A Tagline Somebody Remembers

Memorable is not the usual requirement

Taglines are discussed as though the goal were to produce something that sticks, which is the goal for a national brand buying enormous exposure.

A local business with a van and a website needs a line that explains what it does to somebody who has just arrived, which is a clarity problem rather than a memory one.

Most should stop there, since a plain descriptive line does the job and needs no cleverness.

The exception is the small number of businesses where a line has a second job: being repeated by a customer to somebody else, in conversation, without prompting.

The referral test

Which is what memorability means for a local business.

Could a customer repeat this line to a neighbour, in the course of recommending you, without feeling awkward.

That rules out most of what businesses write. Nobody says the words excellence delivered to a neighbour over a fence.

What people do repeat is a concrete claim: they come when they say they will, they clean up after themselves, they do not charge for the call-out.

Those are lines a person can say in their own voice, which is the property that matters and the one cleverness usually removes.

What makes a line repeatable

• Short enough to say in one breath.
• Concrete, naming a thing rather than a quality.
• True enough to be said without embarrassment.
• Plain words somebody would actually use.
• A rhythm that makes it easy to say.

The third is the one that eliminates most candidates. A line making a claim the customer is not confident about will not be repeated, because repeating it makes them responsible for it.

Concrete beats abstract, consistently

The most reliable finding, and it runs against how people write taglines.

Quality workmanship, professional service, and your trusted partner are abstractions that every competitor could also claim, and abstractions are not remembered.

Same day where we can, or no callout charge in the Tri-Cities, are things somebody can hold onto.

Concrete lines are also checkable, which is why they carry weight: a claim somebody could catch you failing is a claim worth making.

Where the concrete version sounds less impressive than the abstract one, that is a sign it is doing something, since the abstract version sounded impressive by saying nothing.

A worked example

A business used a line about commitment to excellence on their van, their site, and their invoices.

Asked how customers described them to others, the owner said people usually mentioned that they turned up when they said they would, which was unusual in the trade locally.

They replaced the line with a plain statement of exactly that.

It appeared on the van, the site, and in the voicemail greeting.

Within a few months, customers began mentioning it when they called, which meant the line had been repeated to them by somebody else.

The tagline had not become memorable through wording. It had become repeatable by describing something people were already saying.

Listen before writing

The method that produces the line, and it requires no creativity.

Ask several customers why they used you, or what they tell people about you.

Note the phrases rather than the sentiment, since the exact words matter and they are frequently plainer than anything you would write.

The most repeated phrase is your tagline, already tested by the people who will be repeating it.

That takes a month of paying attention and beats an afternoon of brainstorming, because you are recording something true rather than inventing something plausible.

It also tells you what people value about the business, which is worth knowing independently of any line.

Where it has to work

Because the constraints differ by place and a line that fails one of them is the wrong line.

On a van, at a distance, where it competes with the phone number and the trade for space.

Under the business name on a website, where it is read in about a second.

Spoken, in a voicemail greeting or when somebody answers the phone.

And on an invoice, where a line that sounded fine in marketing can read oddly beside an amount owing.

Test the candidate in all four before committing, since a line that only works in one place will be dropped from the others and the consistency is lost.

Not having one is a legitimate answer

Worth stating, since the pressure to have something is what produces the bad ones.

A business name plus the trade and the town, with no line at all, is clear and honest.

An empty space is better than a filler phrase, which costs credibility for no benefit.

Where you cannot find a line that is short, concrete, and true, that is a sign to wait rather than to settle.

The line can be added later, once you have noticed what customers say, which is a much better source than a blank page.

One line, used everywhere, for years

The part that determines whether any of this works, and it is repetition rather than wording.

A line becomes familiar because somebody has encountered it several times, which requires using the same one consistently across every place the business appears.

Businesses undermine this by rewriting the line for each context, so the van, the site, and the invoice each carry a variant and none accumulates recognition.

Pick one, put it in the specification alongside the colours and the name, and leave it alone for years.

Changing a line because you have grown tired of it is the most common reason a tagline never becomes memorable, since you see it a hundred times more often than any customer does.

The counter-case

Some businesses genuinely benefit from a crafted line.

Anybody advertising at volume, where the same line is heard repeatedly, gets a return from something distinctive that a plain description would not deliver.

A business whose offer is genuinely unusual may need a line to convey it, since the plain description would be long.

And an established business with a line customers already know should keep it, since replacing something recognised is a cost rather than an improvement.

Listen for what customers already say, use the plainest true version, test it in all four places, and leave it out if nothing fits.

Writing one

1. Ask customers what they tell people about you.
2. Note the exact phrases, not the sentiment.
3. Choose the most repeated one.
4. Make it concrete, not a quality.
5. Check it is true enough to repeat.
6. Test it on a van, a site, aloud, and an invoice.
7. Use nothing rather than a filler phrase.

Step one supplies the answer, and it is the step that gets skipped in favour of an afternoon inventing something that nobody has ever said.

Diagnosing the one you have is covered in a tagline that says nothing.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.