Guidelines for Taglines

Well, I did it again – blathered online to a perfect stranger and ended up with a blog post.

A lady in Women in Consulting, a networking group I belong to, emailed the following question to the WIC community at large:
I am looking for guidelines or best practices in designing a "tag line" or phrase that describes a company at the highest level. If you have suggestions or sources for such guidelines, please send them along.

I wanted to help her, but more than that, I wanted to help the unfortunate copywriter who might have to toil under someone who believes there are rules to this sort of thing. So I wrote up this nifty guide to writing taglines:

While there are no specific rules to writing taglines, there is a process. The actual tag line writing just requires a talented writer with an agile mind. The important work is strategic, and that happens before you ever think of a tag line. You have to consider:

• The size and focus of your company. If you have a very focused, b-to-b type business with a limited array of products and services, you might want to have a really hard working, granular tag line that says exactly what you do. You're small. You're not going to have to fold a huge array of products under one tag. Your advertising budget is limited and your tagline needs to work extra hard. Lets say you make latex surgical gloves and that's it. So you end up with something like The hospital glove people or Your patients are in good hands. (Tell your inner critic to stuff it. Not writing actual tag lines here, just giving examples, OK?) But what if you are making the leap into other surgical accessories? Then, you might want a more general line about your surgical expertise. Nothing else can cut it. Perhaps your business plan is to expand into other latex products, in which case your strategy might be about all things latex. You are Experts in Latex. No, that sounds too much like Perverts in Leather– but you get the idea.

• What if your company is enormous? At that scale, your tagline has to be more of a topline statement. Perhaps it's a positive spin on what you do – Disneyland. The happiest place on earth. GE. We bring good things to life. Another way to go might be a call to action – Just do it. Obey your thirst. Or a promise. You're in good hands with Allstate. We try harder. Note how you can stick the NIKE and GE lines on just about anything those companies make and they'll work. The important thing is to have an umbrella line that evokes some kind of emotion and still manages to mean something. Just do it is motivational. It tells you to get off your butt, but it also believes you can succeed. Perfect for sports stuff. We bring good things to life is comforting, almost cozy. Note the use of "good" and "life" in one sentence. It subconsciously evokes the phrases "Life is good," or "the good life." Just right for appliances.

• Product benefits Are your latex gloves so sensitive surgeons feel like they're operating with their bare hands? The healing touch. Or Because nothing should come between you and your patients. (Again, just illustrating a point, not saying these are great. Great, I charge for). The benefit is one way to go, but another one is a pain point. Are your hospital gloves less likely to break? Strong hands for Surgery. On the other hand, don't try to shoehorn more than one or two benefits into a tag line. Strong, yet delicate is fine for your gloves - two benefits, but it kind of works because there is some tension in the fact that strong and delicate are opposites. Strong, delicate, and available in six yummy pastel shades, on the other hand, is no longer a tagline. It's a cut line for a catalog photo.

• Your competition. Do you have an indisputable advantage - are you better, stronger, smaller, more portable,easier to fix, less breakable, more cost effective etc.? (Make sure the advantage you choose to lead with isn't some small technical thing that is meaningless to the end-user. Nobody cares if your surgical gloves come with an extra finger). If you have an edge over your competition, use it. Is your advantage temporary because the other guy is coming out with the same thing next year? Then, you might want to proactively own that benefit, so that your competitor is a me-too by the time they roll out their product. If you choose this route, you need to be able to spend, spend, spend before your competitor's launch. Also, don't just look at your competition from a product standpoint - look at what they are doing creatively. Make sure your line doesn't take the same position as, or sound too similar to, theirs.

• Your target. Whether you're targeting consumers or other businesses, shell out for some focus groups. You just might be surprised at what you learn. What are the perceptions of your product? Your competition's product? What are the top pain points? It's conceivable you might hear your future tag line come out of someone's mouth! If possible, invite your writer to the focus group and pay her for her time. If she's any good, she's strategic, and she'll want to attend. If she's REALLY good, she won't even mind suggesting a tag line that emerged fully formed from the ramblings of a focus group participant.

• Your budget. The less money you have, the harder your line needs to work. Fluff is not for the faint-of-budget.

• Tone. Attitude can be great or completely wrong for the product, target or category. Nobody wants a catheter with attitude, but a snack food? Why not? Humor can be endearing or a huge mistake. Just remember, it has a short shelf life. Bragging about the fabulosity of your product or company is a no-no unless you bring it back to the consumer. GE's We bring good things to life may seem like bragging if you look at it just using your left brain, but switch on your right brain and you'll discover that line is actually about the end user. We all have a life, we can all use toasters or cell phones.