Know-How Exchange : Taglines/Names

The most important first step in writing a tagline is to understand (a) your target audience, and (b) the emotional benefit they'll get when they do whatever it is you want them to do.

Taglines should be all about the emotional payoff for your very specific primary target audience, not so much about what you're selling or what you're going to do with their money.

Michael Goodman hits the nail on the head.

Just to provide you with a little more to think about, some taglines will simply provide a generic statement that describes the marketing category, segment or niche their brand should occupy, e.g. “The General Store, Dry Goods and Feed”. And while this direct approach can be effective, it doesn’t really give the consumer a meaningful way to separate one store from competitor stores.

Then there is the benefit statement. Rosser Reeves is largely credited with creating what he called the “unique selling proposition’ or USP, the one reason the product is needed or is better than its competitors. M&M’s "melt in your mouth, not in your hand." Much better than just a category description.

Lastly, Ries & Trout created the positioning statement, e.g. “NyQuil, The Night Time Cold Medicine”. Using the positioning tagline approach, NyQuil re-positioned all other cold medicine brands as “day time cold medicine”, a very powerful and profitable communications strategy for NyQuil.

Getting back to your question, why does the client want to include "run, swim, bike". Have they conducted some research that suggests this will support a strong differentiating strategy? If so, what is the differentiating strategy?

I suggest using several keyword phrases in a google search to discover what is already out there is terms of brand and slogan development. As you will discover, using the keyword phrase “Pediatric Tumors Foundations” will produce hundreds of pages from organizations who are probably trying to accomplish goals very similar to your clients goals.

The next step would be to reduce your research to a benefit or positioning statement of any length that clearly communicates your message to your audience. And lastly, shorten this statement to a few words to serve as a meaning tagline.

Hope this helps,

Steve