There’s no marketing or advertising rule that says you must have a tagline. Or a slogan. What’s the difference? Generally speaking, a slogan sells the product while a tagline positions the brand. “Melts in your mouth, not in your hands”, is a slogan for M&Ms not a tagline for parent company Mars. “Just Do It”, encompasses all of Nike so it is a tagline. Taglines generally last longer than slogans. In fact, a slogan’s shelf life might only last for a single campaign. Coming up with a good tagline (or slogan) is far from easy. We have enough experience with them to understand that there is a process but no formula. You give it your best and hope to catch lightning in a bottle.
Bad taglines and slogans are, unintentionally funny. They are also instructive. They illustrate what not to do. Like the slogan for Uzbekistan Airways pictured above. No company in the transportation industry — especially an airline — should ever use the phrase, “good luck” as a tagline. Doesn’t exactly encourage you to board one of their planes, does it? We have more.
Even when you design it like the opening crawl of a Star Wars movie, “Drive one”, is boring. Typically, you want a tagline to be short and simple. This was too short and too simple.
Seriously? How did that meeting go? I’ve got it! Let’s come up with a slogan that alienates half of the consumers in the world. Great idea!
We get what Smirnoff is trying to do here. Exclusivity + Inclusion. Limited unlimited seating. It’s very hard to marry mutually exclusive terms.
Dodge Neon came up with “Hi” as their slogan. They were attempting cute; they accomplished short.
Chambord is an award-winning raspberry liqueur. We are guessing their slogan has not won any awards. Imagine it in another context. “BMW, because no reason”.
This AM-PM slogan asks you to do the impossible. Just thinking about it can give you a severe headache. All they had to do was drop the first “imagine”.
Thinking of creating a tagline for your business? Don’t try to highlight or focus on multiple benefits your company offers. Keep it to one. Keep it simple and relatively short. Once you have a few good ones, check to see if they are trademarked. Or call us. We do taglines right.