Sloganizing-Brand Recognition

With the marketplace so teeming with companies, spread across the varied forms of the media, now more than ever you need to assert yourself as a voice or risk losing your company in the din. Have you ever heard of the cocktail party effect? It is the recognition of certain words or phrases being culled from many different conversations. Like when you’re surrounded by multiple conversations and suddenly the mention of your name creates a flashpoint word. (If you’re constantly hearing your name even when there are no conversations. That may be paranoia and you shouldn’t be attending cocktail parties).

This same principle holds true for brand recognition through slogans Try hearing the “quicker, picker, upper….. Bounty,” and not picturing some kind of tragic spill (grape juice, spaghetti) being absorbed, and absorbed very successfully. This is an example of great brand recognition through the use of a slogan. The product’s specific attributes, superiority and name are made inextricable from each other and Bounty becomes, in the consumer’s mind, greater than the sum of its parts.

Let’s look at Visa’s recent adoption of a new slogan. For 20 years Visa had been using “It’s everywhere you want to be.” This slogan was structured around the premise that Visa was number one in the world in terms of being accepted everywhere. This idea clings to the idea that trifles such as money and geography shouldn’t slow the consumer down. But in 2006, the Wolf Group New York, an ad agency with such clients as Häagen-Dazs and Miracle-Gro, tested consumer recognition of 19 tag lines that were part of successful, long-running advertising campaigns backed by hundreds of millions of dollars. Each of the top-five brands in the survey included the product or advertiser's name, while none of the bottom 10 did. Their research showed that while 70% people recognized the “Everywhere” slogan, only 15% associated it with Visa.

To remedy this the company has adopted the new slogan “Life takes Visa.” As Visa marketing director Suzanne Lyons said “Life Takes Visa reinforces our brand promise to deliver innovative products and services that can be used anytime, anywhere, and that empowers Visa cardholders to experience life and business their way and on their terms.''
Essentially the new slogan is saying the same thing as the “Everywhere” slogan. But it includes the name of the company within.

A few companies have fashioned their marketing campaigns without explicitly mentioning their brand. Look at Nike who often have very elaborate advertisements with only their swoosh logo to suggest what is being advertised. In this example the word Nike is unspoken and does not appear. This use of semiotics is very powerful when it works because it forces the viewer to say the brand name. For most companies though when creating a slogan in hopes of brand recognition it would be best to start by including your brand in the slogan.

There are lots of ideas about how a company’s slogan should be designed. But applying these to your own company won’t amount to a hill of beans without understanding who your company is, or more precisely, what you want company to be. This type of understanding can only be reached through qualitative research.

Never adopt a new slogan as a quick fix or as part of a temporary campaign. Success requires committing to a slogan or tag line for several years-perhaps even decades. Of utmost importance is incorporating your new slogan into all your marketing materials such as your logo design, website design, and your stationery design (including business cards, letterhead, your brochure design etc) as a part of the company logo. If you want to protect your business's marketing investment in the new slogan, you should consider trademarking it.

In today’s marketplace, being heard is one thing, being recognized is entirely another.