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marketing 101.

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What’s your favourite strapline?

One of most enduring things about the value that advertising agencies add for brands is the creation of great straplines. A strapline complements your brand and in just a small number of words, tells the customer who you are and what you stand for. Great straplines are long lasting and adapt to new creative as it all stays “on message”.

Whether its Whitbread’s Trophy Bitter; “The Pint That Thinks It’s A Quart” (ie the head is so frothy and fulsome you feel like you’re getting MORE beer) or BMW’s; “The Ultimate Driving Machine”, KFC’s “Finger Licking Good” or L’Oreal’s “Because I’m worth it”, great straplines are memorable, can make you feel better about the product, make it stand out from the crowd.

Or sometimes just make you smile. And that’s ultimately how all relationships begin…

My favourite strapline (and without any doubt, the most joyous moment I’ve ever had in an advertising agency without a drink in my hand) dates back to 1994, when I was on the verge of launching FORE! magazine.

FORE! was a new golf magazine unashamedly surfing the new wave of (ahem) “lads” magazines cluttering the shelves of newsagents across the UK. FORE! (it’s a word you shout at golf when your ball is just about to hit someone, hence the capital letters) was aimed at young golfers, new to golf and unlikely to be interested in joining a stuffy golf club, or indeed reading a stuffy golf magazine. The dummy had researched really well and for the launch all we needed was a good print ad as we knew all our readers read the sports pages every day (ah the good old days).

The first agency who had a go at an ad campaign for FORE! got it horribly wrong. I remember sitting with the Emap Group Chief Executive Kevin Hand begging permission to try someone new. It was a hard sell, but it was my magazine and I guess I got the approval to switch agencies on the basis that if I was going to stuff up the launch we were already way too far gone by that point.

Anyhow, switch we did and I will never forget the very first visual presented by the new agency. I’ll use capitals for effect. The very first visual presented by an agency called “Rapp Collins” had the following strapline:

FORE! A GOLF MAGAZINE WORTH SHOUTING ABOUT!

Lock it in Eddie. Hats in the air. Batten down the hatches etc. We were off and running.

History will show that the first issue of FORE! was the biggest selling golf magazine in UK history. It’s a safe bet that record will never be broken.

And while the so called digital world around us changes and so many new products are launched as just words, Google, Air BNB, Uber, EBay, the strapline remains as important as ever.

And advertising agencies across the globe still have the vital task of mining the semantic skills of their best people looking for the next “Reassuringly Expensive” and “Vorsprung Durch Technic (as they say in Germany)”.

Except some it seems.

Driving across the Sydney Harbour Bridge today, I was passed by a striking brightly coloured SUV expensively and beautifully decked out with the logo of a company I’d never heard of.

Their logo began with a “Y”. I know that as they had a “Y”  icon on the wheel cover.

But the only word on the car was the name of the company. No strapline. No USP. No image. No Benefits. Not even a URL! I noticed them straightaway but now, an hour later, have no idea who they were or what they did. Shame, it was a really nice piece of design. Probably cost them a few bob too…and likely on the advice of one of those new social media gurus.

But as the young people say nowadays. #fail. Sorry. Whoever you are.

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