22.10.09

"Taglines: The Cheesy Way to Express What Your Business Does"

There's a lot of hilarious stuff out there on the World Wide Web. My current favourite source of belly laughs is People of Walmart - but I digress, as that site is purely for recreational purposes.

On the odd occasion, you stumble across a hilarious site that wasn't posted in jest. I found an amusing post today that wasn't meant to be funny at all - UK Business Labs asked, well, UK businesses to post their company taglines. And boy have they delivered.

I have a strong aversion to company taglines, when BtoB firms try to come up with three-word descriptions of who they are. Taglines are cheesy and they over simplify your message. It's like the corporate equivalent of sticking political bumper stickers on your car. No one wants to see that while driving. And every time a corporate marketing department has attempted to come up with a tagline, it's the most excruciating "brainstorm" experience I've sat through. Why? Because no tagline works in the BtoB world. You're not Nike and you can't tell your customers to 'just do it' without getting them all confused as to what you're really on about.

So, trust me, ditch the taglines, say what your company does in the most straightforward way possible (E.g. Hatch PR is a PR firm for digital companies) and carry on doing the great business you do. Stop wracking your brain for cheeseball, roundabout ways of saying it. You just wind up sounding like a Hallmark card on corporate crack.

No comments:

Post a Comment