SUPER ADVERTISING SLOGANS & SUPER COSTS
Advertising slogans or taglines pushing sales are great for getting a customer's attention as they often tangle and hold them hostage for a second or two. Some taglines catch the user's attention, but most are simply confusing, causing them to 'escape the trap' and run away.
The
combined yearly budgets of all the strangely composed slogans promoting
various branding worldwide would easily add up to billions of dollars.
Corporations make extraordinary efforts to capture these few words on a
string and liberally fund the most lavish extravaganzas when it comes
to pushing these cutesy and strange sentences.
Not too
long ago, a major credit card company, collected some hundred plus
executives from their national offices around the world to an exercise
organized by a major ad agency with the sole purpose to find a new
slogan. That project was called 'universal words.' The first order of
the day was to dress some of the executives in fictitious characters,
like, Superman, Spiderman, or Tarzan, and the others in various
imaginary titles from a CEO to shipper or an engineer to garbage
collector, and so on. Each participant had to make a mock costume from
a large tear sheet from the flip chart. 48 hours of role playing later,
they came up with a distilled series of universally accepted words:
'life' 'without' 'the card' and 'really boring,' hence the tagline,
'life without the card is boring.' This million-dollar cost was easily
absorbed as a finder's fee for these magical words, and many additional
millions were spent to promote the new tagline for a little while.
Some
taglines that are still easy to recall have only worked because of tens
of millions of dollars in yearly expenditures like 'a tiger in the
tank' or 'his master's voice', 'the real thing' and 'just do it.' There
are other stories, and it seems shorter the better. IBM's 'Think' and
now HP's 'invent' Samsonite's 'worldproof' or 'Relax.' It's FedEx 'The
long ones are,' 'What can Brown do for you?' for UPS or Cannon's 'Know
how. Here's the future, let's go to work.'
Here are some
more examples. Match the following slogans with their respective
companies. The difficulties of recognizing the companies are obvious:
Slogans
1) the life unscripted
2) software that can think
3) what s on your mind?
4) better ideas driven by you
5) think big, move fast
6) what good thinking can do
7) moving ideas
8) TV for the chosen few
Companies
1) TLC The Learning Channel
2) CA Computer Associates
3) Britannica
4) Ford
5) CONOCO
6) Dow
7) GTE
8) Bloomberg TV
Two Critical Factors
When Corporate Identity is Weak
When
names of corporations are obviously weak, like strange initials or
unclear words, then they are no longer able to convey a clear marketing
message, and a tagline becomes essential to identify the purpose of the
advertising pitch. This short gist is supposed to be a small platform
to park the ideology of the corporation. Sometimes capturing the idea,
as a large paragraph is just too long, equally, a few shorts words are
just too limited to paint the entire story.
For that
reason a vast majority of taglines convey very confusing messages.
Upon, a newly invented tagline line, often, the entire corporation
amazingly gets intoxicated with the slogan while repeating and singing
every morning like a mantra as an hypnotic internal branding exercise.
While the poor customer at large has no idea of this deep secret, and
what the real message is in such a riddle. we bring what you desire or
trust life, as it is valuable Really? Furthermore, the consumer is
getting busier and busier by the second, and has no time to memorize or
to be able to recognize a company upon coming across that strange
riddle again. Slogans are like fireworks; they stay lit in the sky for
a second or two and immediately die when the big budgets are cut.
When Ideas Crossover
Very
often, same products can serve many different markets than it is
recommended, to present such ideas with supportive explanations for
those specific markets. In that case, a common-sense approach
translated into a plain sentence is better than a twisted creative
riddle. A simple sentence tells the customer a simple marketing
message. Branding concepts and positioning is best achieved by strong
and original names and not by fluid and ever-changing slogans. Colors,
stripes, logos and slogans come and go, they flow with the budgets and
the trade winds, but a solid name identity stays forever. Solid names
slowly grow at the grass root level without major budgets, and
eventually become a well-known brand. This is a simple common sense
approach.
Recommendations.
Use
slogans that are common, everyday sentences. Use them freely for
different products and services, and describe their specific features
and benefits. For example, for a line of alarm clocks; enjoy seven
different ways to set up your wake-up calls rather than rhythmic
vibrations, better sexual fantasies . Slogans are great when they can
be easily developed internally and created like simple sentences within
an organization. Later, they can be dropped freely without any loss or
pain, in contrast to spending extraordinary monies in creating
ridiculously twisted and ever-so-confusing slogans. Just keep it sweet
and simple.
About Naseem Javed
Naseem Javed, author Naming for Power and also Domain Wars, is recognized as a world authority on global name identities and domain issues. Javed founded ABC Namebank , a consultancy he established a quarter century ago, and conducts executive workshops on image and name identity issues. Contact him at .