Brand Taglines Part III: 6 Tagline Development Tips

This post is part of a series on brand tagline development. Read the prior posts in this series:
Brand Taglines Part I: What Does “For Life” Really Elicit?
Brand Taglines Part II: What’s Closest to Your (Corporate) Heart?

To get more information about the author of this blog post, Drew Letendre, please visit his page at RiechesBaird.

I wanted to conclude my two previous posts on brand taglines with a summary — the big takeaways for me after surveying a swath of the field regarding this common and very important branding tool.

Here are six brand tagline development tips framed as recommendations:

Say (almost) anything, provided that you passionately mean it (and customers can or do passionately care). Don’t assume taglines have one narrow, pre-ordained function common in all situations. They don’t.
Create taglines that are ‘verbalholograms’ or that have multiple layers of meaning. This is both eye- and ear-catching. It proves out innovation, creativity, and efficiency — saying two things with one statement.
Make it unique. Care should be taken to audit (especially) competitive taglines and slogans and then craft language that clearly separates you from the pack. ‘Quoting’ elements of established taglines is a risky gamble – it can quickly ease your tagline into acceptance, based on a perceived sense of familiarity, but it ultimately undermines perception of distinctiveness, originality, and authenticity — prerequisites of a strong brand.
Keep it short. Aim for two to three words (excluding grammatical and logical connectors, like ‘and,’ ‘or,’ ‘the,’ etc.) Taglines aren’t sentences, they’re expressions, clauses, or fragments. They don’t need to be ‘correct’ or complete.
Give it context or rather, realize that the associated brand (mark) will provide some of the context and do some of the work — let it!
Lock it up! Location, location, location! The clear space zone around your name, your corporate logotype (or ‘signature’) is hallowed ground. Think of it as a reserved parking space where your tagline should literally be written. This unmistakable ‘spatial cue’ will convey the value you place upon the ‘strategic sentient’ expressed therein.
Contact RiechesBaird if you’re looking to develop a first-ever tagline or replace what you’ve got — RiechesBaird can help. We know how to do 1-6. Check out the case study for our global client, ABM — for whom we developed the ‘Building Value tagline.