Tagged

A powerful tagline might well be the most powerful brand component of all.

This is an extract from last week's IMTW.

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Issue № 108 | London, Sunday 22 September 2024

① A good tagline distills your most important marketing message.

② The process of unearthing your tagline is valuable in itself.

③ The Alternative Investment Market needs urgent attention.

④ The UK has an opportunity to seize the lead in digital finance.

⑤ A distinctive logo trumps corporate synergy every time.

⑥ The absence of kindness is a management failure.

⑦ We should prioritise lifelong learning over formal qualifications.

What's new

The public has welcomed the return of John Lewis’ tagline, reports CityAM.

In short:

• “After dropping its ‘Never Knowingly Undersold’ pledge in February 2022 on the grounds that it lacked ‘relevance’ amid competition from Amazon and other e-commerce retailers, John Lewis announced that it was bringing the slogan back.”
• “YouGov BrandIndex data shows that Buzz scores – which measure whether the public have heard anything positive or negative about a brand in the past two weeks – have doubled between 4 and 13 September, from 9.5 to 18.6 (+9.1).”
• “This has corresponded with a boost to John Lewis’ Impression scores, which measure overall sentiment, and which jumped from 44.7 to 50.0 (+5.3) over the same period. It has also bolstered the department store chain’s already good Reputation scores, which measure whether consumers would be proud oo embarrassed to work for a particular brand. These have improved from 38.3 to 46.2 (+7.9). But the metric that may be most interesting to John Lewis – especially in an age of belt-tightening – may be Value for Money. These scores rose from 15.3 to 23.4 (+8.1) over the period in question.”

Why it matters

I confess, I hadn’t realised that John Lewis ever dropped the tagline in the first place so its return doesn’t feel like news to me. But that in itself is testimony to the power of a good tagline: my positive association with the brand survived two and a half years of its absence. And that’s why this story matters: it prompts us to think about what a tagline actually is and why a good one works so well.

① A tagline isn’t a vision, a mission, or a mantra. Those ‘expressions of intent’ have their place in marketing strategy and corporate culture but remain largely ignored by customers. A tagline is sharper than a value proposition and more compelling than a benefit statement. It doesn’t try to do it all. In fact a tagline does just one thing - perhaps the most important thing: it distills the one message you most want your customer to remember about you.

B2C marketers tend to be good at this, they instinctively understand that people need a clear message that articulates the essence of a brand. B2B marketers have a lesson to learn here. Whether you’re selling consumer goods or cross-border payment services, you should help your customers understand what you stand for.

What to do about it

Take action

② Can you articulate your tagline? It’s worth remembering, that the process of unearthing your tagline is valuable in itself, even if you chose not to externalise it. Think though these elements in order:

1. Your mission, vision or mantra are expressions of intent. They’re aspirational statements about your purpose, what matters to you as an organisation, why you exist beyond making a profit.
2. Your value proposition is chiefly about what sets you apart in the market. It articulates who you serve and how you help them but it’s really about why customers should choose you over the alternatives.
3. Your benefits are what ‘make it real’ for customers, they’re the answer to the ‘so what?’ question. What does a customer get from choosing your product? In what way will it improve their lives? (Hint: in B2B, there are only three types that matter: more revenue, lower costs, mitigated risk.)
4. Your features are often confused with benefits. They’ve very different. They’re actually the how to the benefit’s what.

Your tagline comes from all of this. When you’ve documented 1 through 4, when you’ve considered market research, when you’ve spoken to as many of your current customers as you can about what they value about you, ask yourself: what’s the one thing I’d like a customer to remember about my brand? Now distill that to as few words as possible. A good tagline is short, memorable and relevant. It’s devilishly hard to create and extraordinarily powerful.

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To learn why:

③ The Alternative Investment Market needs urgent attention.

④ The UK has an opportunity to seize the lead in digital finance.

⑤ A distinctive logo trumps corporate synergy every time.

⑥ The absence of kindness is a management failure.

⑦ We should prioritise lifelong learning over formal qualifications.

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About

Written for senior leadership teams in finance and technology, InMarketing This Week is a showcase for news likely to impact you - delivered with insight on why it matters and ideas on what to do about it. It’s published every Sunday at six to give you a head start on the week. Read extracts?here, or subscribe to?have each full issue delivered straight to your inbox, before it's available anywhere else.