Sir Isaac Newton said that somewhere around the late 16th Century, quoting his teacher Isaac Barrow. Although uttered as a backhanded criticism – with mild disdain at the obfuscation in the craft – it’s that virtuosity, that lyrical alchemy and affecting wonder, that brands have coveted since the early heyday of advertising.

From the poem in a 19th-century Warren Blacking’s shoe polish ad, to the worldplay in classic slogan “Beanz Meanz Heinz” and Dead Poets Society teacher John Keating (Robin Williams) invoking Walt Whitman in an Apple ad as he asks, “What will your verse be?”, examples abound.

In his book The Science of Story, Will Storr explains how the weapons of poetry – metaphor, simile etc – deployed in prose writing activate our neural regions, giving the language deeper meaning and sensation. That’s the benefit of choosing “she shouldered the burden” over “she carried the burden”, for example.

“A successful poem plays on our associative networks as a harpist plays on strings,” he writes. “By the meticulous placing of a few simple words, they brush gently against deeply buried memories, emotions, joys, traumas, which are stored in the form of neural networks that light up as we read. In this way, poets wring out rich chords of meaning that resonate so profoundly we struggle to fully explain why they’re moving us so.”

But is verse in an advert really a poem if its goal is to sell? This age-told tension between art and commerce goes under the microscope again in a new BBC Radio Four documentary hosted by copywriter and poet Rishi Dastidar. In it, he traces the history of “words pressed into service on behalf of sales”, drawing on the musings of WH Auden, George Orwell, Clive James and Don Draper among others.