Here’s yet another example of squandered branding/positioning on the part of a global brand. Rotary Clubs International, like other international benevolent organizations, does a lot of good work. Unfortunately, that good work doesn’t extend to their own brand. I just came back from Canada, where I saw a commercial for Rotary Clubs (of Canada, I assume), which carried a very nice tagline:

Humanity In Motion.

It made me think for a split second, which is what you hope a tagline will do. And it is nicely tied to the name of the organization.

So, WHY do I not see this tagline on their website, or anywhere else I look? Why hasn’t the international organization embraced it?

Of course, these organizations, being not just vast, but global, are extremely political, and no doubt the barrier to using this tagline ubiquitously lies in the political quagmire.

This was certainly the case with Lions Clubs International, for whom I wrote a tagline a dozen or more years ago:

For All The World To See

(In case you didn’t know, and most people still don’t, Lions Clubs’ cause celebre is blindness—helping those who are blind, research into solving it, etc.)

To the best of my knowledge, this tagline survived for one short-lived TV and print campaign, and then was tossed unceremoniously on the tagheap, for who knows what reason. Probably because this organization had precious little marketing will, not enough to sustain an effort beyond its debut.

In both cases, what a waste.

I think I’m going to launch an advocacy group for language sustainability, supporting efforts to keep good language in good use, rather than winding up in some languagefill outside town.

It’s not like they don’t have a good tagline. The fact is, they have two pretty good ones. Unfortunately, they also have a bad one. And they seem to be using them all at more or less the same time. As far as I can tell, their tagline has generally been

Healthy sight in every light.

It has a nice ring to it and sums up the benefit well. However, I’ve seen spots with this line and without, and, recently, a spot that directed people to a microsite called LifeLessSquinty.com. While they don’t use this phrase as a tagline, it function as a de facto tagline, and, in my estimation, a better line than the “official” one.

But wait. There’s more. If you go to their main website, they seem to be using:

Adaptive To Your Life

as their tagline. This is a kind of stinky tagline—dry, boring, and articulated in their lense-speak rather than real people language.

They have a chance to establish a tagline in the American consciousness, especially if they went with Life Less Squinty. But at the moment, they’re all over the place, thus squandering the opportunity.

They, of all brands, should understand the need to focus.