Taglines and slogans

What a tagline is, and what a slogan is

A tagline is a short line that sits beside your company name for years and says what the business stands for. A slogan belongs to one campaign and is retired when it ends. A tagline has to survive being read ten thousand times and still be true after a change of services; a slogan only has to work for a season, so it can be sharper.

Neither is a value proposition. The proposition explains; the line refers to something the reader already knows. A tagline on its own, with no clear proposition behind it, is decoration.

Who this is for, and who should not bother

Most small businesses do not need a tagline and are better served by a plain sentence that says who they are for and what changes. If a stranger cannot tell from your home page what you sell, a clever four-word line will not rescue it and will usually make it worse. I will say this on the first call if it applies, and point you at the value proposition or at home page copy instead.

A tagline earns its cost when your name does not say what you do, when the line has to appear on vehicles, uniforms, signage or packaging where there is no room for a sentence, or when you are about to spend real money on a rebrand and the line will be set in the design.

A slogan earns its cost when there is a defined campaign with a start and an end, a budget behind it, and several places the same idea has to appear. That work usually sits with campaign copy rather than here.

How twenty become one

Short is hard, and the only reliable method is volume followed by a stated test. Twenty candidates is the working number. Four or five usually survive the first cut, one survives the week, and sometimes none does, in which case I say so and you keep your money for something else.

• The swap test. Put your nearest competitor's name in front of the line. If it still works, the line says nothing about you and it goes.
• The out-loud test. Say it at the end of a phone call. Lines with three stresses in a row, or a word that needs spelling, die here.
• The sign test. Set at the size it will appear on a van door or a business card. Lines that need a comma to work rarely survive being set small.
• The week test. The four survivors go on a wall for a week and are read every day. Cleverness wears out fast, and it is meant to.
• The in-use check. Each survivor is checked against what is already visible in your trade and your market, so you do not adopt a line a competitor or a franchise is already running.

That last check is a plain look at what is publicly in use, and it is not legal clearance. I am not a lawyer and I do not do trademark searches. Before you put a line on signage or apply to register it, have a trademark agent or a lawyer clear it properly. The cost of that check is small next to the cost of repainting a fleet.

What you get

The twenty candidates. All of them, grouped by the idea each is built on. Seeing the rejected nineteen stops the question being reopened every time somebody new joins.

The scored shortlist. Four or five lines with each test marked against them, and a paragraph on what each commits you to and what it rules out.

The recommendation. One line, with the reasoning, plus the in-use check for it and for the runner-up.

Usage notes. One page: capitalisation, punctuation, whether it takes a full stop, where it may appear beside the name and where it must not, and the two or three places it should never be used at all.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A mobile tire-fitting service with five vans wants a line for the van doors, the invoices and a radio spot. Twenty candidates are written across four ideas: speed, coming to you, safety, and price. The swap test removes nine immediately, because every fitter in the province can claim fast and friendly service.

Four go on the wall. Two fail the out-loud test within two days, one because it depends on a pun that has to be seen rather than heard. The survivor is a plain five-word line about tires being changed where the vehicle is parked. The in-use check finds a near-identical line already running for a franchise in another province, so the runner-up is taken instead and the usage notes record why. The radio spot gets its own slogan with an end date, because the offer inside it ends in March.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What the line is for, where it will appear, and whether you need one at all. No charge, and this is the call where I most often say no.
2. A fixed price in writing. Scope, whether it is a tagline or a campaign slogan, and the price agreed before anything starts.
3. Reading. Your positioning and messages where they exist, your competitors' lines, and the places yours has to fit. Three working days.
4. Twenty candidates and the first cut. Written, tested, and sent with the scoring. About four working days.
5. The week on the wall, then delivery. The shortlist lives with you for a week, we talk once at the end of it, and the recommendation, the in-use check and the usage notes follow.

Two and a half to three weeks from first call to a final line, most of which is the waiting week.

What it costs

Quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call, agreed in writing, and not changed without your agreement. The price depends on whether a tagline or a campaign slogan is wanted, how many places the line must work in, and whether the positioning behind it already exists. A line written after a finished value proposition costs less and turns out better. The pricing page explains how fixed pricing works.

What happens next

A new line usually forces a look at the page it sits on, which is the home page it sits above. Businesses that discover during the twenty candidates that they call their own services three different things go on to brand vocabulary. And where the line has to hold up across a whole run of advertising, the campaign version of this work carries the idea into every place it appears. This piece of work is complete on its own, and nothing further is assumed.