It’s interesting that many recent, decent taglines out there are for brands that are, shall we say, less than upscale, or are mundane and utilitarian.

Take Beano Before. And there’ll be no gas.

Valspar. The Beauty Goes On.

Pam Helps You Pull It Off.

Kashi. Seven Whole Grains On A Mission.

Benedryl. You Can’t Pause Life.

And now Old Country Buffet has a new campaign anchored by the tagline, The Land Of &. I envy the economy and resonance of this line, which captures, perfectly and unapologetically, the differessence of OCB. The use of an ampersand in place of the word “and” is a beautiful touch. Not only is the ampersand far more elegant to look at than a plain old “and”, it also engages the brain for a microsecond in order to translate the symbol into the word, and then recognize the assonance between “land” and “and”.

For years, my mock tagline for Old Country Buffet has been Mediocre Food. And Lots Of It. In deference to the new line, I promise to stop invoking my line whenever the subject comes up. At least for awhile.

In contrast, I call your attention to a campaign that my brother called to my attention to recently.  It’s the current Honda campaign touting some promotion, the details of which elude me. The campaign which features an animated fellow, “Mr. Opportunity”—kind of a dufus, who does a lot of knocking, all within various otherwise live action contexts. The obvious question this campaign raises, aside from WHY the Honda folks thought that making Mr. Opportunity a badly executed, sophomoric cartoon guy might be a good idea, is this:

Is it opportunity that’s knocking, as they hope we’ll pick up on? Or is it Honda engines, as one’s mind immediately goes to when the term “knock” is introduced in a car commercial?

In fairness, there is one nice line in these commercials that says something about how the promotion “is the only thing in a Honda that won’t last.” But that one line isn’t enough to forgive the aforementioned, far more egregious aspects this campaign.

Having just gotten back from a 4500 mile road trip to and through Montana, a few things stuck in my head, mixed in amongst the squashed bugs and pebbles that chipped the windshield of my mind.

First, healthcare advertising continues to be predictable and uninteresting everywhere. Imagine that. But I was pleased to see a couple of taglines that were a notch above the usual pablum, if only barely. United Healthcare’s line, which I hadn’t seen before, Health In Numbers, contains a nice play. The line relies heavily on the TV ads to interpret the thought so as not to come off too cold and calculating, as the prominence of “numbers” in the tagline might suggest. Not earthshaking, but better than average.

Better than that line, however, is the tagline for St. Luke’s, somewhere in Minnesota. Their line: State Of The Art Humanity. It’s such a simple thing. By applying that impossibly cliched term, “State of the art”, which is always about technology and medical advances, to the caring side of the healthcare equation instead, it de-sentimentalizes the “caring” part, while at the same time giving it a refreshing prominence. And, even though there is no mention of the technological/advanced medicine part of the equation, somehow “state of the art”, used in this refreshing way, has a subtle connotative halo that feels like it somehow applies to the medicine side, without suffering from cliche-itis.

Nicely done. Glad to see someone out there is thinking.

I saw A LOT of semis carrying the usual empty taglines touting Innovative Customer Service and providing The Road to Success. While I didn’t see any lines that knocked me over, I thought that Knight Transportation’s line, Your Hometown National Carrier, at least attempted to express an actual brand position, so I applaud them, however feebly, for that.

I smiled at the tagline of one small town: Kremlin, MT. USA Style.

While I didn’t catch the brand name, I was intrigued by one business we passed—a winery/car wash.

I would like to salute the E Z Mark Casino in Harlem, Montana for their refreshing honesty and forthrightness.

As we drove through the Beartooth Mountains, which can truly be described as Majestic, I reflected back on the name of one of those generic, utilitarian, decidedly mundane self-storage facilities we had passed early in our trip. The brand name: Majestic Storage. I would love to ask the guy who cooked up that name what he was thinking.

“Look, honey, have you ever SEEN anything so awesome and breathtaking as those STORAGE UNITS? Quick, get the camera!”

Apparently, I’ve pretty much taken the summer off, blog wise. But this topic sticks in my craw chronically. It’s about this word, “real”. Below are five, count ‘em, five examples of current taglines that invoke the “r” word.

It’s Time For Real. (Hellman’s)

Nothing Is More Real Than Reddi Whip.

Wendy’s. You know when it’s real.

Xerox. Ready For Real Business.

Solo Paper Plates. Inspired By Real Life.

My question is, what the heck are they talking about? Real, as opposed to what? Fake? Virtual? Counterfeit? Artificial? Imaginary?

Do they mean real in the sense of authentic, or genuine, or natural, or what? Whatever they mean, why don’t they say THAT instead? Because this claim to being more real than the competition, whether implicit or explicit, is bogus.

Of these lines, can you find the ONE that makes some sense? Right, it’s the Solo Paper Plates line. I can actually understand what they’re talking about. They’ve designed their plates based on information or experience derived from real life, presumably, the lives of their customers, so that the plates are up to the task for which they’re designed. Okay, so they get a pass.

But these others? Of particular perplexity is the Xerox line. As hard as I try, I can’t figure out what they even INTEND to mean by this use of “real”. Real business, as opposed to what? It’s baffling. At least, with the others, I can guess that they’re invoking “real” in contrast to some vague sort of artificial/manufactured/unnatural/chemical alternative.

Of course, this distinction doesn’t bear much scrutiny before it collapses one way or the other. After all, everything shares an ontological status as equally real, until you start poking around the edges, like with dreams, hallucinations and the like. On the other hand, from someone like Michael Moore’s perspective, everything, if you dig around enough, is to some degree artificial or manipulated, affected, contaminated, violated in some way by human activity.

So the claim to being real, or more real, is either trivial, maybe even tautological, or else it’s just plain false. Either way, it seems like a bad idea, raising more questions that it answers, and not just straining, but outright stomping on, credibility.

Really.