It comes as no surprise that the state of Connecticut has jettisoned “Still Revolutionary” to the tag line graveyard.
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It comes as no surprise that the state of Connecticut has jettisoned “Still Revolutionary” to the tag line graveyard.
It served no purpose other than anchoring the state’s tourism efforts into the communications world abyss. It followed a series of unforgettable tourism tag lines over the past two decades.
Does anyone remember “Connecticut. We’re Full of Surprises?” I didn’t think so. “Still Revolutionary” felt complicated and contrived — trying to serve too many masters from tourism to economic development. It didn’t have the same consumer connection as “I Love NY.”
Much like jingles that ruled the commercial airwaves throughout the 1960s and 1970s, tag lines have lost their place in the fast-paced, here today and gone tomorrow, world of advertising.
They’ve been reduced to placeholders that are in tandem with logos, literally and figuratively. There is growing evidence that tag lines are a thing of the past.
The best tag lines endure the test of time. It’s no coincidence that the most memorable ones were created in the 1980s. Nike’s “Just Do It,” Apple’s “Think Different,” or the venerable line from BMW, “The Ultimate Driving Machine.” They expressed a brand positioning and personality in a way that paid off the creative embodiment in a few words.
It was an overt signal to consumers about the brand’s performance; creative rendering in the finest sense.
Those tag lines worked because the brands didn’t change them on a whim. They were the bedrock against which new campaigns were developed. Absent the online world, TV, radio and print ruled the day in the decade of excess. Frequency was paramount.
Brands need both a reason to believe and a reason to belong. Tag lines were the ultimate conduit to making this happen. The implicit promise articulated in the best tag lines connected with the audience, both in their hearts and minds.
Somewhere along the way, tag lines lost their reason for being. They became categorized in several different iterations and were relegated to being victims of their own success. It morphed into slogans or descriptors, many times being reduced to a mere campaign theme.
The common downfall was trying to do too much with a tag line in an advertising and communications arena that is continually evolving — the “all things to all people” mentality.
Audiences today don’t have enough time to immerse and engage with tag lines as they once did. Today, it is all about the creative idea — quick and hard hitting. Tag lines need time to grow and evolve.
Ask any creative person about tag lines and you’ll see their panic-stricken look with a rebellious overtone — “No, not that.” Yet, clients still ask and, at times, demand tag lines. It’s viewed as the expected last vestige of the advertising world. There’s no discernable reason behind the request — a creative box checker, so to speak.
Tag lines are incredibly hard to create. They involve summing up a point of difference or brand positioning in a few concise and evocative words. When done correctly, they are powerful enough to drive transactional behavior. They provide a link between a consumer and a brand that has the potential to last a lifetime.
What makes a great tag line or slogan essentially comes down to four components. The first is memorability. Is it recognizable in the two-to-three seconds consumers spend with it?
Secondly, it denotes a benefit. Think Mastercard’s “Priceless” — one of the few compelling tag lines from the past decade. Differentiating the brand is a third important element. Hallmark lived for years with the “Care to Send the Very Best” tag line before getting ravaged by shifting consumer behavior and the digital world.
The final component is differentiation. No one did it better than Miller Lite — “Tastes Great. Less Filling.”
It is incredibly difficult to convey a complicated emotional concept in a few words. That is why tag lines are hard to create and are often fleeting. The great ones far outweigh the sea of tag line mediocrity that exists.
For many marketers today, tag lines are either from a bygone era, or are ready to be banished.
Bill Field is the founder of FieldActivate, a Connecticut-based marketing firm.
