Know-How Exchange : Taglines/Names

Dear Rsk.advertize,

Er? I do so hate to be the one to state the incredibly obvious here, but doesn't your question rather defeat the purpose of you being in business?

Let me see if I understand this properly. You're running an ad agency. But you can't come up with a title and tag line?

Really?

Sorry to burst your bubble here but were I your potential client, this admission doesn't make me feel all warm and fuzzy about your abilities to promote my product.

One wonders what your creative people do to earn their daily bread?

If you are truly, truly stuck, just do what everyone else seems to do and name your shop after the names of its main movers and shakers.

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA

Not trying to pile on here, but I do agree with Gary. If you can't advertise and sell yourselves, how can you do that for others?

My suggestion would be to look at your organization itself. Who comes up with the ad strategy? Do you have creative types on board? Are you involving them in the creative process?

It's a crime how often the left-brained business types make all of the creative decisions, and then just shove it off on an artist to 'make it work'.

There are proven, reliable processes that can be employed to reach the solution to the problem you have presented. Those are the same processes that you should be employing to solve your clients' problems as well. It always begins with research and brainstorming.

My recommendation would be to look within your organization and find that creative person who hasn't been allowed to shine. If you don't have someone like that on board, it sounds like you need to hire them.

What's an ad agency without creative people?

Again, I'm not trying to pile on. But this happens a lot, and I'm on a crusade against it.

Take a risk on hiring a creative, right-brained weirdo. You may be surprised at how much money they can make for you. Just make sure you let them into the meeting room and give them the freedom to direct brainstorming sessions.

Gary & aaardvrk hit the nail on the head: if you do any type of branding or brand management, you must come up with your own tagline. If you can't, there's nothing wrong with that -- it just means your core competencies are elsewhere, and it appears you have plenty of them. Don't be what you aren't. Imagine if someone asked me: Why did you call yourself The Brand Mason and I said, "Well, I hired an agency, and they saw my last name and thought of the idea." My case is a lot stronger because I created my name (as well as many others) and can explain and stand by it. But I won't design your logo because I can't (I can only specify the attributes the logo ought to evoke.) You should do the same and you'll be more successful for it.