Business taglines more important than ever
Steve Cone from Advertising Age published an interesting article last week entitled “Help taglines regain lost glory: why creating strong slogans is a marketer’s most important job.”
He says powerful taglines – what he calls “powerlines” are largely missing in action in today’s marketing messages. Cone believes this is a mistake because the right words “have the power to awe, inspire, motivate, alienate, subjugate and, in a marketing context, change the buying habits of consumers.”He argues most consumer taglines “generally mean nothing or are relegated to small, unreadable type.” Cone also doesn’t like the fact most companies change their taglines every year or two, and sometimes within the same year. “Nothing could be more harmful to your brand and your business.”
The secret to creating a compelling tagline is attitude. Cone says “the brain is wired to seek the unusual phrase … and ignores phrases that seem ordinary and unimportant.” He also makes a compelling case for the power of sound, “Sound trumps sight by a wide margin in forcing the brain to remember something; you can’t turn off hearing.”
A current consumer powerline Cone likes is “Las Vegas: what happens here, stays here.”
Most of his top 10 favorite taglines hark from an earlier era when they were “the epicenter for all promotional executions:”
- A diamond is forever (De Beers)
- Think small (VW)
- Just do it (Nike)
- You deserve a break today (McDonald’s)
- When it rains it pours (Morton Salt)
- You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s rye bread (Levy’s Baking)
Some of my favorite consumer taglines are:
- Snap! Crackle! Pop! (Rice Krispies)
- It’s the real thing (Coke)
- M’m M’m Good (Campbell's Soup)
- We try harder (Avis)
- We bring good things to life (GE)
- King of beers (Budweiser)
- For life (Volvo)
- It’s everywhere you want to be (Visa)
- The ultimate driving machine (BMW)
- When banks compete, you win (Lending Tree)
Are taglines equally important in the world of B2B and technology? Is it more difficult to position a product that’s more complicated, or isn’t noticed/used by consumers?
Yes and yes.
I’ve met with hundreds of business people over the past decade to discuss how to create focused messaging. 80 percent expressed a passion for “dumbing it down.” They really, really, really wanted to capture their product benefits in a catchy way. The business taglines they most frequently cited to make their point:
- We don’t make a lot of the products you buy, we make a lot of the products you buy better (BASF)
- Think different (Apple)
- Intel inside
- The network is the computer (Sun Microsystems)
- When it absolutely, positively, has to be there overnight (FedEx)
- Invent (HP)
- Where do you want to go today? (Microsoft)
If you believe taglines aren’t that critical for business, think again. They’ve never been more important.Google never had a tagline until last year. Some people thought it was “Don’t be evil,” but that was their internal corporate motto. After a lot of introspection, they came up with: “Search, ads and apps.”
Salesforce.com had a pretty good tagline for years, “Experience Success.” But they changed it to “Success on demand.” They obviously care a lot about whether the new one is working because in January ‘08 they posted the following on their corporate blog:
“What do you think about the “success on demand” tagline? Is it memorable? Do you recall it when Salesforce.com is mentioned? Does it reflect who we are? Can it be improved?”
Look no further than Dell to validate the importance of taglines. They’ve created so many taglines it’s tough to keep track. Here’s a list of the ones I remember, most of which, if not all, are from this decade:
- Dude, you’ve got a Dell
- Easy as Dell
- Get more out of it now
- Purely You
- Yours is here (current tagline)
As Dell relentlessly morphed its tagline, the company’s brand reputation was frequently barraged. The two went hand-in-hand.
Taglines are important because they exist to capture the essence and promise of a brand. When companies consistently struggle to articulate this most critical message, it’s often a symptom they have lost their way.
> Help taglines regain lost glory:
> why creating strong slogans
> is a marketer’s most important job.
Some people think slogans are different from taglines - not you? (I couldn't read Cone's article, not being an Ad Age subscriber.)