Are Taglines Timeless?

Key Takeaways: 

• Taglines Still Hold Value: Despite claims that taglines are becoming obsolete, they remain a powerful tool for brand differentiation and emotional connection with the audience. A well-crafted tagline can complement and enhance the brand name.

• Short and Punchy Taglines Work Best: Generally, shorter and punchier taglines are more effective. However, the context and the overall marketing strategy determine the ideal length and content of a tagline.

• AI’s Role in Branding: AI tools like Meta’s LLaMA 3.1, Google’s Gemini, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT are revolutionizing the way taglines are created. These tools offer efficient, high-quality results, making them invaluable resources in the branding process.

• Adaptability and Speed Are Crucial: In today’s fast-paced market, brands must be agile and responsive. Quick and impactful taglines can help brands stay relevant and competitive, especially when created using advanced AI tools.

Introduction

Welcome to “Naming in an AI Age.” As someone born in the 1900s, many might consider me ancient, especially my kids, but some things do stand the test of time. In fact, some of my favorite taglines hail from the late 1900s, also known as the 1990s. Who can forget “Got Milk?,” “I can’t believe it’s not butter!,” or the infamous “Where’s the beef?” But the question in today’s fast-paced digital culture is: Are taglines still relevant? Do we still need that short phrase accompanying our brand name?

The Death of Taglines?

Craig Briggs, a marketing professor, claims that taglines are “dying a painful death.” Are they worth it? What do you think? My perspective is different. Back in my generation, David Ogilvy, a well-known advertising guru, also criticized taglines, calling them distractions. However, I believe that while a name is crucial, each syllable and letter is invaluable real estate. A name can only convey so much. This is where a short, punchy tagline can take some pressure off the name, connecting emotionally with the audience.

The Power of Taglines

When I interned at Dr. Pepper Company during college, we never changed the brand name. Instead, we would update the tagline. The agency at the time, Young & Rubicam, created the tagline “Be a Pepper,” which was a call to action to drink Dr. Pepper. Later, it changed to “Just what the doctor ordered,” which was clever and engaging. The tagline kept the brand name fresh, relevant, and differentiated from competitors.

Iconic Taglines

Think about Nike’s “Just Do It,” Apple’s “Think Different,” L’Oreal’s “Because You’re Worth It,” KFC’s “Finger Lickin’ Good,” or Amazon’s “Delivering Smiles.” These taglines are short, punchy, emotionally appealing, and have stopping power. They show that a well-crafted tagline can be a powerful marketing tool.

Short vs. Long Taglines

In general, shorter and punchier taglines tend to be more effective. However, there are successful longer taglines too. It depends on what you want the tagline to accomplish and how it complements the brand name and overall marketing strategy. For example, Angry Orchard’s visual branding takes some pressure off the written word, allowing more flexibility with the tagline. In contrast, a B2B service related to AI or the cloud might rely more on words due to less visual appeal.

AI’s Role in Tagline Creation

AI has become incredibly capable of generating taglines that can blow you away. With tools like Meta’s LLaMA 3.1, Google’s Gemini, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, creating a focused, effective tagline takes less time and can even yield better results. I recently went through a brand voice exercise with Kami, the founder of Zoetica Media, using AI prompts. The responses were consistently impressive, requiring minimal tweaking.

Brainstorming Taglines

Here are three raw tagline ideas I’ve been playing with for NameStormers:

1. Go like Lightning with a Great Name: Emphasizes speed and effectiveness.

2. Flash into View: Combines speed with eye-catching appeal.

3. Helping You Kick Up a Storm: Conveys disruption, excitement, and impact.

These taglines aim to capture the essence of NameStormers, emphasizing agility, impact, and standout quality.

The Future of Taglines

Taglines remain important, whether short or long. AI will be an invaluable resource in crafting them, making the process faster and more precise. As marketing trends evolve, staying agile and using AI will be crucial for creating effective taglines.

Conclusion

We’d love to know your thoughts. Do you think taglines are worth it? What are some of your favorite taglines? Feel free to share your ideas or email me at mike@namestormers.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

Transcription:

Ashley Elliott (00:04):

All right, well, welcome to naming in an A I Age. As a person born in the 19 hundreds, a lot of people would consider me ancient, my kids especially, but some things do stand the test of time. In fact, some of my favorite taglines are from the late 19 hundreds, AKA 1990s. One of those being got milk. I can’t believe it’s not butter or the infamous, where’s the beef? But the question today, in today’s fast-paced digital culture is, are taglines still a thing? Do we really need that short phrase that accompanies our brand name? Craig Briggs, a marketing professor, actually says, taglines are dying, arriving painful death. Are they worth it? What do you think, Mike? What are your thoughts?

Mike Carr (00:50):

Well, Craig isn’t the only one that’s a little critical of taglines back in my generation, much older than you, Ashley. David Ogilvy was a well-known advertising guru and pundit, and he said, agencies waste countless hours, concocting slogans of incredible fortuity of just worthless, just a distraction. But I don’t agree. I mean, I think a name can only do so much. And each letter, each syllable of a name is just invaluable real estate. So if a name is very focused, if it’s very punchy, if it just does one thing, well, there may be some other attributes or characteristics like describing a little bit more about what the product is or creating more emotional cache and engagement, that if you have a tagline that’s very short and punchy, it takes some of that pressure off the name, it connects emotionally. So when I was an intern during college at Dr.

(01:56):

Pepper Company, we never changed the Dr. Pepper brand. I mean, that brand’s been around for a hundred plus years, but we would change the tag. And so young and Rubicon was the agency, and when I started there, it was Bea Pepper. That was the tagline, right? And they had all kinds of great ads and radio spots and outdoor billboards, Bea Pepper, right? Call to action drink Dr. Pepper. Well, then a little bit later, they changed the tagline to just what the doctor ordered, which is sort of cool and clever. And so the whole idea is the tagline can keep your brand name fresh and relevant and cool and hip. And it also can help you differentiate from your competitors as they sort of change what they’re doing out there in the landscape.

Ashley Elliott (02:40):

Yeah, I think about some that are older and some that are probably newer. And when you think of Nike, just do it that call to action Apple think different. L’Oreal because you’re worth it. I mean, that gets anybody that wants to buy makeup. You’re worth it. You need to indulge on this. Even KFC’s finger licking good. I mean, that’s a call to action. If I ever saw one myself describing how my children after they eat that, or Amazon delivering smiles, if you’ve opened my door most of the time there’s an Amazon package on the other side of that. But what all of these have in common is, like you said, they’re short, they’re punchy, they have that emotional appeal, they have that stopping power. Should a tagline always be short like that, or do you think there’s a time where your phrasing should be longer? I mean, what is the tagline for, are you showing any of your value prop in this? What are your thoughts on that?

Mike Carr (03:30):

I think you’ve got a wide playing field there. In general, I think the shorter and punchier the better. But there are some taglines that are more successful that are a little bit longer. And part of it is what do you want the tag to accomplish? What else is going to be wrapped around the name, right? So you think about names where the packaging is really critical, like Angry Orchards, which we’ve created for Boston Beer. Well, if you look at an Angry Orchard six pack, the tree and the image of this very angry looking apple tree with a few of these really ugly looking apples on, it conveys an awful lot about the brand and the persona and the edginess of it. And so it takes some of the pressure off of quote the written word. And what it also gives you perhaps more runway or a different direction to pursue with respect to copy on package or on your point of purchase materials on the end cap, versus in a totally different situation, you’re selling a B2B service, it has something to do with AI or has something to do with the cloud.

(04:42):

Well then maybe words are going to be more important because the visual elements aren’t as pronounced, they aren’t as obvious. And I want to talk a little bit about AI because I think AI is incredibly capable at coming up with taglines that will blow you away. And we’ve been watching this journey. I mean, the title of this podcast is Naming in the AI world. And so we’ve sort of been watching this evolution a few days ago. Meta announced LAMA 3.1, it’s free, it’s all open source. This is a big deal. They’re sort of shooting away the 20 bucks a month that open AI charges for chat GPT, or you get Claude three for 20 bucks a month too. So they’re raising the competitive ante. But this idea that you can create a very short tagline or a longer tagline that is very focused on exactly what you need it to do with AI’s help in less time and probably even better.

(05:48):

And I went through a brand voice exercise with Kami, who’s the founder at Zoetica Media. She’s down in Houston yesterday, and we went through a series of prompts. It didn’t make any difference whether using Gemini from Google or chat GPT or Claude, it didn’t make any difference. AI was consistently giving you better and better responses as you went through these prompts to get a brand voice that was spot on. You had to do a little bit of tweaking, but it was just amazing. So I haven’t done this yet with taglines. I’ve got three taglines though that I want to throw out. These are pretty raw, and this is my limited effort. So name Stormers, we’ve got the storm in the name right. Mark Schaffer, who’s a guy I follow, I’ve mentioned before. He is a well-known author. He’s just brilliant as a futurist. He talks about how the key to marketing success today, the branding success today and in the future is speed.

(06:42):

This is interesting, right? If you’re not agile and nimble, you’re going to be destroyed. And these big companies aren’t there yet to approve a new ad campaign to approve a new digital campaign. Often it takes weeks or months, whereas their new, smaller competitors are doing it in days or weeks. So we as an agency are very used to this. We have a lot of clients that come to us and they needed a name yesterday or what they thought they had enough time, but then the attorneys that killed it the 11th hour or they found some linguistic problem with it that they weren’t aware of, or the employee naming contest didn’t yield the kind of names they were interested in. Whatever the reason they come to us, and they needed the name yesterday. So we’re used to working pretty quickly. So a tagline for us could be like, go like Lightning with a great name.

(07:34):

Go like Lightning because name Stormers Lightning not real good, but it gets to that speed idea or flash into view. So flash relates to speed, but flash also relates to a name that sort of catches your eye. It grabs your attention. It’s not just about speed. It’s about something that’s very evocative. Or the last one I was playing around with helping you kick up a storm that we’re named Stormers. And when you think about a storm, a storm isn’t like a rain shower, right? It isn’t like a little sprinkle. A storm gets your attention a thunderstorm, you’re going to hear the thunder. You can be in a conference room in a building, you’re going to hear that thunder or you’re going to hear that rain just come pelting down on the office windows, whether you’re on the first floor or the 32nd floor. And so that’s this idea that we want a tagline that conveys this sense of disruption, of excitement, that we’re going to create names that cut through all the clutter like a thunderstorm does, that they’re delivered quickly, and they’ll let you as a client be very agile and very nimble. So I think taglines are important. I’m not sure whether they need to be always short or long. I think AI is going to be an incredible resource if you aren’t using it already. I think it’s going to turn into something that you will never want to do anything like this without at least using in your hip pocket.

Ashley Elliott (08:59):

Yeah, as you were talking about the storm analogies, I was thinking of, man A name’s a Bruin out there and we just were ready for it. The storm’s a Bruin. But we would love to know your thoughts. Do you think taglines are worth it? We would love to maybe even have you share some of your favorite taglines. Where’s the Beef that I shared? Or even just some tagline ideas that you may have. Feel free to reach out to us or email me at ashley@namestormers.com. And you can email Mike at mike@namestormers.com. We’d love to hear your thoughts. Have a great one.

Mike Carr (09:30):

Thanks guys. See you.