How Much Good Can a Tagline Really Do?
The answer is much if it resonates enough to have your audience remember why it is you do what you do the next time they are ready to donate time, talent or treasures. (Or in the case of for-profits, when they are finally ready to make that purchase.)
What Makes a Great Tagline?
Great taglines are underused in my opinion. When I say great taglines, I mean the kind that consist of a double entendre or somehow pack such a punch that they get to the heart of what you do in just a few words…. are catchy… without being cliché.
A Great Tagline Can Commit Your Mission to Memory.
As I work with more and more nonprofits, I find that often times what they do is the most elusive. (Or at least how they communicate about it is.) Yes, it is implicit that nonprofits are doing something good for someone or something, but figuring out how to quickly (and effectively) sum up what differentiates their work from another is a problem for small and big nonprofits alike.
How to Come up with a Great Tagline.
Six steps to developing a killer tagline that can convert skeptics to brand believers and commit your org’s mission to your audiences memory.
First of all you should understand the difference between types of taglines. For my clients, I put them into two buckets: “descriptive taglines” and then simply “taglines”.
Understand what kind of tagline makes sense for your organization’s culture. Which style will best suit your organization is a question of culture. For example, a religious charity is more likely to adopt a descriptive tagline than, say, a retail business. Descriptive taglines are a slightly more “straightforward” approach, but still highly effective. Descriptive taglines are also well suited for brands don’t have much recognition or have done an exceeding poor job communicating in a concise way what they do in the past.
Hire a professional. Even if you want to take a more active role in the development of a tagline, you should engage someone to help you at the very least be a sounding board. Ideally this person is someone who does this for a living, has lots of experience doing it, and preferably doesn’t report directly to you at your organization.
Start with the mission. When working on a tagline project I nearly always start with the mission. If a company or organization doesn’t have one, I try to get them to adopt one.
Less is more. I am a big believer in this one and it is often one of the biggest pitfalls not only in tagline projects, but in identity projects in general. Many clients want the tagline or logo to say too much. Unfortunately, audiences just aren’t that gracious with their time!
Avoid clichés. Avoid using empty words like Good, Better, Best. You are working with a very limited amount of space and your audience’s attention span is even shorter so there isn’t room to use words that are either codependent or don’t mean anything to the reader. As I write this I can’t stop thinking of Salvation Army’s tagline, “Doing the Most Good”. I’ve often driven behind a big red truck thinking …do they really do the most good? To me, that is so vague. If it means being the largest nonprofit in the world then I guess technically…that is almost true….in November 2013 Forbes Magazine cited Salvation Army as the 2nd largest nonprofit in the world under United Way for the second year in a row. That said, I am still not sure what the most good means exactly. Doing the most good for who, why and to what end? Just being the largest doesn’t compel me as a donor.
Get to the Heart of Why. American Heart Association (who also made Forbes’ list at #19) adopted a tagline that has it all…“Learn and Live”. A.) It is short, does the job is three words. B.) It gets to the Why and the How, speaks to prevention and gets to the real benefit of the work they are doing C.) It has Double Meaning/an appropriate play on words.
Remember, a brilliant tagline can speak volumes about what you do in a way that your audience can remember.
–aimee heimbinder, marketing & design consultant, Consequence of Innovation
Back to all posts
