Tag, You’re It
There is an article in Brandweek about the impending death of the tagline. Much like the impending death of paper magazines and the imminent introduction of flying cars, there is a bit of hyperbole involved in the article. Case in point, the opening sentence:
Not long ago, every ad had a tagline that stuck with the consumer after the message was delivered. But that former rule may no longer be the norm.
Look at the first sentence: “Not long ago, every ad had a taglinethat stuck with the consumer after the message was delivered.” OK, whatever. That’s a bit of lazy journalism, kind of like dismissing someone’s point with the phrase “OK, whatever.”
So, getting into the meat of the article, it actually seems that the tagline isn’t going away, but there are getting to be fewer of them. One reason:
The reasons range from ever-shorter tenures of CMOs (13 months on average, according to recent research) to ever-splintering consumer demographics.
And another:
Taglines are often more utilitarian and less emotional, experts say. They tend to be fed through the focus group mill until they’re watered down beyond recognition. That process does not produce “Think Different,” “Got Milk?” or “Just Do It.”Â
So let me get this straight: Taglines are going away because of CMO tenure and because big corporation business tactics churn the life out of them? I guess I can buy that, to a degree. But there is another reason they may be going away. It’s because most of them suck.
One example of a currently used tagline mentioned in the article is Sony’s “Like. no. other.” This line is being used in Europe to sell their new MP3 Player. My first reaction is that it falls into the category of taglines that suck. Here are my reasons. First) The “me too” method of creating a tagline of three words with three periods, making each word its own little highly important sentence has played itself out. It has got to go. (The worst offenders are developers of the trendy mixed-use developments going up these days. Do these folks really think “Live. Work. Play.” is going to drive any new business to their new communities when there are hundreds of other “Live. Work. Play.” communities going up all over the place? Maybe that hasn’t happened in Europe, where they have had Live. Work. Play. communities for thousands of years.) Second) It is just weak. Their point of differentiation with the iPod is that the battery lasts longer. That’s all fine and dandy, but unless your MP3 player can make me popcorn and let me fly on a unicorn to the moon, it is like the others, only with a longer battery life.
Many taglines that could easily have been considered weak can work from sheer frequency of use alone. “Just do it” is a great example of that. So is “Is it in you?” Both lines could have faded into obscurity, if Nike and Gatorade hadn’t stuck with them. Now, they’ve become part of our current American culture.
Memorable taglines can stick with a product decades. Folks of a certain age (mine) will remember “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.” and “Plop plop, fizz fizz.” for Alka Seltzer. Tim Best, our Creative Director, was working on Chrysler at the time ‘If you can find a better car, buy it!’ made it’s way into America’s homes. As anyone over age 35 will tell you, that was the mantra for Chrysler’s chairman, Lee Iacocca.
I spent several years as marketing director at a live theatre, where, like the movies, the tagline is still king. I wrote some good ones and some forgettable ones, but I had to come up with one every eight weeks for a new production. It can take minutes or days to come up with the perfect one. And sometimes you just give up and use the best you have. There are also some interesting new factors involved in tagline writing the past decade or so. Is the top-level URL available? Is it associated with anything negative that comes up on Google’s first couple of pages?
I came up with a tagline for our trade show division here at Frank/Best International yesterday. It says exactly what we want it to say. The domain name is available in a couple of different variations. If you Google the phrase in quotes, there are no results returned. It is six common words, strung together in a brand new way. That’s rare. I can’t tell you what it is yet. While we would never run it through a focus group, the head of the trade show division hasn’t said whether she likes it or not yet. If she doesn’t, we may have to come up with something else. Or, more likely, just use it anyway, since she is always off doing trade shows and probably couldn’t do anything about it.
(This is the blog for Frank/Best Interantional, a full service ad agency in Nashville, Tennessee. If we ever propose a tagline to a client in the future that is three One. Word. Sentences. I am going to have to consider quitting.)
