Straplines95

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STRAPLINES

A strapline is the thing you say about yourself that you put under the brand name or at the bottom of every page. It’s a very short statement of what you do or what your brand stands for.

Do you need one? Not always. They do help customers to understand what your brand is all about, so if in doubt, try it.

The idea There are straplines that aim to persuade you to buy, those which give you an image of how wonderful it’s to use their brand, amusing ones, those which try to make you feel better about yourself for buying into their vision, and some great ones which have been banned for not being justifi able, including “Guinness is good for you”, “A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play” and “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should”.

At the time, the Winston line caused more of a stir at the ungrammatical use of “like” instead of “as” than any question about using the word “good” in the same sentence as “cigarette”.

There are websites that will help you generate your own strapline. For my writing company, Slogaizer.net came up with “Feel good with Little Max”, “Little Max, in touch with tomorrow” and “Little Max never lies”. It’s easy to write bad ones that have no relevance to your brand at all. It’s harder to come up with something short that illuminates your purpose.

Your strapline should be true and justifi able, and within the

Advertising Standards Authority’s (ASA) guidelines, or impossible to disprove, like BMW’s strapline: The Ultimate Driving Machine. Some are intriguingly evocative like the Spanish shoe company, Camper, with the strapline “Walk, don’t run” or Muji’s “no-brand goods”.

In practice • Check on the ASA website what you can legally say about your brand in your publicity online and off, and with Trading Standards about packaging. Their UK sites are www.asa.org.uk and www.tradingstandards.gov.uk. • Get your most creative minds together and write a long list of possible straplines, cut it down to a shortlist, think about it for a couple of weeks and go with the one you prefer. • If you don’t want one, don’t have one. Some huge brands don’t bother because they don’t feel the need to explain themselves any further.