My colleague, Frank Grubich, ECD at Maddock Douglas, recently raised this question: What’s more important — that the client like the tagline or the consuming audience?

Of course, the answer is both. The client must like the tagline enough to actually make use of it—to allow it to have its impact. If a client isn’t enthusiastic about their own brand’s tagline, there will be a reluctance to display it—on business cards, the website, print ads, brochures, signage and so on. What customers don’t see, they can’t respond to.

In addition, employees will inevitably pick up on this lack of emotional commitment, so that the tagline’s potential positive effect on these employees—clarifying the brand’s promise or “differessence”, funtioning as a rallying cry, and so forth—will be undermined.

At the same time, the fact that the client loves the tagline will mean absolutely nothing if the intended audiences—customers, employees, suppliers, etc.—don’t like, or are merely indifferent, to it. In order for a tagline to be effective, both conditions must obtain. The client must like it enough to commit to it enthusiastically, and customers and employees must respond positively to the line.

Expedia’s new tagline, “Where You Book Matters.”, presents two issues for me right off the bat. First, the “Such And Such Matters” formula, which has been used so painfully often for so painfully long as a tagline and as a title for newsletters and the like, at least contains a tiny piece of what may have once been mild cleverness, as worn out as it may be. It plays the word “matters” as a verb meaning “makes a difference” or “is important”, and as a noun, referring to a subject of concern, feeling or action, like “matters of state.” Recently, JC Penney has worked this play with “Every Day Matters.” In Expedia’s case, the line doesn’t seem to even be going for this play. Of course, considering how worn out the play is, maybe that’s to their credit.

My second issue is that the tagline is a copout. Whether it’s Expedia’s “Where You Book Matters.”, or Turville Bay Oncology Center’s “Quality Standards Matter.”, or any other such line, these statements are unarguable, but they don’t tell us anything about why I should choose either of these brands. There is the implication that the brand is better somehow, that Turville Bay Oncology Center has high standards, or that there is some reason to book with Expedia. But what is the reason? What are the higher standards?

I reluctantly acknowledge that Chase Bank has the best tagline with the word “matters” in it—Chase What Matters—but that’s because they’ve incorporated their brand name into the line to form a coherent, perhaps resonant thought, and have not tried to leverage the two meanings of “matters.”

If I ran the zoo, I’d try very hard to avoid using the word “matters” in any tagline I adopted.

And by the way, speaking of Expedia, I was disheartened to hear their new, emasculated, blandified version of the musical button at the end of their TV spots. Since they began advertising, this has been the one consistent, distinctive element related to their brand and its advertising, and now they’ve gone and wrecked it. Why? I’ll tell you why. Someone high up at the company or the ad agency got tired of it. Or they did some market research and, as is usually the case, the research said to make it less . . .
less something. And more homogenized and blah. And so they did. Whatz!?

Sometimes the meaning of a tagline depends entirely on the ad campaign that it punctuates. This is a critical difference between how taglines function for big businesses, versus small businesses that may not have the budget for any ad campaign, or for a limited ad campaign that they can’t rely on it to seed the meaning of their tagline.

Domino’s Pizza has just launched a campaign (I’ve only seen one spot, don’t know if there will be more) forthrightly acknowledging that their pizza didn’t taste good, using the unforgiving words of actual customers. Then Domino’s employees tell the story of how they started over from scratch to build a much better pizza. It’s a very compelling campaign, the tagline of which is “Oh yes we did.” Now, absent the campaign, this tagline would be incomprehensible jibberish. However, landing at the end of this TV spot, it works beautifully to convey the remarkableness of what they’ve done. Domino’s is clearly delighted with what they’ve done, and that delight will rub off on viewers of the spot, who may then actually try the new pizza. That remarkableness, and Domino’s delighted pride about it, does wonders for the brand. Never mind the spike in sales this campaign will likely cause as people give the new pizza a try, suddenly we see Domino’s as a whole different kind of company, willing to recognize its failings and do something about it, including talking openly with us about it. This is a very endearing quality for a company to have.

Joe’s Pizza down the street can’t afford this kind of tagline. Their tagline needs to be clearer, (unless they want to be known as the inscrutable pizza place, which would indeed be a unique positioning.) But there is no reason that Joe’s Pizza’s tagline can’t contain an element of the promise and personality—what I call the differessence of their brand. In fact, I recommend it. Maybe it’s pizza made with a passion, or the most fun pizza in town, or the place you want to be when pizza’s being served or whatever. The point is, even when you don’t have an ad campaign to invest your tagline with meaning, it should still have meaning—emotional meaning—for the customers, not just the owner. Joe’s Pizza. Great pizza since 1993. just ain’t it.

Happy new year, etc.

In my never ending effort to scare up business while making the world a better place, I’ve forged an alliance with Jay Ehret, whose website, TheMarketingSpot.com, and its accompanying blog, are an invaluable resource for small businesses.

Jay and I are in the midst our Branding Reality Checkup, a three-pronged effort to help small businesses take a fresh look at the state of their brand as they move into 2010.

The first prong is a podcast of a conversation Jay and I had on the subject, breaking down some of the things you need to consider when re-examining your brand.

The second prong is an eight-article series in which, alternately, Jay and I discuss aspects of your branding effort in general, and your tagline in particular, that you may not have considered. This series will be unfolding on Jay’s blog over the next couple of weeks.

The Branding Reality Checkup culminates with a webinar on January 20th, in which we hope to provide attendees with some useful and instructive ways to refresh and re-invigorate their brands.

I encourage you to check out all three prongs.Your brand may not suck, but it can always be better. And remember, your brand is a dynamic, fluid sort of thing that must always evolve in response to the changing needs of your customers and shifts in the environment in which it lives. Ultimately, if you don’t give your brand a little thought now and then, neither will your customers.