How To Write A Terrible Tagline

So you want a tagline to go along with your corporate colors and logo? Good for you! How can any company make it big without a tagline tagging along?

In many ways, a good tagline is a bit like porn: hard to define, but easily recognizable. Yet despite the wealth of good examples out there – “Just Do It,” “You’re In Good Hands,” “Every Little Helps”– many taglines fail the primary test of a good one – succinctly communicate the value of a benefit or experience.

Sometimes, knowing what not to do is more important than knowing what to do. So here are some suggestions for writing terrible taglines:

• Don’t differentiate between product and corporate taglines: Product and corporate taglines are as different, as Mark Twain might have said, as lightning and a lightning bug. Product taglines encapsulate the USP (unique sales proposition). As a result, they may change as products and/or the USP changes, or even fade into the corporate sunset. Corporate taglines reflect the foundation for long-term customer relationships. The easiest way to write a bad corporate tagline is to confuse it with a product tagline.

• Use a committee: If two heads are better than one, then 10 are best. Make sure that your tagline represents a consensus among individuals with different agendas. The surest way to make sure that your tagline says nothing wrong is to make sure that your tagline says nothing at all.

• Make it long: Many memorable taglines are 6-8 words, and some are even shorter. So be sure to describe all your many capabilities in the tagline. Surely, the more it says, the more that people will remember you.

• Ask a question: “What can brown do for you?” (UPS) “Where do you want to go today?” (Microsoft)  “Where else?” (Sears) This is a particularly good way to solicit answers don’t want (“none of your business,” “I don’t know, and I don’t care.”). Using a question also works if you are unwilling to make a statement about your brand, and you want your brand to be defined by all the varied answers that can be given. There is only one exception – when your tagline can only be answered by “yes” or “no.” “Got milk?” is one of the most successful taglines of the past decade.

• Use “we:” According to an ADSlogans Unlimited Database survey, 19.09% of taglines begin with “you” or “your.” This approach looks at the offering through customer eyes, which is the heart of all good branding. By contrast, taglines incorporating “we” is in third place, at 6.03% of total taglines surveyed. “We” taglines essentially elevate the firm over the customer, plus contributes to a company-specific narcissism. Proof: “We’re Exxon.”

• Follow hot trends: One- or two-word taglines are fashionable now.  “Drive.” (Nissan) “Invent.” (HP) “Belleve.” (Yahoo Personals). While such taglines can pack a punch, they also have the ephemeral quality of a talk-show trend. Inevitably, someone will start asking questions like, “how can we give people a reason to drive our cars, and not just any car, in our tagline?”

• Use the tagline the CEO likes best: If the tagline committee deadlocks or runs into a roadblock, just use the CEO’s favorite. Don’t bother to test it, especially among customers.

• Let employees pick their own tagline: One trend is to develop a variety of taglines, then let employees pick the one they believe is most suitable for their business cards. Do this especially if you are interested in developing an inconsistent brand or confusing customers (“I understand why you have different titles, but why do you have different taglines for the same company?”)

• Don’t test international translations:  The surest laugh in any Marketing 101 class are examples of how some English taglines and slogans have been translated. Look at how "finger licking good" “came out in Chinese: "Eat your fingers off." Don’t waste money on testing, and your tagline too can be added to that Marketing 101 list. Actually, many argue that taglines should never be translated because of cultural or linguistic minefields.

• Use a bland label: To demonstrate a complete lack of understanding about what you can provide customers, use a label: "A company called TRW" or “BASF: The chemical company.”

• Use “delivering,” “solutions,” “quality” or “value:”  Cliches,  overdone to the point of appearing on pizza parlor menus, have little appeal: “Quality in everything we do.” (Ernst & Young)

And the worst mistake of all:

• Consider a tagline to be your brand: It isn’t. It is a tiny facet of your brand, which is defined by customers based on your promises, services and delivery.

Comments

[Brandorama]

Hi,

This article was incredibly interesting. Once you read it through it makes perfect sense the do's and don'ts of a tagline. One has to remember that the tagline is part of the overall brand and has to be integrated in order to be effective.

Chris
www.threerooms.com