A great tagline (1962) that helped Avis triple market share in 4 years.
Last week I was counseling a university brand manager who confided her concerns that the internal stakeholders of her organization – faculty, staff members, students, alumni – were beginning to believe that their tagline was, in fact, their brand.
She was right to be concerned.
Taglines aren’t really required for great campaigns. Lots of organizations that have effective marketing programs don’t use them. But a strong tagline can do wonders for a brand campaign by offering an enticing and memorable preview of what differentiates your brand.
Maybe even more importantly, they provide a rallying cry that internal stakeholders use to help articulate a shared vision: A clear focal point, a source of pride, an intriguing introduction to the value your organization provides for its audiences.
I’m thinking of Washington State University’s tagline, which was developed in 2000 and is still being used nine years later: “World Class. Face to Face.” For this statewide organization, it has been an internal statement of pride about the unique value that WSU provides students, and a declaration of what truly differentiates the organization in the marketplace.
Another really successful tagline is “Defy Convention,” used by Clarkson University for more than five years. It grabs attention, it’s intriguing, and it hints at the unique attributes and attitude of this, the smallest nationally ranked research university in the nation.
Then there is “what’s your dream?” that has inspired thousands of Corpus Christi students (as well as legislators and donors!) for more than nine years and while enduring through the changes of successive presidents at Del Mar College.
My personal favorite is still The University of Maine, Presque Isle, “North of Ordinary” which has served this tiny campus in the North Maine Woods well for about ten years. It certainly gets noticed – an important function for a tagline – but at the same time it defines the organization’s fierce pride in excellence in what they do, based on one of the defining characteristic of their brand – it’s geography.
Because good taglines are compelling, it’s easy for internal stakeholders to begin thinking that the tagline IS the brand. But in each one of the outstanding examples above, the tagline only hints at the brand, and doesn’t encompass the fullness of what differentiates each organization, and the unique value that each provides for its audiences.
So it’s important to constantly reinforce the brand platform – which states not only the brand promise, but the primary attributes that allow your organization to deliver on your promise better than anyone else – among internal constituencies. It’s easy enough to do: posters outlining “Our Core Values” throughout campus; periodic articles on the intranet and the faculty/staff newsletter that simply state your brand platform; internal awards that honor those who exemplify the brand attributes.
Our clients have also come up with some unusual and incredibly fun, interactive ways to make the brand platform come to life for faculty, staff, students, and alumni, and we’ll recount some of those in upcoming posts.
April 13, 2009 at 3:16 am
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April 13, 2009 at 6:05 am
Yes, and a point I probably should have mentioned in my post is that taglines NEED to be part of the creative development process. If you want a tagline that is fresh, intriguing, interesting, and on-strategy, get a team of experienced creative specialists to create it. Never, ever let the CEO or administrative team develop a tagline, even though they will try to do it themselves, and may even pressure your team to take their ideas.
April 14, 2009 at 9:16 am
I teach an advertising course at SUNY New Paltz and I stress to my students that taglines represent the marketers attempt to summarize their positioning. The tough thing is to create a line that encompasses all we want people to know, feel and think about our brand when they see that line. So, the hard work is making those strategic decisions before a line ever gets written. Like any brand, if a the key stakeholders understand what the brand stands for, then every piece of communication, including a tag, delivers on that message.
April 14, 2009 at 10:07 am
David:
Couldn’t have said it any better! Your students are way ahead of the game to be getting insights like these.
One of the biggest challenges we find with our creative teams is to come up a tagline that’s new and fresh enough so that it generates interest, yet is still on strategy. Sometimes quite a feat, which typically requires generating literally hundreds of possible ideas, then winnowing them down based on the brand strategy to 2 or 3 that we then refine and fine-tune. Lots of work for just a few choice words.
On another note, I know that New Paltz was looking last year to develop/launch their own brand campaign. I hope that is going well!
April 16, 2009 at 7:40 pm
As a writer who specializes in higher education marketing communications, I spend a lot of time coming up with taglines. I think the one I came up with that I liked the best was for the Culinary Institute of America. They were working on a brand that would stress their primacy in their market–the Harvard of culinary schools–but also stress their accessibility, as they were facing a great deal of competition from other schools who were “branding” them as too elite and expensive. The line I came up with–We Speak Food–had a nice duality in that it suggested that when “we” speak food, the world listens (which they do, as the CIA is top of the heap), but also “we speak food” meant to the prospective student that here was a place where you would be heard and welcomed for your interests.
I think the tagline sometimes precedes the branding, or perhaps reinforces, at different intervals, different facets of the branding. For me, it’s a fun challenge and I miss it when a school decides to do without.
April 17, 2009 at 6:11 am
Alan:
I love the Culinary Institute tagline! (What a great organization – my nephew John studied there and is building a great career based on the skills and credentials he got at CIA!) It does everything a great tagline is supposed to do: it’s fresh, unexpected, has confidence and plenty of attitude, and assumes a clear leadership position. I also think the use of “we” achieves exactly what you wanted it to.
I think it’s dicey if the tagline “precedes” the brand platform, since it should be based on a pretty clear strategy. But no question that the tagline should be the first element in creative development, since it is so powerful in guiding and shaping the way the brand is expressed is design and messaging.
Like you, our creative team is sorely disappointed when a client chooses not to employ a tagline, but a good solid “campaign theme” sometimes is a reasonable replacement. Old Dominion’s “Built for the Modern Mind” is an example of this approach.
Nice, nice work at CIA!
April 17, 2009 at 6:17 am
Alan:
Omigod…in thinking about your great tagline, a whole series of incredible potential campaigns just started flowing through my head! What a fun campaign that would be to implement!