importance of taglines for brands

What is a Tagline?

Tagline can be mentioned as a catchphrase which defines a brand/business. It’s an essential part of the branding as the audience remembers your brand from its tagline.

Tagline can be a single word or a sentence but the drill is to be the shorter the better. Your potential consumers are not Sherlock, don’t give them a task to deduce the brand message. As easy as it sounds, keep it short, simple, to the point and define the unique preposition of your brand.

There are many brands who haven’t changed their taglines since inception and others went on a spree to change them. For an ideal tagline, keep in mind that it should be timeless ie: if it lasts a generation or more.

Target Group

Identify your target audience as to whom you are delivering your service and message. The language you choose majorly depends upon your target group as how they communicate. For example: Pepsi, is consumed by many but it is largely youth-oriented made evident with its recent tagline - Har Ghoont Mein ‘Swag’. ‘Swag’ is a slang which is popular among youth and not among elderly. It doesn’t fit or sound appropriate for that target group.

How It Should Be?

Writing tagline might get mind-boggling sometimes but the process of writing tagline is a simple process. Try not to invest all your time into cracking a tagline. Yes, it’s important and like any other campaign, this too needs brainstorming. Just figure out your target audience, your tone and what your brand/product conveys.

Though, it’s not a compulsion for taglines to always be witty, it must associate well with your brand and its USP. There is a trick to crack a perfect tagline.

There are 3 easy steps to write a crisp and powerful tagline. The process is like an inverted pyramid. Starts with the bulk and ends with the most relevant information.

Write everything that comes to your mind upon hearing about the brand. Dump the USP and other features, each and every thing. What incites your mind about the brand, is it a story or a milestone? Is it the best service of the world? Why your brand is better than the competitor? Is the brand loved by millions or hundreds? Whatever comes to your mind, write it down, doesn’t matter how irrelevant it might look while writing because it is helpful for the next step.

Now is the time to trim out the unnecessary details and write it more concisely. Frame a structure of the tagline. Remember, ‘The Shorter the Better’. Long sentences won’t work here so try to think how you can shrink the whole para into 4-5 words max.

This step is to refine the previously written lines into more refined way. At this step, you can further explore relevant phrases, idioms, proverbs or slangs etc. and fit your brand message into them. Even though you are left with one word, go ahead and analyse if it aligns with the brand overall.

Additionally, you can refine, retouch and polish till it gets approved. Write and read like a consumer and not like an Ad-Man. Read and analyse, see if it incites your own consumer mind or not. If it doesn’t work on you, it probably wouldn’t work on the masses either.

Concluding, writing a tagline is a simple yet overwhelming task. The things to keep in mind are to align your audience and message, keep it simple and short, make it timeless and easy to recall.