Taglines have been a part of most brand communications for more than a century. Ivory Soap’s “99.9 Percent Pure: It Floats” date to before 1900.

Whether you call them taglines, slogans, or positioning statements, they are almost manditory for today’s brand. These five-to-eight-word phrases are supposed to differentiate your business, product, service or event from your competition. But just as often, they just state the obvious.

Y2 Marketing, a network of no-nonsense marketing consultants founded by Richard Harshaw and Edward Earle, have a great way to evaluate taglines. 

After hearing or reading a tagline for the first time, if your reaction is “Well, I should hope so!”, you’re hearing or seeing a platitude, not an effective tagline.

There’s a moving company whose tagline is “the caring moving company”. Isn’t your reaction to that line, “well, I should hope so!”? That’s a platitude.

Effective taglines are difficult to craft. That’s why so many turned out by wordsmiths sound good but mean nothing.

But taglines can be evocative, define a context, or express an idea if it’s based on the central core of your organization. There’s where you should start. Once you’ve captured the essence of your organization in a tagline, subject it to the “well, I should hope so” test.

If you discover your best efforts result in a platitude, I suggest you look to your business core. Perhaps it needs to be rethought and revamped to reflect a truly differentiated offering. Or perhaps just don’t adopt one at all.

Martin Jelsema

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2. Three Tagline Traps You’ll Want to Avoid
3. Another lame tagline exposed
4. Nonprofit taglines: no better than commercial slogans
5. Tagline Panic Setting in at American Airlines?