Duncan Southgate, a big brain at Millward Brown, in a piece in the April 2010 Admap (which I can’t link you to because you must subscribe to see the article), contends that what separates a successful viral online ad from an unsuccessful one is that the successful ad has LEGS—it’s Laugh out loud funny, Edgy, Gripping or Sexy. Mr. Southgate’s contention is supported by an analysis of 100 ads that his firm performed.

I would expand on his contention.  It seems fairly obvious that ALL ads, not just viral ads online, are far more likely to succeed if they have LEGS.

To apply this standard to taglines, I suggest modifying the characteristics that make up the LEGS. Taglines are very, very seldom laugh out loud funny. But many great lines are great in part because they are funny, but less boisterously so—whimsical, witty, clever, droll, charming, smile-inducing. To keep the acronym intact, let’s call it Lightly funny.

We must make one other modification. Rather than sexy, which, again, aptly describes such a tiny portion of great taglines that it doesn’t merit being included in a list of four characteristics, I propose making the S stand for Smart.

Lightly funny, Edgy, Gripping and/or Smart. Great taglines got LEGS.

Sadly, most taglines fail because they don’t have LEGS, but rather, STUMPS—Stupid, Timid, Unctuous, Muddled, Patently cliched or otherwise Sucky.

Thanks to friend and associate Jay Ehret for suggesting that I comment on the new branding mess Hebrew National has foisted on us. I’m sure the folks at Hebrew National could give you a some sort of justification for “updating” their logo and abandoning their iconic tagline. Somehow it must have made sense to them.

Now, I’m not a logo expert, so all I can tell you about the change in logos is that, in the process of “updating” the logo, they’ve managed to dispose of a classic, timeless logo in favor of one that is terribly cheesy and dated-looking. If you showed the old and new logo, side by side, ( I tried to create a link to this side-by side comparison, but couldn’t for some reason, so here’s the URL — http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/hebrew_national_now_more_national.php )— to a bunch of people unfamiliar with the brand and asked which was the old one and which was the new one, I’m confident that most of them would guess wrong.

To make matters much worse, they’ve inexplicably trashed a great tagline—We answer to a higher authority. This tagline was gloriously endearing to their customers and catapulted an obscure regional brand into national prominence, at least in the eyes of the advertising world. A significant portion of whatever brand equity they have stems directly from that tagline. Now, where there once was a great tagline, you’ll find this fascinating expression of the brand: “Made with premium cuts of 100% Kosher beef.” They’ve gone from a brand with a wonderfully engaging personality—truly a rarity—to one with zero brand personality.

Other than that, I love it.

Recently, I have come across no new taglines to praise or bury. I have some topics that I need to address, but I just haven’t figured out what to say about them yet.

So I’m posting this in a transparent attempt to appear to be actively posting stuff on my blog, when, as you can readily see, I’m running on empty.

If you’d like to suggest a tagline to comment on, or some other topic to roll around, I’d consider it an act of mercy.

I detect a symptom of a very troubling malady in advertising lately. The symptom is this: tv spots are airing for big national brands in which the presumably normal, real characters who act as vehicles for the brand’s message turn out to possess a loathsome personality trait. These people are not the foils, representing the problem that’s solved by the brand. These are the heroes of the spot.

EXAMPLE ONE: Fifth Third Bank has a spot running featuring “The vulture”, a moniker this jerk seems to embrace, who we see in an office setting, perusing the food in the community fridge, looking for something to steal. He picks a piece of cake—not HIS cake, some other employee’s cake— which he proceeds to unabashedly devour. I have no idea what the message of the spot is because I am so horrified by this leech being the de facto spokesman, preaching whatever the Fifth Third’s message is, that I can’t hear whatever he’s rambling on about.  Now I dislike this bank even more than I did when they initially chose their tongue-twisted name.

EXAMPLE TWO: There is a particularly bad campaign for Aleve running currently, in which various scenarios play out in the drug aisle of some drug store or supermarket. Each scenario involves a person or people literally doing the math out loud regarding how many Tylenol they would need to take versus how many fewer Aleve they would need to take over the same period of time.

Aside from the fact that the dialogue seems to have been written by the same person who wrote the creative brief, there is one spot where a woman loads up her little grocery basket, the kind you carry, with four bottles of Tylenol, only to then notice the Aleve, and realize that she would only need to buy one bottle of Aleve, in place of the four bottles of Aleve in her basket. So she simply tosses the basket full of Tylenol onto the floor in the middle of the aisle and walks away, happy as a clam with her newly found Aleve.

While both of these spots are troubling because they seem to enthusiastically endorse boorish, self-centered behavior, the thing I worry about is that an army of people, including, very likely, marketing research experts and testing results, somehow thought these portrayals of their brand personified were a really good idea, worth investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in production and millions more to run these spots for all of America (or, in Fifth Third’s case, whatever portion of America they do business in) to watch and wince at. What is going on here? Is the epidemic of incivility that old people always seem to perceive and complain about really happening? Has a generation of thoughtless, self-involved jerks who celebrate bad behavior taken the reigns in advertising? Enlighten me, please.

As has been pointed out in articles in the New York Times, Crain’s Chicago Business and elsewhere, BP’s tagline, Beyond Petroleum, is coming back to bite them big time in light of the big mess in the Gulf.

While the line seemed to signal that BP is leading the charge in developing non-fossil energy, it now reads as a confession that they’ve taken their eye off the big ball of oil, which remains the business they’re in, first and foremost.

So, what does a behemoth like BP do in the face of this messy circumstance? Do they soldier on with the same tagline and try to manage the damage solely via PR? Do they downplay the line for the time being, as they seem to be doing? Or should they abandon that line and find another tagline, one that, perhaps, they CAN live up to?

The BP situation is a cogent reminder of one of the risks you take with a bold, aspirational tagline. If you don’t fulfill its promise, you may be screwed.

Long story short: When committing to a tagline, if you don’t mean it, I mean REALLY mean it, don’t say it.

Say, does anybody out there know what ExxonMobil’s tagline was prior to the Valdez fiasco, and whether they kept it or changed it as a result of the mess? Today, their tagline is Taking on the world’s toughest energy challenges. This line, while positioning them as an energy company, not simply an oil company, makes no promises. “Taking on” is far less aspirational than, say “Conquering” or something similar. To my mind, an obvious, limp tagline. But having my brand equated forever with a vast catastrophe of my own doing might cause me to opt for a flaccid tagline as well.

For at least three decades, we’ve been subjected to a tagline formula that, while probably effective the first time it was used, before it was a formula, by now has become one of the laziest, most obvious and least effective tagline templates out there. I’m talking about . . .

Doing Something. One something at a time.

Curing Disease. One Patient At A Time.

Making The World More Wealthy. One Client At A Time.

Helping You Get Fatter. One Calorie At A Time.

I defy you to name a product or service for which I (or anyone of you, for that matter) couldn’t immediately produce one of these taglines. And any tagline formula that can apply equally to every brand, is precisely the opposite of what a good tagline should be.

More accurately, I’m on Adweek.com. They posted a guest column of mine last week (Wednesday, April 28, 2010). Guess what it’s about?

Interesting that the Adweek folks insist on directing readers to jim@communicaterer.com, rather than jim@taglinejim.com. Perhaps they feel that a column about taglines by a guy named Tagline Jim might appear self-serving, which, of course, it absolutely is. But, as Chairman Jimmy reminds us, “Just because it’s self-serving doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”

I was very pleased to receive several positive emails in response to the column, including one from one of my heroes, Dennis Berger, who wrote many iconic taglines, including We Bring Good Things To Life, Have It Your Way and Life Takes Visa.

Also interesting that, whenever I have a column on Adweek.com, I get emails, which are thoughtful and substantial, whether positive or critical. And I get responses posted below the column on their website, which are sometimes thoughtful and substantial, but more often consist of snotty, dismissive attacks on my column, based solely on the snap brim cap I’m wearing in the photo accompanying the column. Whatz!? I worry that the advertising kids who, presumably, author these snipes, are operating on such a horrifyingly superficial plane. Is this as deep as their thinking gets? If so, the ad biz is screwed. I choose to assume that this is not the case, and that the most surfacey boys and girls tend to be weeded out over time.