The Power of a Good Tagline

White work van

To help you get your work-week off to a productive start, we’ve got a business-related post for you today.

Whilst crawling south along the A34 over the weekend, heading towards Newbury and stuck in a traffic jam, I noticed the following van in the lane next to me. What immediately caught my attention was the tagline painted on its back doors. And even though I haven’t decided yet whether I like it or not, I have to admit that it’s done what it was supposed to do: catch my attention and make the company name stick in my brain. Heck, I’ve even checked out the company website already. Tagline creators: give yourself a pat on the back for a job well done.

Our business sucks but it's really picking up

(Note: For any of you concerned about the safety of taking photos on the motorway, please know that traffic was at a standstill due to a crash on the opposite side of the motorway.)

51 comments

  1. Oh and it does remind me of an old line that Electrolux used to use; I recall having come across it in some discussion on international ad campaigns during my MBA. The line is:

    Nothing sucks, like Electrolux.

  2. Hi Shefaly – Exactly! It borders the line of respectability/acceptability. Not that crude really, but something we might be shocked to hear our mothers say. I guess that’s why it sticks in the brain.

  3. Hi QI – Yep, it is really good, isn’t it. I wonder if someone in house came up with it, or if it was dreamt up by a consultant …

  4. If that was a consultants idea, I bet that was a tough one to sell to the client, or really even to bring up as deliverable…

    Consultant: “Here is the tagline you’ve just paid us thousands of pounds to create. Hope you’ve got a sense of humor!”

  5. This just in via from one of our readers via email:

    In response to your blog today, I thought I would share this link:

    http://www.herniamovers.com/

    I saw the truck in Milwaukee a few years ago, and remember their slogan well: “The Potentate of Totin’ Freight”, as if the name alone was not memorable enough.

  6. @ JP –

    Well, I think you’re the first on chickenmonkeydog to give a shout out to Columbus, so right on there. Go Ohio! Or something like that anyway …

    As for the photo of the couch, you can see it in a larger format on the photos page of this blog.

  7. Talking about impactful taglines, this comes to mind:

    Viagra – the quicker pecker upper

    with obvious reference to Bounty(TM), the brand of strong paper towels.
    Sadly, the marketers of Viagra didn’t quite find that tagline useful enough.

  8. Hi CheekyMonkey –

    Maybe the Viagra people were worried that given that Bounty is for cleaning us household messes, they didn’t want to overly-associate their product with that concept. Could bring about concerning brand-confusion.

  9. The crash was caused by someone else who was taking picures of awesome taglines, I’d bet.

  10. Greetings, I can definitely respect your blog here, however I have a slightly different opinion. At any rate have a good holiday.

    Thanks!
    Lou

  11. @ Spammers leaving comments on this post:

    Here at chickenmonkeydog, we realize that this particular post does quite well in some search engine listings. As you might be able to ascertain here, we are not looking for opportunities to accept spam comments. We prefer genuine, on topic and intelligent additions to the conversation here.

    Thank you!

  12. Hi Woodin,

    Good thing you told us that in a comment. We love getting comments that effectively insult the current look and feel of our blog.

    Much appreciated!

  13. Great Blog I love your content. I have been learning internet marketing for the past year now and always seem to find there is still so much more to know. Thanks for the post I will be stopping back again.

    Lisa

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *