At LawProse, we’ve long stressed the capital importance of openers. We’ve likened the first paragraph of a brief—a good one, anyway—to the fanfare in a Sousa march. It announces the song.
The point was reinforced recently in a BBC interview with the composer Monty Norman, who wrote the memorable theme song for the James Bond movies. He was asked why his music has lasted through all the films. “I can’t even answer that,” he responded. “But the point is that with any major theme, it’s the first four bars that matter.”
You can hum the first four bars of the James Bond theme right now. Try it, and think how its catchiness might be analogous to effective persuasion. It’s catchy, not cacophonous.