Lexington, KY - Marketing people and CEOs love to talk about their brand, but not all of them communicate their brand attributes well. One way to quickly sum up a brand is through the use of a tagline or slogan. Most businesses have a tagline, but are they really telling us anything?
Recently, several big-time muckety-mucks from large companies and advertising agencies got together and decided what they thought were the best taglines ever created. Their top choice was one developed in 1971 for BMW, and the company still uses it today. Can you recall it? The answer is: "The Ultimate Driving Machine." If you think about it, this really does sum it up for consumers. If BMW is the ultimate car, why would we want to buy anything else?
Like BMW, Nike and other companies with well-known taglines, you need to capture the essence of your company in the words you choose. Your tagline should say not only who you are and what you do, but also why someone should buy your product or service.
Think about your company's mission and vision. Are they still as relevant today as when they were created? If not, start there. Develop mission and vision statements that capture what your company is and what it will be going forward.
Think about your brand from the customer's perspective, not yours. This is a problem for a lot of organizations. They become so internally focused that they can't see what others do. If you can't be objective, hire an outside agency or conduct some research on your own to find out what people think about your company. You might be surprised.
In tagline development as in website and ad creation, the focus needs to be on the benefits of your product or service versus features. Again, it's the why. Why are you better? Why should consumers choose your product over similar ones? In other words, what's in it for the customer?
Most important is developing taglines that are clear. Your goal is for people to understand and love your brand, not be confused because a copy writer was too clever. If it has to be explained, it's not the right tagline.
Creating a tagline that personifies your brand is not easy. The evidence is in most ads. At the bottom of the ad, a company will use a logo with a tagline, which usually is boring, cheesy or could be descriptive of any business. This is true of a lot of small, local companies. They use words like: the best, the only, lowest prices, serving you since, family-owned, and my personal favorite: quality.
If you say you are the best, the only or have the lowest prices, you must be able to back it up. Those phrases are tired, old and clich?, and they don't belong in a tagline.
How important is it to most people that a business is old? What advantages are offered to consumers because the company's been around a long time?
That's what the tagline needs to communicate.
For some people, the phrase "family-owned" may be important, but it should be a copy point in an ad, not a tagline.
As for quality, it's more important to demonstrate that a product or service is high quality. Saying it doesn't make it so. Show us.
Not all local business taglines are boring or non-descript. Here are three examples that I ran across in ads in the latest Southsider: