Return on Intention

There seems to be a rash of meaningless slogans going around. Don’t get me wrong, a good slogan or tag line is hard to craft. It should be meaningful and serve as an accurate indicator of what you or your product stands for. Often a good slogan or tag line is aspirational, and can call out the unique selling proposition of a brand or organization. It can be a hard to encapsulate so much meaning into a short, memorable phrase that is clear to both the market and the members of the organization. This is really easy to get wrong. All this aside, there should be some pretty obvious indicators that can point out when this process has gone awry. The first indicator that a tag line should be reconsidered is, well, if the phrase actually doesn’t mean anything. “The Difference” is a good example. I saw a sign on the back of a truck today that read “Our people make the difference”. What does that even mean? What difference? It could be a bad difference. Really all this sign conveys is that they have people, and that creates a difference. That is hardly unique or even slightly compelling. That slogan will not help me remember or choose a service provider. If you have a difference, say what it is in terms that are meaningful to your customers. Just a thought.

Tags: difference, slogan, tag line

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 31st, 2009 at 1:23 am and is filed under Doin' it right, Total Quality Mistake. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.