Two things.

First, General Motors has decided that advertising on Facebook and the Superbowl isn’t a good use of their advertising dollars, so they won’t anymore. I don’t know about you, but this is glorious music to my ears. Finally, a big brand has had the guts to pull back the curtain and begin the long slog back to well-reasoned reality. Just because a lot of people show up to look at something doesn’t mean they’re going to pay attention to, or be affected by, you, in the corner, jumping up and down and yelling “hey, look at me!”

Second, Hellmann’s mayonnaise has come to its senses regarding the tagline it chooses to hang its lid on. Not being on the inside, I’m not privvy to the reasoning behind abandoning the short-lived It’s time for real tagline and returning to at least the second half of their timeless, iconic Bring out the Hellmann’s and Bring out the best. I can only speculate that It’s time for real flopped as a tagline because it was one of many recent taglines touting this whole “real” thing, diluting the message as a result of being part of a bandwagon.

And perhaps, also, because, as I wrote about a million posts ago, “real” is such a slimy attribute. In one obvious sense, everything we buy is real, or else we’re really getting ripped off. In the sense that I’m sure Hellmann’s intended, where real is contrasted with the presumed artificiality or fakeness of some competitors, while there may be some grounds for this claim, it apparently isn’t resonating. I’m guessing taste trumps realness among mayo fans. In fact, if you go to their website, you’ll find a modification of last year’s tagline, which now reads Real Tastes Better—obviously indicating that “real” by itself wasn’t doing much, so they needed to connect the dots regarding why real is such a good thing. Curious that they didn’t choose to go right to the word they’ve used for decades, “best”, instead opting for the more modest “better.” And, of course, also curious that they’ve returned to the old tagline for their TV advertising while apparently choosing not to, or failing to, align their website, tagline-wise.

Okay, here’s my “too lazy to research” tagline trivia question for the day: Which tagline debuted first, Hellman’s Bring out the Hellmann’s and bring out the best or Budweiser’s Bring out your best?

Again, reading the sides of trucks, I saw one go by for a company Called Vision Integrated Graphics Group. Companies like this that are in the marketing business REALLY have no excuse for a stupid tagline. Nevertheless, here’s theirs . . .

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.

First, a distinction. “Tagline” is such a broad-ranging term that  sometimes it’s important to specify what sort of tagline is being discussed. In this case, I’ll be talking about what I think of as a branding or positioning tagline, a line that should have a far longer shelf life than the kind of tagline that is “ad-campaign-dependent.” The latter sort of tagline is specific to one particular, probably not long lived ad campaign. Taglines like this are disposable, and not intended to be attached at the hip of the brand’s logo.

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?