To create a really good advertising slogan, you need to understand that you are not selling the product or service. What is sold is your brand core. It is feelings and inner images that you trigger in consumers with your advertising message. You can describe a product in detail, advertise all its advantages or present it in a perfect look – but sales will still not occur if you cannot anchor yourself with your brand in the consumers’ minds in the long term. If you want your product to sell, you need a catchy and concise tagline that sells the benefit, not the item itself. An advertising slogan should provide information about all the advantages of the brand in a few words and encourage purchases. He has to pick up on your brand essence and give your product a unique selling point if possible. Strictly speaking, a slogan is the packaging that describes what is inside.
Don’t sell a product—sell an associated sentiment
People buy things because they give them the experience of feeling. Very few people can feel happiness, contentment, power, or freedom in themselves without a triggering factor. We have learned to attach feelings to material things and buy products to invoke feelings in this way.
You have to take advantage of this fact if you want your product to sell. Because the more emotions you can arouse in your potential customer, the faster he will take action.
You know this phenomenon, for example, from landing pages on which a product or service is described and advertised in various ways until the reader impatiently scrolls down to the purchase offer because the desire has become overwhelming. If, for example, the positive effects of dietary supplements on physical well-being are described and alleviation of existing symptoms of illness is indicated, the emotional level of people is appealed to. The prospect of freedom from pain or weight loss is translated by the brain into an image with a corresponding feeling. Patients want to be free from pain. Overweight people want to feel slim and light. That’s what advertising is all about.
People should want to feel happiness, power, health, contentment, beauty, and abundance that are coupled with the image of different products.
Let’s look at the following example:
Do you remember – the yogurt from the company Zott that promised the “weekend feeling” in the advertising message? The term “weekend” is generally associated with pleasant feelings. Someone says the word “weekend” and something happens inside you. A smile crosses your face. You breathe in deeper and your body relaxes for a moment because you remember the last weekend with all its beautiful moments. This makes you feel good because your brain releases happiness hormones. Your body is better supplied with blood for a moment, which you perceive as a pleasant pulsation and which makes you feel more energetic.
At that moment you realize that you don’t have to wait until Friday to feel so relaxed and content. All you need is a yogurt that will evoke those same sensations within you. With this, you live every day like a weekend – and that’s what people want and gratefully accept.
In this case, of course, the product must also taste good, because an artificial yogurt flavor does not remind you of a work-free weekend that you associate with relaxation and enjoyment. In this case, the advertising slogan will not have an effective effect because the memory triggered will not correspond to the real experience. It is therefore important not to make any promises in the slogan that cannot be kept.
The process of creating an advertising slogan
Several steps are required to create a good advertising slogan.
1. Your product, your feeling: Every product should create a specific experience. Find and feel them.
2. Be the result: Connect the feeling with your product.
3. Put the feeling in one word: speak the experience. You are also welcome to use alliteration (” short, crisp, creative “) or idioms.
How does it look in action?
Any bet: Just by mentioning Carglass, the following advertising jingle plays in your head: “Carglass repairs, Carglass replaces.” Many consumers also remember “Washing machines live longer with Calgon.” These advertising messages can be anchored in the minds of consumers for decades. Advertising slogans in which alliteration or idioms (“milk makes tired men perk up”) appear have also proven particularly effective in recent decades.
So how do you go about memorably communicating your brand name?
Have you seen the movie What Women Want with Mel Gibson? As an advertising specialist, he was also supposed to create perfect advertising slogans and did so by identifying himself with the products in the first step. He put on pantyhose, painted his lips with lipstick, and picked up the epilating paper to empathize with the emotional world of a woman.
What does that tell us in terms of a perfect slogan? First, create the desired feeling and then connect it to your product.
An example: How do you sell a baby diaper whose shape is the same for every seller? You can emphasize the absorbency or the adjustable cuffs. But none of that interests a mother. She wants her baby to feel good and it can only do that if nothing pinches and everything stays tender and dry. The result of such diaper comfort is:
- a good night’s sleep
- a healthy skin
- a happy baby
- a relaxed mother
That’s what mothers want to “buy”. Whatever the diaper looks like, if those feelings are appealed to and summed up in a phrase, that diaper will be bought. You just have to make sure that the quality corresponds to these statements. Otherwise, another (negative) slogan will emerge very quickly, which will not be developed by the manufacturer but by the customer.
Brand manufacturers of diapers start with the feelings of mother and child. The qualitative features are listed (wide cuffs, leak protection, absorbent core), but the animation to buy is triggered by the following statements:
- dry skin
- slept through the night
- happy and energetic waking up
- dry bed
That’s what a mother wants. Diapers can be cheap, colorful, ecological, or made from renewable materials – if they are not good for the baby, the brand and advertising slogan do not matter.
An advertising slogan for the sale of diapers must therefore have something to do with well-being, dryness, protection of the delicate baby skin, and joie de vivre to appeal to a mother. The product must protect, heal and be comfortable for the offspring to feel good. Let’s take a quick look at Pampers’ previous slogans:
2000: Pampers keep your butt nice and dry.
2003: Pampers surprised.
2004: Inspired by babies, created by Pampers.
The slogan that most directly shaped the needs of mother and child was created in 2000. The statement “Pampers surprises” has now anchored itself in the consciousness of the target group because the company relied on the brand name. After all, the slogan itself did not evoke any emotional impact.
The individual steps
1. Use your product yourself
As a rule, we as manufacturers and sellers first find the right product and then have to advertise it. For this, you should know your product and have tried it yourself. This is the only way you will know which sensations are directly related to your product.
If you sell saws, saw wood first. Only through your own experience will you know how it felt. Perhaps the operation was very simple. Or the size more appropriate than other devices. The saw was more secure in the hand or was very light in weight. Use your product and make your own experience. It is the basis for your advertising slogan.
If sports shoes are your product – run in them. If you sell clothes – wear them. If you’re a real estate agent, then it’s best to switch perspectives and imagine how you live in it. how would you feel If you offer pet food, put yourself in the shoes of a pet owner with an all-around healthy animal.
Whatever you want to sell, use it and see what it does to you. This is the only way you can anchor yourself with your product in the minds of your users in the long term.
2. Brainstorming
Then you delve into the thoughts that you became aware of while using it. Humans are wired to divide everything into positive and negative experiences. Look for a pleasant feeling that comes up during product use. Your mind is always commenting on every action. Keep track of the thoughts that come to your mind and look for positive statements.
3. Dive into the feelings
You then take the time to match each positive phrase to the corresponding feeling. This means that this time you have to switch off your mind and go to the emotional level. Unfortunately, the reason is no help in this case, because we do not sell shapes, profitability, or bargains. We sell a feeling. That’s why you have to delve into the emotional level to find the right words from there.
4. Turn sensations into a catchy advertising slogan
People don’t want detergent, they want clean, delicate, and, above all, fragrant laundry. They don’t want special foods, they won’t taste, healthy or have a summer feeling when barbecuing. They are looking for what the product can do and what it can evoke – and this is about feelings.
Everyone associates fresh laundry with a scent that makes you take a deep breath and forget everything for a moment. Advertising for cars suggests the feeling of power, freedom, and self-determination. Just looking at a juicy burger stimulates the taste buds and makes you salivate. When are sunglasses cool? When it makes you feel a little bigger than another person. It’s always about feeling.
Even a drill is easier to sell when the slogan promises professionalism. “Build like a pro” makes you feel like you’re a great and talented guy. Therefore, any machine will outsell the others if the appropriate advertising slogan appeals to the ability to be a successful craftsman. Even if you have no idea.
To find a sales-boosting advertising slogan with which you can anchor yourself in the minds of consumers in the long term, you have to take the desired feeling and formulate it concisely in the last step.
Here’s an example:
Product: Offer hairdressing service
Feeling: be attractive, be seductive, be conspicuous
Word/slogan: “We make you even more beautiful!” or “Seduce with a new hairstyle!”
Another example:
Product: Coaching for personality development
Feeling: be self-confident, be more capable of acting, be more recognized, be more successful
Word/Slogan: “Why you’re not where you could be yet!” or “Do you dare to change something in your life?”
In the field of coaching, it is somewhat more difficult to find the right slogan. People are fed up with promises of miracle cures and 5-step programs that rarely work. Also, the fear of not being good enough is ingrained in our consciousness. In this area, it is more effective to pick people up where they are: in their doubts, fears, and shortcomings. In this case, frame a tagline asking why the person hasn’t taken the initiative yet or what they need to get started.
A final example:
Product: dietary supplement
Feeling: to be pain-free, to be well fed, to be resilient, to be active, to feel safe
Word/slogan: “Over 50 and still pain-free?” or “The body heals itself. Start now!”
Note the consumer group to create an appealing advertising slogan
When you empathize with the impact of your product, you need to consider one thing – your consumer group. There’s a difference between selling to moms and teenagers. Older end users, for example, value a respectful approach. In addition, people in their mid-fifties will not necessarily feel attracted to advertising slogans that use terms like “sexy” or “cool”.
Every generation has its linguistic revolution and only feels addressed by it. Also, words like “attractive” or “beautiful” mean different things to teenagers than they do to seniors. This means that you don’t just have to put yourself in the desired feelings of your potential customers. Also, dive into the age of the relevant buyer group.
Make it easy for yourself, use the slogan generator!
This creative process is not easy for everyone. Finding words and alliteration that arouse emotions cannot be realized with the mind alone. Without emotional involvement, an advertising slogan can describe a product perfectly, but sales will still be unsatisfactory. But don’t worry, the Internet also offers professional help when it comes to developing an advertising slogan.
So-called slogan generators create suitable word groups from individual words or phrases, which can serve as the basis for the perfect advertising slogan. This results in funny creations that you should not adopt, but use as inspiration. You will notice that your ideas come up much more spontaneously once you have initiated this process. The slogan generator is like a tool to fire up your imagination when it’s rusty.
In a nutshell: create a good advertising slogan
Every good slogan takes shape when you use your product yourself and feel the good feelings associated with it. Name these feelings, use them as the basis for your advertising slogan, and orientate yourself toward your consumer group.
One last tip before you start designing your perfect tagline. Avoid the superlatives and advertising slogans that thrive on scary thoughts.
People are not stupid and yet they are treated that way every day. Anyone who constantly works with grammatical and linguistic intensifications leaves an unpleasant impression. After all, this is not about the customer and his needs, but about the ego of the seller. “Greed is hot” may have worked for a while because it was new, cheeky, and funny. However, people sense that these opposites are self-contradictory, so it was soon off the table. Avarice involves scarcity and that’s exactly what nobody wants to experience.
Advertising slogans that talk about more, bigger, or cheaper are also being paid less and less attention to. People realize that discount percentages are a sham if the basic price has been increased beforehand. Even offers that are shown to be scarce and advertised with corresponding advertising slogans do not lead to the desired sales.
If the customer is supposed to be seduced into buying by scary advertising and the offer still exists after a few weeks, the credibility of the seller is gone. So formulate honestly and authentically. Offer quality and pack all the benefits together as one phrase in the tagline. Then it will also work with the sale.