Crafting an Effective Business Slogan: A Step-by-Step Guide
When launching a new business, coming up with an effective slogan can be as daunting as creating an iconic logo.
Like your brand’s signature colors, an effective slogan has the potential to become your brand’s organic symbol.
Successful businesses craft slogans with a specific objective in mind. These taglines aim to evoke emotions and create a lasting impression on the audience. Brands want their customers to associate a particular feeling with their product, service, or name, which leads to engagement and eventually conversion. A powerful and impactful slogan that vividly describes the brand is the first step in this lengthy process.
What is a Slogan
A slogan is a mission statement distilled into a short, punchy phrase that’s witty and exciting.
Think of slogans as war cries. Specifically created to appeal to a target audience, slogans are meant to convey what you stand for, and what you represent. Like rallying cries, slogans are designed to encourage people to unite under a specific insignia and participate in a common goal.
Slogans can be political, business-related, or mottos for institutions.
In business, slogans appear next to official brand logos, accompany the brand’s marketing, and become catchphrases that aid in brand recall.
Types of Slogans
In business and marketing, slogans come in two distinct categories:
● Advertising Slogans
Also called ad slogans or marketing slogans, these slogans are specific to brand campaigns that run for a specific time, product, or offer.
Examples:
– McDonald’s slogan ‘Look For the Golden Arches!’ ran from 1960 to 1967 when the company wanted its arches to become synonymous with the brand.
– It ran its ‘Do You Believe in Magic?’ campaign to promote Happy Meals from 1992 to 1997.
– During this time, for a brief couple of years, the company also ran a concurrent Happy Meals campaign with a slightly different slogan: Ronald Makes It Magic.
While ad slogans or marketing slogans can change from one campaign to the next, brand slogans or business slogans enjoy a more consistent presence.
McDonald’s brand slogan — I’m Lovin’ It — for example, has been representing the company for the last 20 years. And still going strong.
● Business Slogans
Also known as taglines, business slogans are more permanent than ad slogans. A lot of serious thought and consideration goes into creating effective business slogans that become brand battle cries, of sorts.
Nike’s ‘Just Do It’ is one such slogan that has become more popular than even the brand name itself. You look at the Swoosh and can’t say for sure what popped through your mind first, Nike or Just Do It.
And that is the power of an effective business slogan.
In the steps ahead, we’ll share with you what goes into making one, and what are some critical components of a good business slogan.
Key Traits of a Good Slogan
All good slogans of the world have some key traits in common. From Katniss Everdeen’s ‘If We Burn, You Burn with Us!’ to Disneyland’s ‘The Happiest Place on Earth”, slogans contain powerful statements that convey a singular, clear message.
● Short: Brevity is a key identifier of a good business slogan. Short statements are easier to remember and aid in better recall of your brand message.
● Clear: An effective business slogan will help establish your brand’s core offer to the audience in a simple, uncomplicated way. Determine what you want your brand to be known for, and then say that in the slogan in the simplest way possible.
● Active: Good business slogans use emotive, active language. Urgency, action, and a voice of feeling are necessary ingredients for a successful slogan.
● Memorable: The efficacy of a business slogan lies in its memorability and immediate association with the brand. Short, clear, and witty statements help achieve that goal.
● Timeless: Good slogans don’t have a shelf life. They carry universal meanings that remain relevant to the brand for decades to come.
6 Steps to Creating an Effective Business Slogan
Good business slogans are like good business logos. They aren’t easy to create, but when you successfully create the right one, the result may look deceptively simple.
A brand mantra that rolls right off the tongue and carries just a handful of words often requires weeks of sustained, targeted efforts.
1. Define what your brand stands for
The first step is to clearly outline your business’ core offer. The right answer lies deeper than what you sell or the service you provide.
Find out the problem that you solve for your consumers. What do you offer that others don’t? Convenience? Reassurance? Safety? Truth? Transparency?
On the surface, Uber is a ride-sharing service, but what it actually provides is convenience and comfort. Netflix can be termed as an entertainment brand, but its core offer isn’t good shows; it is entertainment the way you want it: at the place of your choice, at the time you desire.
Some helpful questions that can bring you closer to the answer include:
- What product or service do you provide?
- How does it improve your customers’ life?
- What problem do you solve?
- What values does your company stand for?
- What are some feelings or goals that you adhere to in your business?
Remember that there are no wrong answers in this exercise. The intent is to get all the thoughts out on the paper so you can start getting ready for the next step. Plus, when the rush of the first ideas subsides, clearer answers emerge in the silence that follows.
2. Determine the emotive pull of your brand
When you know what you stand for, it’s time to communicate that through a feeling. As the famous saying goes, people will forget what you said, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel.
As overused as it sounds, there’s hard truth in it. Human beings are hard-wired to respond more strongly to emotions than anything else. That’s why De Beers doesn’t tell you that it sells the best diamonds. It tells you instead that ‘A Diamond is Forever.’
Image Source: jewellermagazine.com
Their emotive pull is eternity and longevity.
What do you want your brand’s core emotion to be? That one feeling that you want to be forever associated with your brand?
Perhaps you want your consumers to feel empowered, sexy, and in control. Maybe you want them to laugh and chuckle with you, feel happy, and at peace.
To determine your brand’s emotive pull, take a look at the shortlisted answers you’ve gathered in the previous exercise and see how each answer makes you feel. Do you see a common theme emerging? One feeling that reappears often?
If so, that’s your brand’s organic pull. If not, and there is more than one feeling vying for the top spot, go back to the shortlisted answers and repeat the process.
3. Study your competition
There are two reasons why you should study your competition as the next step.
- You want to be original and dare not sound like everybody else.
- Before you finalize anything, you want to ensure that others don’t have the same or similar slogans as yours.
In 2005, Barclays got into an advertising fight with a smaller accountancy firm, Cooper Parry, over the use of the slogan, ‘Now there’s a thought.’ Barclays had created an entire marketing campaign around the slogan but never got the time to research if it was used by any other entity.
Cooper Parry, who had been using this tagline for five years sought an injunction against Barclays when they found out what was happening. The court rejected the injunction but both were able to reach a settlement and Barclays went ahead with the tagline.
While Barclays was able to buy out the slogan it needed, a budding startup may not have the funds or means to do so.
Therefore, it’s better to take a look around and spend time learning what’s already in use. It will save you from any potential legal trouble, and will also ensure that your tagline is original and unique to your brand.
Important note: When you arrive at your perfect tagline, trademark it immediately to protect your brand rights.
4. Start writing down your ideas
With your core offer and your emotive pull guiding you forward, start writing down creative and catchy ways to say what you want to say.
Once again, no wrong answers here. Just get everything out on the paper. Don’t stop till you can’t think of anything else.
In your head, imagine a radio or TV commercial of your brand and try out phrases that you’d like to say at the end. How do they sound?
Don’t worry if your taglines are becoming longer, shorter, or going off-track. As long as you can keep them aligned with your core offer and a core feeling, you won’t stray too far.
Remember that the writing process should not be hindered by editing just yet. Don’t try to fix phrases or edit out words. Let your ideas flow and germinate.
5. Use this filter to weed out what doesn’t work
Stephen King, the grand wizard of the horror-thriller genre, the mastermind of frightening stories such as The Misery, The Shining, It, and more, has an equally famous piece of advice when it comes to writing: Kill Your Darlings.
Talking in the context of story writing, Stephen King wants you to delete every passage, paragraph, scene, or dialogue that doesn’t work for your readers — no matter how much you’re in love with that specific thing.
When writing a business slogan, follow King’s advice and remove all iterations of the tagline that don’t work. Anything that’s too superficial, too safe, or too bland needs to go. Even if it sounds good to you.
Use this filter to help you along.
- Too trendy: An effective business slogan must remain a steadfast partner in the business evolution. While it can change as your business grows, it shouldn’t happen often. Brand slogans that use trendy language or syntax that’s only popular in the present often have a short shelf-life and poor brand associations.
- Too long: Brand slogans, as a rule, should be 2-4 words long. MasterCard has a longer slogan but that’s a one-off example. Aim for a short, pithy phrase that you can under the breath.
- Too similar: Strive to be original. That’s all there is to it.
By the time you’re done with this exercise, you should have a couple of strong contenders for the final round. Gather your employees, create a focus group, or run campaigns on social media to figure out which one’s getting the most responses.
6. A/B test your top contenders
The decision to choose your final logo must be based on something more objective than pure gut instinct. A/B testing is a methodical way to go about it.
Take your top 2 slogan choices and create branded versions of each by pairing them with your logo. It’ll help you sort of see more clearly which version looks and feels the best with your other brand elements.
But don’t stop there. Move on to your test audience — it could be your employees, an outside focus group, or even your online consumers — and split them in two. Send each group one version of the branded slogan and study the feedback you receive.
Whatever metrics you set to gauge the responsiveness of your slogan choices — more likes, shares, downloads, or orders — should guide you toward a clear winner.
If there aren’t any clear winners or you’re getting mild responses on both, you may have to go back a few steps and restart the journey. Consider the feedback you get and use that to follow along a more structured path.
10 Brand Slogans That Are Clever Without Being Contrived
We’ve all heard some really bad slogans blaring out of our TV screens at one time or another. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of Barclay’s ‘Now there’s a thought!’ slogan. It may sound okay when seen in the context of the campaign, but if your slogan needs a context to make sense, you probably missed a few key lessons along the way.
Even campaign slogans — which are always temporary — should be complete statements in themselves. All the good ones are.
In this section, we’re sharing some of our all-time favorite slogans that are timeless, cheeky, funny, inspiring, and poignant.
The Takeaway
Slogans are fun soundbites that carry the very serious load of establishing strong brand associations. As you start the process, you’ll learn things about your brand that you probably didn’t know before. Like discovering a new side to someone very close to you. Eye-opening and exhilarating.
As we bid Godspeed to you on this journey, just remember a single, simple takeaway: don’t overthink it. That’s all.