Mention tagline to someone, and invariably they’ll connect it to a business tagline and how that business benefits you, the end user.
And that makes sense. After all, a tagline is one of the first chances your business gets to make an impression on a prospective customer or employee. Get a great tagline, and it can jump you way ahead of the competition in just a few words.
Think of the very best taglines, and how their simplicity stays with you long after your first touch-point with them.
Three brands, three taglines, three instant impact messages. Nike’s “Just do it” slogan is so ingrained into our everyday lives, we know what the words are referring to when we hear them.
LG’s promise of life being good when you own their products talks to our desire of less work, more enjoyment and personal moments. And everyone knows the Apple “Think different” campaign as one of the reasons the brand has built up one of the most loyal customer bases in the world.
What makes these taglines, and others like them, work is that they avoid clutter and confusion. Instead of trying to be smart, all three of them remain simple, because that’s all that’s really needed.
You get the message right away, and that high impact reaction is all the brand needs to start your love affair with them.
But it’s not just businesses that can benefit from taglines.
You Have to Be More Than the Words You Create
If you take a look at my home page, you’ll see a large image of a serene scene, with the tagline “there’s more to life than social media”.
While I wouldn’t claim to be as creative as the people that came up with the three examples highlighted above, it’s a simple message that tells you what this blog’s goal is – to go beyond social media and provide the type of personal content that I hope connects with the reader.
I changed that tagline about 6-8 months ago, if I recall – it used to be “The human side of media and the social side of marketing”. While that tagline related to the type of content I was putting out then, it’s not the case today.
Since changing the tagline, I’ve had quite a few people reaching out to tell me it’s one of the reasons they dug into the content once arriving on the home page. Their reason for doing so? It’s not salesy, and it connected to their wish to read content that wasn’t just about social media, or marketing, etc.
Given that’s the direction I wanted to move this blog in, that was music to my ears.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Your tagline needs to tell your story. How well are you telling yours? #branding” quote=”Your tagline needs to tell your story. How well are you telling yours? #branding”]
It also showed the importance of having a good tagline for your blog. Much like a business uses a tagline to create interest around their product, your tagline needs to create interest around you.
Whether it’s on a blog, or the little bio that’s on your Twitter account, or even just the way you interact with people when they ask you what motivates you, it needs to be clear, punchy and true to you and your goals.
Is Your Tagline Really About You?
To highlight just how important a good tagline is, and why its message needs to be conveyed on first touch if you want a second chance, I’ve gathered up some examples of how my friends and connections are highlighting what they do.
I’d love for you to share in the comments after this post what the tagline says to you, and whether it made you want to know more, either about the person or business.
I’ll then ask the folks whose taglines I’m using to pop over to read your thoughts – it’ll be interesting to see if your initial reactions marry to the goals they have for the tagline. Note: this isn’t a “critique”, I’m curious to see how people read taglines differently, based on perception and background.
These are a mix of business and personal taglines – over to you (if the image is too small, you can click on it to expand to full size).
