THE SCIENCE OF SLOGANEERING

A slogan is the public face of what is known in the marketing profession as a brand "positioning." We want audiences to perceive not only a product, but also a higher purpose. The best slogans capture this higher purpose in a memorable way. The energy drink Red Bull wants to stand for not only hyper-focus, but also the invigoration of mind and body captured in the phrase "Red Bull gives you wings." MasterCard aims for consumerism that complements the priceless things in your life: "There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's MasterCard." Since 1988, Nike's call to action "Just Do It" has resonated with athletes and would-be athletes alike.

Ideally a positioning taps into our underlying human motivations. The desire to be a good parent. The need to demonstrate status. The urge to have a good time. This is harder than it seems. Let's say you're Johnnie Walker whisky. Do you stand for casual hedonism? Well, you make rare, expensive liquor. So do you stand for luxury? Well, bar tenders serve you at dives. It took two years and extensive market research to identify the positioning of history, optimism, and personal progress captured by the slogan "Keep on Walking."

There is a commonly accepted idea in marketing that a brand must identify and stick with a compelling "brand positioning" over time. But the changing values and attitudes of customers -- plus the inherent difficulty of finding the right few words on the first (or twenty-first) try -- means most slogans do not stand the test of time.

In the 1980s, British Rail tried to convince potential passengers that they were making significant improvements to their service with the slogan, "We are getting there." Passenger experience suggested otherwise, and the much-ridiculed slogan proved short-lived. Ford's "Quality is Job 1" met a similar demise around the same time. There is nothing wrong with slogans acknowledging weakness and being aspirational, but they do have to pass the test of experience. Avis' current slogan, "We try harder," was originally coined in 1962, as "We're No. 2. We Try Harder." Positive customer experience ratified the claim and helped Avis achieve significant sales growth.

FROM GOOD TO GREAT (AND BACK)

More common perhaps is the slogan that does not say anything coherent about the brand. While in South Africa recently I saw the slogan, "Nature will thank you" on the back of a Corobrik truck. Was it a reference to the company's sustainability program? How its bricks were made? I still have no idea. Multiple meaningless slogans in a short time frame is a sure sign that the brand in question has lost its way. Rather than seeking to identify a positioning that makes the brand meaningfully different, these brands seek to use slogans as an echo chamber, hoping to find one that resonates with their target audience.

Ultimately, a slogan is only useful as long as it still conveys something meaningful about the brand. When circumstances change a brand may need to rethink how it expresses what it stands for. FedEx found great success with the slogan "When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight." It directly addressed the company's dependability. But times change and overnight delivery become less compelling in the age of the Internet, so now we have "The World on Time" to indicate global reach.

Sometimes slogans just need fine-tuning in order to reflect the cultural psyche of the target audience. Over time L'Oreal has shifted its slogan from "Because I'm worth it" to "Because you're worth it." Today it reads, "Because we are worth it." The company worked the personal pronoun to track the zeitgeist, moving from self-regard to flattery, to collective pride.

Once established, however, a slogan can be hard to replace. In the 1990s Maxwell House decided to make a change after three-quarters of a century. "Better beans make better coffee" was the new motto, and it was geared toward quality. The effort flopped. A year ago, the company tried again to expand again from merely "good" with the slogan, "Good just got great." But most people still know the brand from Teddy Roosevelt's off-hand comment.

When it comes to slogans, sometimes it's best to leave "good" enough alone.

The Power of Slogans in the History of Thought

Posted on August 6, 2015 by Tim Lacy

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I'm a PC guy, so this is here for your entertainment.

I’m a PC guy, so this is here for your entertainment.

According to Merriam-Webster online, a slogan is “a word or phrase that is easy to remember and is used by a group or business to attract attention.” You know many, I’m sure—probably way more than the following examples (some serious, some fun, some weird):

– “Drill, Baby, Drill”

– “Eat the Rich”

– “Just do it”

– “Go Green”

– “Abortion on Demand”

– “Black Lives Matter”

– “Black is Beautiful”

– “Better Dead than Red”

– “Don’t Mess with Texas”

– “Make Love, Not War”

– “The Whole World is Watching”

– “One Man, One Vote”

– “War on Drugs”

– “No Taxation Without Representation”

– “The Buck Stops Here”

– “It’s the real thing”

– “The Globally, Act Locally”

And here are some alternate definitions, offered by Merriam Webster, that perhaps apply better to some of the slogans I just listed:

– “A word or phrase used to express a characteristic position or stand or a goal to be achieved.”

– “A brief attention-getting phrase used in advertising or promotion.”

For the purposes of U.S. intellectual history, I think the first of the those two definitions should grab your attention. As an aside, the Wikipedia entry on “Slogan” brings up interesting points for rumination.

In my memory and experience of S-USIH doings, it was LD Burnett—during last year’s S-USIH conference in Indianapolis—who most successfully invoked a slogan-like phrase during her presentation. In recounting the Stanford Debates (or Affair), she discussed relevant history behind the chant, “Hey hey, ho ho, Western culture has got to go!”* LD connected this chant to prior protests from the Civil Rights Movement, or perhaps the Labor Movement. Her goal was to get us to see the long history, and sensibility, invoked by the slogan. The students and protesters at Stanford had a clear position and goal to be achieved.

Because-you-need-a-sloganPrior to writing this post, I had mentally classified LD’s invocation as a chant. Perhaps she did too. Heretofore, slogans had been classified under my personal mental file of “business rhetoric,” beneath the “marketing/advertising” tab.

What got me rethinking my classification was the renewal of the phrase “abortion on demand” in relation to the latest Planned Parenthood “exposé” on the purported “selling” of fetal tissue (or baby body parts, if you prefer). It’s not a rhythmic chant, but just a slogan—albeit a powerful one that brings to mind consumerism, choice, and selfish desires. I started wondering about the wider staying power of that particular shorthand, as well as its origins and history.

That also starting me wondering about the line of demarcation between a slogan and an aphorism. Intellectual historians take (or have begun to take) aphorisms seriously, but not necessarily slogans or chants. The latter end up being noted in cultural histories. Aphorisms, however, seem to imply deeper, timeless truths and universals. truthiness-defSlogans are more time-and-place, or to use Stephen Colbert’s term, they possess “truthiness.” It seems clear to me that slogans serve as shorthand truths, or words to live by, for large parts of the population.

Have intellectual historians done a good enough job contextualizing and tracing them, exposing their sources, deeper goals, and uses (intended or otherwise)? Are slogans taken seriously in works that involve mass movements?

I think future intellectual historians will likely do a lot of work on slogans in the form of hashtags. #BlackLivesMatter has proven to be a powerful slogan over the past year (though created in 2012). And, I would argue, it has been a slogan that has done a lot of good.

What say you about the differences between slogans, chants, and aphorisms? What of their power? What of their use and abuse? How should we “think differently” about slogans in relation the history of thought? – TL

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Notes

* Or was it “Hey hey, ho ho, Western Civ has got to go!” I recall the discrepancy, but don’t think I ever settled the exact phrasing for the section in my book on “The Stanford Debates” (pp. 196-201). In that I used William Bennett’s May 27, 1988 National Review piece titled “Why the West?” I should’ve known better than to take Bennett’s phrasing at face value!

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 965