Know-How Exchange : Taglines/Names

Be creative -- do different things in your own life and you will think differently and spawn a creative slogan.

Slogan is nothing but creative expression of a thought.
1. The first step is to have clarity of thought. What do you want to say? You can write this in the most 'uncreative' fashion, if that be the case, and park it aside. Rethink if this is indeed the thought required. Go through the creative or marketing brief again and again till you find and zero-in on an unpolished statement of desired thought. Write this out.
2.Now you got to find a way to express it creatively. This is where your life experiences, language skills and lateral thinking (you may refer to DeBono's references on acquiring this skill) will help. You should consider factors like brevity, connect with target audiences, distinctiveness and memorability. An expression that could stay on the lips.
3. Test. Check it out with someone who understands what you're doing and who you think can be an unbiased as well as an informed bouncing board.
4. Recraft it if required and present. Explain your rationale before you present your slogan. It has a much better chance of success- you would have a few nods going for you before you announce the slogan.

Writing slogans (or taglines)... good ones anyway... requires a key insight into the audience.

That's an insight derived from knowledge of a) the audience and b) the product/company/cause. The insight is found where the audience in terms of their fundamental desires intersects a singularly defined Point of Difference of the product in that category.

Walmart, for example: for families who want to be sure they're not paying too much for anything, Walmart is the discount merchandiser who consistently offers general merchandise at the lowest price because it has the power of tremendous volume coupled with the greatest selection.

Now, what's the Walmart tag? "Always the low price. Always." Though I made up the specifics of this positioning statement, the elements are always the same:

-the audience defined by a key insight
-the category of business
-the singular point of difference
-the reason to believe

If you can thoughtfully articulate these things for any business or product or brand or company or cause, you can develop a good tagline. An effective tag is derived from such a positioning statement. It's pithy. It appeals to the target audience in an key way, preferably triggering an emotional response. And, the best ones are not see-say. That is, they don't simply describe. They do an end run around what's simply descriptive to nail a real truth to which the defined audience will respond.

The Discovery Channel's new tag is a great example: "The World is Just Awesome." It doesn't try to tell you about their programming. It knows people who are curious and crave intellectual stimulation will be inspired by those few words. That's the essence of good tagline writing.

Good advice above. Also, get a good Thesaurus. I have seen many ideas spawned simply by adding new parallell-words to the mix.

Jennifer P.
XPRT Creative