Ad SlogansHow many times have you been in your car with your radio on, gotten out, and hou

Ad Slogans

How many times have you been in your car with your radio on, gotten out, and hours later, had some tingle(广告诗) playing in your head？ This, my friends, is good advertising. That jingle was so catchy that hours after you had been exposed to it, it still lingered. The same can be said of ad slogans. Every day, we are surrounded by car ads, credit card ads, travel ads, food ads, clothing ads...the list goes on.

The Basics

The purpose of the strapline or slogan in an advertisement is to leave the key brand message in the mind of the target (that's you). It is the sign-off that accompanies the logo. Its goal is to stick: "If you get nothing else from this ad, get this...!" A few well-known examples of these slogans include:

- American Express: "Don't leave home without it"

- Apple: "Think different"

- AT&T: "Reach out and touch someone"

- Timex: "Takes a licking and keeps on ticking"

- Wendy's: "Where's the beef？"

- Wheaties: "The breakfast of champions"

Unfortunately, ad slogans don't always work, usually because they are generic, ready-to-wear, off-the-shelf lines that are taken out and shined up, ready to be used again and again when the creative juices have stopped flowing. Dozens of advertisers use them without blinking. Their ad agencies should be ashamed of themselves!

The Perfect Tagline

A perfectly-formed tagline should fulfill several criteria. First, it should be memorable. Memorability has to do with the ability the line has to be recalled unaided. A lot of this is based on the brand heritage and how much the line has been used over the years. But if it is a new line, what makes it memorable？ The big idea should be told in the advertisement. The more the tagline resonates with the big idea, the more memorable it will be.

Guinness used to use the line "Guinness is good for you" until the authorities got after them, saying "Come on! Guinness is stout(烈性啤酒)! It contains alcohol! It can't be good for you! So stop using that claim!" So, the Guinness ad agency came up with a stroke of genius. The line？ "Guinness isn't good for you." A good slogan should recall the brand name, and ideally, the brand name should be included in the line. "My goodness, my Guinness!" works, as does "Coke is it？" On the other hand, "Once driven, forever smitten(深有感触)" does not easily invoke the word Vauxhall—a British car made by General Motors. If it is successful, the line should pass readily into common idiom as a catch phrase, such as "Beanz meanz Heinz" or "Where's the beef？". In addition to a provocative and relevant illustration or story, alliteration(头韵) like Jaguar: "Don't dream it. Drive it.", coined or made-up words (Louis Vuitton: "Epileather"), puns, and rhymes are good ways of making a line memorable. So is a jingle.

A good tagline should include a key benefit: "Engineered like no other car in the world" does this beautifully for Mercedes Benz. "Britain's second-largest international scheduled airline" is a "so what" statement for the late Air Europe. You might well say "I want a car that is engineered like no other car in the world," but it is unlikely that you would say "I want two tickets to Paris on Britain's second-largest international scheduled airline!"

There's a well-known piece of advice in the world of marketing: "sell the sizzle, not the steak." It means to sell the benefits, not the features. Since the tagline is the leave-behind, or the take-away, surely the opportunity to implant a key benefit should not be missed:

- Holiday Inn:" Pleasing people the world over"

- Karry-Lite: "Takes the ' lug' out of luggage"

- Polaroid:" The fun develops instantly"

- The Economist: "Free enterprise with every issue"

Conversely, the following lines have no obvious

A．Y

B．N

C．NG