We are inundated. Assaulted. Bombarded. Nearly tortured. But the ad slogans and messages keep on coming. Beyond the old standby marketing vehicles, we have our movie screens, airplane seats, even our high school gyms. We are over saturated. In print, the little ® and TM marks ride roughshod over the call-to-action taglines and uncontained sales thoughts drip from the corners of the pages.
The marketing gurus are legion who use over saturation as a gateway to methodologies and techniques that can help you attract eyes, to engage viewers, to standout in the crowd. But sometimes to be noticeable all that’s needed are new tactics and improved creative execution. Sometimes, I believe, this journey can begin with a tagline.
Companies can spend millions to find the new catch phrase that will be attractive, memorable, sales effective, and raise brand awareness. But it seems many decision makers just want a tagline as a matter of course. Unfortunately for audiences, the competitive bar is not raised that high for most industries, evidenced by the many horrendous company taglines. Certainly, creative leadership is not insurmountable with a decent team that’s given the time to allow great work to percolate.
The tagline can be interesting as a sneak peek into a company’s style, their corporate culture, their desperation, their knowledge of consumers, and level of ease with transparency. The tagline represents their product, service, or company.
Developing a stellar tagline is an art form apparently not easily mastered. Today I’m perusing a few magazines from our lounge: I have a copy of The Atlantic and Esquire—marketing vehicles of choice to connect with audiences everywhere. Let’s take a look at a few taglines.
Topping my list of bad ideas is from a car company: “Advance.” That’s it. “Advance.” It’s all caps on the page with a period, because that’s important. Doesn’t this punctuation stop me from advancement? If you don’t know which automobile giant this is selling, then perhaps I’ve proved my point.
Oh, the masters of the single word tagline. You’re so cool with the quick call to action, but there is zero connection to anything deeply meaningful or interesting or memorable. It lacks a unique position—even a lifestyle connection, which is commonly used to sell the short punchy tagline. This is a word not a tagline and it could be used with 10,000 products. I can almost hear the board of directors approving this line, chatting over the blackboards from their ad partner.
Interestingly, this was the one ad that appeared in both magazines. They hit me twice. And still, I had to find the page again to remind myself which car company used this tagline. No wonder ad frequency must be so high to encourage sales. Well, let’s move on, or as they say: advance…
Equally horrible to me is one pharmaceutical company’s tagline: “working for a healthier world”. The problem here is that, quite frankly, we just don’t believe you Mr. Pharmaceutical Giant. The fact that you have to put this PR message in your tagline is proof enough that I’m right. Rather than this bit of text helping to legitimize the company, I feel more alienated. This tagline reads like propaganda. May I suggest: “working for a healthier profit.” Let’s not forget the trademark symbol. This is a must for the legal team, because companies everywhere will surely jump to steal this mediocre bit of copy. Well, at least there are the words healthy and world, which say something about this company’s offerings.
Other taglines I found riffling the pages of these two magazines are just plain boring. Here’s one example from an American car manufacturer: “Inspiration Comes Standard”? Does it? It doesn’t come automatically? Oh, I get it. Like when you buy a car and some things are part of the standard package. Now that’s clever. I’m inspired. No wonder U.S. auto sales are doing so well with great taglines like this one.
Another lackluster example comes from a gas company: “Energy to serve your world”. That’s about as uninteresting and utilitarian as I can imagine and smacks to me of a line that was successful in testing for the simple fact that it didn’t offend anyone. I’ve seen this happen often, when the marketing department must kowtow to the PR, Strategic Communications, HR, or legal departments. The effect: a line of copy that will neither impress nor offend, so it seems okay.
On the next page in my magazine is this forgettable tagline from an airline manufacturer: “We never forget who we’re working for”? But I’ve already forgotten what you said. Don’t you guys make planes? Of course, the art direction of the ad and the picture speak nothing about this tagline, so there’s a problematic disconnect here.
All in all, I’m tired of the one-liners, the slick talk, and the wannabe cool catchy phrases. I believe there are many people who would agree. “Just do it” has been done. Why try to do it again? Mammoth budgets and creative directors from large agencies didn’t seem to help many companies develop memorable taglines. Without these resources on hand, may I suggest we keep the tagline simple and offer a direct explanation of your product or service or style. To me you’ll be cooler still for your retro nod from the days of long-form copywriting written by artists who understood how to draw in readers, then trusted that people would actually read and enjoy the ad.
Sometimes taglines, as in headlines, can just effectively and succinctly relay the unique selling propositions. Here are three taglines I liked from the same magazines. Calvin Klein Eternity: “The timeless fragrance for men”. Don Julio Tequila: “Taste the Mexico you don’t know”. Haggar: “Gentlemen’s Supply Company”. In all three instances, I’m told what, who, where, why. While this might lack the memorable, lifestyle, brand power of “Just do it,” these taglines are hard workers and express enough in the single line to allow the ad’s creative execution to have more leeway.
All in all, I’m perusing these magazine ads and I’m underwhelmed and I’m reminded of a passage from Ogilvy on Advertising. Ogilvy argues: “Trademarks are an anachronism… In the olden days, before people could read, manufacturers used trademarks…Many companies, unaware that consumers are no longer illiterate, still use graphic symbols to identify their brands… and proclaim ‘this is only an advertisement.’ Readership of the advertisement is reduced.”
Perhaps to help rectify this situation, we added the tagline rather than removing the logo. But a bad or useless tagline just adds to the noise and clutter. It’s a disservice to these companies and to readers. My reaction as writer and marketing professional is sighing disgust; as reader I’m mildly annoyed while trying to find the next article.
