Brand Taglines are memorable phrases often used in conjunction with company logos and in advertising campaigns.

They are claimed to be the most effective means of drawing attention to one or more aspects of a product or brand.

But how often do you see “serving you since 1982” or a similarly canned slogan under a beautifully designed logo? Too often.

In this post, we’ll discuss 5 essential tips on how to write an epic tagline and, if you feel you can’t manage it on your own, where to go to get them written for you.

At the end of these tips, you’ll find a selection of famous taglines as well as an interactive showcase of famous taglines.

The first step is to decide whether or not you need a tagline. If you have a logo, you are already engaged in branding your product or your company.

If you have already taken this step, you really should consider a tagline as well.

Do you want to brand your product or company? That depends on the image that you are trying to project. If you want to attract larger corporate clients, branding is pretty much a necessity.

They will want to see that you are as serious about your product as they are. If you prefer to work with mom and pop shops and want to appear as the helpful guy next door, you may not require this level of branding.

The business model of your company determines your level of branding. If you want to take things to the next level, this is a good starting point.

START FROM THE LOGO

If your brand doesn’t have a logo yet, you should get that done first. A tagline works with a logo in order to promote brand identity.

A tagline doesn’t really work without a logo unless your sole advertising medium is radio. The logo is the chicken, the tagline is the egg. If you are designing the logo and producing the tagline for a business, you have a unique opportunity to create both at once, which can allow you to better integrate the two as a final product.

Remember that top brands change their taglines all the time, and you can do the same if you feel you need to five years down the line. No tagline is cast in stone.

 

GIVE THE PROJECT THE TIME IT NEEDS

Coming up with a tagline isn’t easy, even for seasoned veterans, and takes at least one working day. On the flip side, if you are hiring a tagline writer, there needs to be an element of trust there before you hire them.

You have to trust that they really are going to come up with some great tagline ideas for you to choose from, and you can’t really keep going back and expect them to go through the process indefinitely after paying for an initial session.

If you really don’t like the taglines that they give you, or feel that they misinterpreted your brand’s vision, most slogan writers will want to make it right within limits and these limits will usually be made very clear in your initial contract.

 

KEEP YOUR TAGLINE SIMPLE

A logo is only effective if your audience can understand it quickly.

You only have a few seconds to impress, so a tagline like “the best in olfactory widgets since 1949” isn’t going to do the trick. Simplicity is what you’re aiming for.

Taglines absolutely cannot go over one sentence and five dollar words such as “olfactory” should be avoided. Some rules are made to be broken; if there is a five dollar word that rolls up a few sentences of meaning in one word, go for it.

The one sentence rule, however, should be adhered to at all costs. Simple tagline : Just Do It(Nike). Not simple enough slogan: Selling the Highest Quality Organic & Natural Products(Whole Foods).

 

MAKE YOUR BRAND TAGLINE FUNNY, IF YOU CAN

Where you can bring humor to a tagline, do it.

A great example is Cracked.com’s tagline: “America’s Only Humor & Video Site, Since 1958”. This slogan packs in a few jokes including making fun of the usual “since such a year” tagline and claiming to be the only humor site in America.

There is also a claim about being the only video site, and the fact that they couldn’t have been a website since 1958. All of this in eight words, if you count the “and” symbol.

While they had to make their tagline funny, the same approach to tagline writing of injecting a joke or two is something that you should adopt when appropriate.

If you can’t make it funny without making it lame, just drop the funny and go with your next best options.

 

STAY HONEST AND DON’T “TRUMP UP” YOUR PRODUCT

Honesty is important. Can your business actually deliver on the promise that your tagline makes? If not, rethink the tagline.

You’ll also want to stay away from tagline that incorporate language like “the best” or “#1 at what we do” because that kind of language is not only standard and boring, but hard to substantiate even if it is true.

This is a fine line to walk because you still want to present the idea of a quality product without coming off as being too pushy, but a good tagline writer can manage it.

If it seems too intimidating, don’t think of it as writing a tagline, think of it as writing a brand message.

What would your product say if it could talk?

 

INTERACTIVE EXAMPLES

Some companies change their taglines very often while others keep their taglines for years. Just how memorable are taglines in general and do they really accomplish what they’re set to do?

Here are 10 examples of well known companies and their taglines. I have purposely hidden the companies behind these taglines so that you can see if you can figure out which company is connected to which taglines.

To reveal the company behind each tagline, simply roll over the images below:

 

FAMOUS Taglines

Here are some of the most famous taglines ever created:

• Where do you want to go today? – Microsoft
• Where’s the beef? – Wendy’s
• Between love and madness lies Obsession. – Calvin Klein’s “Obsession”
• Plop, plop; fizz, fizz; oh, what a relief it is. – Alka Seltzer
• There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else there’s Mastercard. – Mastercard
• Sharp Minds, Sharp Products. – Sharp
• Do you… Yahoo!? – Yahoo!
• Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. – Wikipedia
• Because you’re worth it. – L’Oreal
• Be all that you can be. – United States Army
• M&Ms melt in your mouth, not in your hand. – M&M candies
• Let’s Make Things Better. – Philips
• We make money the old-fashioned way….We earn it. – Smith Barney
• Everything is easier on a Mac. – Apple Computer
• Don’t leave home without it. – American Express
• The king of beers. – Budweiser
• Welcome to the World Wide Wow – AOL. (play on World Wide Web)
• Live in your world, play in ours. – Sony Playstation and Playstation 2 gaming consoles
• When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight. – Federal Express
• Push Button Publishing. – Blogger.com
• The best a man can get. –  Gillette
• We’re number two; we try harder. – Avis Rental Cars
• Nothin’ says lovin’ like something from the oven. – Pillsbury
• Come alive! You’re in the Pepsi generation. – Pepsi Cola
• No battery is stronger longer. – Duracell Batteries
• Intel inside. – Intel

SUMMARY

A tagline is as necessary to a brand, even an online-only one, as a logo is. If you have one, you should have the other, if only to differentiate yourself from the rest of the crowd that has a logo with no tagline.

Even if you are going to hire someone else to produce it, you should brainstorm a list of options just to make sure that they understand what you believe your own brand message to be.

Keep it simple, try to make it funny, and make sure you aren’t making an inflated claim about your product.

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Although many business owners recognize the importance of branding, they don’t always know how to create an affordable one.

And that’s where my FREE Define Your Brand email course comes in.

This course is a FREE solution for those who are hoping to start a brand from the ground up, re-brand, or refine their current brand. In 5 days, I walk you through the design process I use with my branding clients and let you in on the decisions I make and the design principles I keep mind during each step. See more details here…

*Registration for the FREE Define Your Brand email course here!

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To your success,