guarantee a movie will be remembered. On the other hand, there are some films which struggle at the box office but can endure for decades through devoted fans who cling to particular moments. What struck me is that popularity and exposure don’t guarantee a movie will last, and obscurity doesn’t prevent it. Sometimes, it’s not the movie as a whole we remember, but single, resonating moments and certain salient lines that stay with us.

I’ve actually come across a movie line so memorable that it exists outside of its screentime and has become so detached from its cinematic roots, that many mistake it for ancient wisdom from Sun Tzu’s Art of War. Spoiler alert: “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer” is not centuries old, it’s actually from 1974 in The Godfather Part II. And on the other hand, there are movies like Fight Club, which initially flew under the radar, but has since gained a cult following who have adopted its “rules” and quote them till this day, ironically breaking the very first one: “The first rule of Fight Club is that you don’t talk about Fight Club.”

Since our memory is selective, a single line can outlast the movie itself. I only revisit Lilo and Stitch, a childhood favourite, once in a while, yet “Ohana means family, and family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten” has stayed with me since I first watched it at 8 years old. 

This is the same principle that underlies memorable brand messages: if we can understand what makes a movie line stick, we can apply the same thinking to make brand taglines and advertising more memorable. You don't need to capture attention everywhere to create something that the brain can't seem to forget.

So why do certain lines linger in our minds long after we leave the cinema? The answer lies in how our brains encode, store, and retrieve memory.

Our brains prioritise emotionally salient moments, and even a mediocre movie can produce a line that makes our bellies hurt from laughing or stings our hearts a little. Before we’ve had time to think about it, we’ve felt it. Psychologists call this the affective primacy hypothesis: feelings come first, and reasoning follows later (1).

Movie lines that spike our emotions or catch us off guard activate a part of the brain called the amygdala. Our brains are constantly scanning for new information, and research suggests that the amygdala responds particularly strongly to anything unexpected or unusual (2). A paradoxical line like Fight Club’s first rule is so unexpected that it registers as novel, prompting the amygdala to take notice. This makes the amygdala pass a signal to the hippocampus (the brain’s memory storage system) which then saves the line for later. It’s like taking a video on your phone: the amygdala hits record, and the hippocampus automatically saves the memory to your photo gallery. This is because the brain treats anything it flags as important, whether that’s something that moves us or surprises us, as worth storing for later. And because we tend to judge experiences by their most intense moment and by how they end (a principle known as the peak-end effect), a single, intensely felt line can be carried with you beyond the screen, while the rest of the movie remains behind in the cinema (3).

One of my favourite examples showing the power of emotion is from Gone with the Wind. A heartbreaking line from the source material is when – shockingly – the leading man rejects the heroine. But there was a problem: it was controversial because it included a word which was considered profanity in 1939. The producers drafted 22 variations to avoid this word, but they fought censors to stick to the original as it was the only line that felt right. It was eventually allowed, and hundreds of thousands of Americans sat in the cinema for three and a half hours to hear Clark Gable say: “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.” The word “damn” was so jarring in a mainstream 1930’s film that it was novel in the truest sense. Because the producers prioritised how viewers would feel, it cemented the line’s place in movie history.

A memorable line doesn’t always have to be purposefully emotional. Sometimes, it’s due to how the line is written. Our brains are information-processing machines and the way information is presented makes a big difference. Think of it like a blender: it’s much easier to puree a banana than a coconut. Similarly, when words or ideas are phrased in the right way, our brains can “blend” them more effortlessly, making them easier to understand and remember. This is referred to as processing fluency (4).

Memorable lines can leverage all sorts of sentence structures that our brains naturally prefer:

·   Short sentence lengths: “I’ll be back” (The Terminator)

·   Rule of three: “Bond. James Bond” (Dr. No)

·   Parallelism: “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer” (The Godfather Part II)

·   Rhyme: “I feel the need – the need for speed!” (Top Gun)

·   Rhetorical questions: “You talkin’ to me?” (Taxi Driver)

These linguistic tricks, along with many others, compresses ideas into concise phrases that are easy to repeat and even easier to remember.      

But beyond emotion and cognition, we often remember what resonates with our sense of self. We respond positively to lines that align with our actual selves (who we are), ideal selves (who we want to be), and social selves (how we want others to see us). This is aptly referred to as Self Congruity Theory (5). When a line reflects who we are or who we hope to be, it feels less like dialogue and more like recognition. It no longer solely belongs to the movie because we adopt it for ourselves.

The hopeless romantic likely remembers “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn”. The cynic bears in mind to “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer”, while the rebel recalls “The first rule of Fight Club…” And maybe it's no coincidence that “Ohana means family” is the one that stuck with me, since I've always valued family and a sense of belonging. This explains why certain lines are memorable to some, but not to others.

Some movies win Oscars and others win opening weekends, but some quietly win, again and again, by our memories keeping them alive. Luckily for brands, this doesn’t only apply to movies, but to any sort of message you want to convey to your consumers. You don’t need to be everywhere to be remembered. You can share a brand message – from tagline to claim – that sparks emotion or is easy and fun to say; reflects the audience’s sense of self or makes them feel part of a community. This creates a moment that endures long after the campaign has ended, exactly like how a movie line is recited long after the credits have rolled.

(1) Zajonc, R. B. 1980. Feeling and thinking: Preferences need no inferences. American Psychologist, 35(2):151–175

(2) Blackford, J. U., Buckholtz, J. W., Avery, S. N. & Zald, D. H. 2011. A unique role for the human amygdala in novelty detection. Neuroimage, 50(3):1188-1193

(3) Do, A. M., Rupert, A. V. & Wolford, G. 2008. Evaluations of pleasurable experiences: The peak-end rule. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 15(1):96–98

(4) Winkielman, P., & Cacioppo, J. T. 2001. Mind at ease puts a smile on the face: Psychophysiological evidence that processing facilitation elicits positive affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(6):989–1000

(5) Sirgy, M. J. 1982. Self‑Concept in Consumer Behavior: A Critical Review. Journal of Consumer Research, 9(3):287–300