BRANDEblog

Monday, December 03, 2007

R.I.P- The Death of the Tag Line

From BrandWeek, November 26, 2007; T.L. Stanley

JUST DON’T DO IT

According to T.L Stanley at BrandWeek, that might be good advice for companies looking to build their brand in a world of blended audiences, fragmented media and high turnover of Chief Marketing Officers.

For generations, taglines have served as the foundation for advertising—a short statement poised to deliver the brand message in a memorable way. Today, there is some consensus that the tactic is on life support. Not so today. Starbucks, Samsung, Converse and others are among the growing number of brands that do not focus on the use of taglines.

“It used to be on the list of deliverables,” said Mike Wolfsohn, vp/executive creative director at Ignited, Los Angeles. “It was mandatory.He suggested marketers be bold and definitive about taglines, or skip them all together.

“Treat it heroically,”. “Celebrate it. Don’t relegate it to eight-point type in the lower right-hand corner.”

Too often, taglines are used as safety nets out of a fear that the rest of the campaign isn’t communicating well enough, he said.

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.”

“If the Nike tagline were suggested today, the question back would probably be, ‘Just do what?’” said Wolfsohn. “There’s a level of trepidation now that people won’t get it and they won’t be able to parrot the idea back to you. So, taglines get over-defined.”

That’s when they lose strength and become meaningless, he said. For a slogan to stick, it’s not just coming up with five catchy words or less, said Landor & Associates’ managing director Allen Adamson. It’s vital to weave that message through all the communications and the very brand DNA itself.

“It has to be the right promise, with the brand living up to it, expressed in a sticky, unexpected way,” Adamson said. “And then you have to spend money and stay with it for the long haul.”

He points to GE’s “Imagination at Work” as a breakthrough tagline because it’s more than a slogan. “It’s the business strategy,” he said. “It’s the mission of the company.”

I have always thought of the tagline as the bag to match the shoes, and I will be sad to see it go.

Labels: internal communications

Written at 3:08 AM by JODY.

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