People. Technology. Solutions.

Don’t even get me started on the three-word construction. (And never mind that I just wrote a three-separate-words tagline for a client.  That’s different.)

The structure is very overused. But if you can find three really good words, sometimes it works pretty well. That, of course, is a big but.

In Vision’s case, they managed to land on the three most generic, meaningless, vague, overused words in the business lexicon. Even worse, if you go to their website, you’ll see that they compound the sin by heading the section in which they explain each word in the tagline, “Our Difference”. Wow.

This tagline is more like the beginning of a list of the most fundamental, cost-of-entry requisites for operating any enterprise. Not operating it well. Just operating it at all.

“Let’s see, first, we’re going to need some . . . people! YES, people. Then, in order for the people to do pretty much anything, we’re going to have to equip them with technology. Now we’re cooking! Armed with both people AND technology, we’ll be able to solve our clients problems, or, to put it in noun form, we’ll provide solutions!

As opposed our competitors. Yep. That’s it. That’s Our Difference.What other company can credibly make such a claim?”

Help me.

What I’m suggesting here applies instead to branding/positioning taglines that are intended to accompany the logo for many years.

And what I’m suggesting is this: That these taglines ought not to be viewed as separate from the logo. Instead, a logo and tagline ought to be considered one unified element, to be designed together. In fact, the choice of tagline should precede the design of this logo/tagline element because both the meaning and the appearance of the tagline should have considerable impact on how the logo should look and feel so that the finished logo/tagline express a single, consistent brand vibe. There should be, if you’ll excuse the word, synergy.

By considering the logo and tagline to be one element, it ensures that the tagline will appear every time the logo appears, which is precisely what should happen with the tagline. Any less visibility than that squanders the power of the tagline.

Of course, this level of commitment to the tagline puts more pressure on the advertiser to choose a really good tagline. Which may be the most compelling reason of all  to take this approach.

The only argument I can imagine against this view would be that there are certain contexts or environments where it is desirable to see the logo but not the tagline. I can’t think of a single one. Can you?

Life Opens Up When You Do.

I confess I didn’t really process the content of the commercial up to when the tagline showed up, so that might explain why I’m puzzled. But I doubt it. All I could figure out is that maybe they’re saying, when you brush with Oral B, it protects you from bad breath (one of the ostensible benefits of Oral B), and so your social world “opens up” because you’re not driving people away with stinky breath. Could that be it?

So, kudos for an intriguing, arresting tagline. Points off, however, for bafflingness.

To the extent that banks truly understand in how little regard they are held, it makes committing to a tagline a big challenge. To a hostile audience, a tagline can become just a setup line for some expression of hostility on the part of customers.

Chase What Matters.

“Yeah, right, like your bottom line for instance?” “It sounds like greed in sheep’s clothing.” “Chase what matters to whom, you evil leeches?”

Citi Never Sleeps. “Yeah, because they’re at it 24/7, cooking up new ways to screw us.”

With this in mind, I’d like to consider two Bank taglines that have caught my attention recently. I may have mentioned one of them in an earlier post, but I really don’t feel like digging into the archives, so if there’s some redundancy here, cut me some slack. Maybe what I have to say bears repeating, yes?

Fifth Third Bank’s tagline is  The Curious Bank.

At first, I wasn’t taken with this line. Ever since they came up with their current brand name, I’ve been curious how such an unpronounceable name could ever have made it through the decision-making process. So that’s what I thought of first when I initially saw this tagline. “Hmm, yes, curious, indeed, that a bank could be so stupid as to choose this unpronounceable name. To speak nothing of the fact that “third” and “fifth” are generally the places that losers come in, trailing those who came in first and second.”

However, as happens with many good taglines, the full meaning of the line is only revealed over time as the advertising campaign plays out. Now that I’ve had time to experience some of that campaign, I like the sentiment the tagline expresses. It feels more open and less arrogant that most banks feel. Of course, they face the same problem that every bank faces. If your tagline feels sort of customer-friendly, it immediately, automatically strains credibility. Because anyone familiar with the business model upon which banks are built knows that their regular old retail customers are, from a purely business perspective, the enemy. And those who aren’t familiar with the bank business model will still know that such a customer-friendly tagline is almost certainly a lie, because we’ve all experienced first hand how dismissive, unforgiving, and inhuman banks are in their treatment of even their most loyal, longstanding customers. Of course there are outliers, people who don’t have this loathing for banks. My sister, for instances, loves her bank. Of course, she also loves the federal government, so go figure.

At the risk of making this discussion of The Curious Bank all about me, I must inject this: The tagline reminds of me of a tagline I tried like crazy to sell to Pearle Vision Centers way back when they were a thriving enterprise. My good friend and hero, the late Scott Ferraiolo, had written their iconic tagline, Nobody Cares For Eyes More Than Pearle, and I had made it my mission to supplant that tagline with one of my own. The line I advocated for was Nosey Eyecare. Basically the same thought as The Curious Bank, the idea being that the more we know about you, the better we can serve you. Ironically, the client squinted at, and ultimately couldn’t see, the brilliance of this line.

The other bank that got my attention is Ally Bank. Their tagline is

No Nonsense. Just People Sense.

This is an even more audacious, hard-to-buy line than even Fifth Third’s. No nonsense? Really? At a BANK? And people sense on top of it?
Get outta here. Who you kiddin’?

What I like about these lines is that, in theory, they both give their respective banks something to live up to and be held accountable for. If either of these banks could actually fulfill on their promise, wow, that would be unprecedented in banking history.

Aside from the small matter of not being credible, I like what they’re trying to convey. It’s a step in the right direction. And in both cases, the campaigns these lines anchor seem to be providing some reason to believe the tagline, or at least to consider suspending belief for a little while, until it becomes apparent that it’s all a big lie, as usual.

Hopefully, this problem will continue to interfere with my blogging stuff.

I’m not an Angie’s List fan. My experience with this service has been very bad. Three different times I chose to go with a company that was very positively reviewed by Angie’s List, and in every case the service I got was terrible. Not mediocre or less than satisfactory. Terrible.

For the sake of this post, let’s assume my experience was an anomaly. Assuming that, let’s talk about the tagline. In case you’ve forgotten it, (which would be understandable), their tagline is (yawn):

Angie’s List  Reviews You Can Trust.

This line commits what I consider a cardinal sin, not just for taglines, but for advertising in general. It’s about that word, “trust”. My recommendation is that this word NEVER be invoked in an advertising context. Trust is not something you can tell someone to do or have and then expect them to do it. Trust is only earned. It doesn’t come about any other way, least of all as a result of the company telling you to trust it.

So, obviously, I hate this tagline for that reason alone. But there’s another reason, having to do with timidity or spinelessness or something similar, of the line. As it happens, Angie’s List has a headline on their website, (or at least on the website as portrayed in one of their commercials), that makes a very similar point to that of their tagline. But is SO MUCH better. It should be their tagline. The line is . . .

Ridiculously Reliable Reviews.

First, this line invokes “reliability” rather than “trust.” Much better. Reliable is much easier to substantiate credibly. I’m not automatically suspect at the mention of “reliable” the way I am with “trust.”

Just as important, the word “ridiculously” renders the line so dang human. Suddenly, Angie’s List isn’t some sterile, faceless sort of corporate brand, but rather, a kind of funny, likable brand pal. How could they have failed to realize the superiority of this as a tagline?

I’ll tell you how. They’re chicken. They had the courage to use it on the website, but they just didn’t quite have the guts to commit, to be real with the tagline itself. This is the Law of Centropy in action. Advertising may start out at the edges (you remember “edgy” advertising) but there are powerful, foolish forces at work within the process, and the industry, that pull ideas toward the center, trimming edges and rounding off angles.

Angie, Angie, Angie. What a squandered opportunity.

For example, I just heard on the news about a new enterprise called Scribble Press. It’s a retail concept in which kids come to the store, create and “publish” their own books. It’s a nice concept, encouraging kids to be creative and all that. The situation begs for a tagline that suggests or expresses the emotional benefit of having your kids participate in this activity. But no, the opportunity is squandered. Instead, what we get is three words summing up the process:

Imagine. Create. Publish.

Yawn.

Yes, that’s what happens. But isn’t it far more important to communicate what happens as a result of this happening? What about the effect on the child and the child-parent bond? This is a far more compelling topic for the “tagline” than this sort of nuts and bolts summary of the three-step process. Imagine a manufacturing company having a tagline that consisted of three words summing up the process that takes place within their factory:

Design. Fabricate. Assemble.

Not very inspiring,  differentiating or evocative.

Scribble Press bears a similarity to Build-A-Bear workshops. Build-A-Bear reveals a deeper understanding of the value and function of a tagline, to a point. They took the trouble to come up with a good tagline expressing an emotional benefit:

Where Best Friends Are Made.

But then, they drop the ball by failing to imprint the tagline, using it only occasionally in their various marketing communications.Why isn’t it permanently attached to the logo, wherever the logo appears?

It all seems so simple and obvious to me. Invoke the power of a tagline by first investing in finding a really good one, and then actually using it. Why is this so elusive to so many?

I do a lot of naming projects in addition to tagline projects. It is SUCH a subjective thing, which allows for EVEN MORE dumb and goofy thinking than happens in trying to choose a tagline. Not to pick on banks, but I’d love to have been in the room when the agency was trying to sell Fifth Third Bank to the client. Did they have Daffy Duck lead the presentation? The walls must have been soaked in spit, right?

And BMO Harris Bank? (See my comments about three or four posts ago.)

I feel like I have an unfair advantage in the experience department, as far as the art of naming goes. This comes from the vast amount of time and effort I put into coming up with band names back when I was attempting to achieve rocknroll stardom. My bandmates and I spent far more time arguing the merits of this or that name than we ever did actually rehearsing.

Meanwhile, I had years of practice in this maddening exercise before I even got into ad biz.

Here are my two absolute rules, naming-wise:

1. Don’t have a name that’s just made up of letters.

2. Don’t use one of those danged automated naming programs that just chops up words into syllables and recombines them endlessly and randomly. Oh, the lack of humanity!

This is what passes for work with me at times.

John Deere  Nothing Runs Like A Deere.

Trane It’s hard to stop a Trane.

You have ten minutes. Ready? Begin.

I haven’t done the research to prove this, but it seems like the trend is continuing, if not accelerating. The industry-wide epiphany I predicted in my AdWeek column, the one in which taglines, and language in general, will be re-discovered, and will rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes, won’t occur for another five or ten years. First, the industry has to get this stupid impulse out of its system, and this takes time. All those brands who simply follow well-established trends haven’t yet jumped on the band wagon. They will need to see more of the brands they try to copy or emulate dropping their taglines before the wannabees will have the “courage” to follow suit.

Meanwhile, the Harris Bank brand, whose very smart, distinctive, useful campaign was anchored with the tagline, We Can Help, got swallowed up by Canadian banking giant BMO (pronounced, not B-M-O, as you might expect, but, rather, “beamo”, reminiscent of an anti=flatulance pill, or some scary clown with giant pockets overflowing with cash).

In the process of swallowing, apparently BMO thought it best to drop the tagline (curious, since, on the closely connected BMO Financial Group website, sits their tagline, Making Money Make Sense.)

Did they decide that for a bank to promise to be helpful was ill-advised, perhaps straining credibility? Whatever the reasoning, when I watch a BMO Harris commercial, I’m now left at the end with NO IDEA what they’re about, what they stand for or do well. I’m left with not the slightest hint why I might want to bank with them rather than the bank down the street. Just the image of that creepy clown.

Today I noticed a big ad for TD Ameritrade in USA Today, with tagline conspicuously absent. So, I’m left to wonder, why, again, you guys rather than Etrade? Or Chuck? Is it all that white space in your ad?

Pay attention and you’ll spot more and more big brands abandoning their taglines. The net result of this trend? More brand confusion then we already had, and that was plenty. This is simply a very visible symptom of the continuing devaluation of language in general in advertising. Being articulate, precise, and expressing a brand personality, other than visually, is SUCH a bother. It’s apparently SO much more fun (for the creatives) to play with pictures and games and apps and endless social media exercises, none of which communicates a brand’s differessence as quickly and clearly as a half dozen well chosen words.

Meanwhile, I’ll be here in the corner spinning handy little taglines for those brands that see the value of applying rational thought and the emotional power of language to their marketing and advertising.