Chapter 8

Designing Your Logo and Tagline

In This Chapter

Deciding what kind of logo you want for your brand

Developing and testing your logo design

Using, managing, and protecting your logo

Knowing when, why, and how to create a tagline or slogan

Logo design is the point at which the branding process acquires fanfare. The minute people in your organization see your brand emerge in a logo that embodies your name, they get enthusiastic about what may have previously felt like a whole bunch of navel-gazing. To most people, logo creation is the fun part of branding. It’s also the part that unduly gets the most attention.

If you opened straight to this chapter with the hope that you could give your brand a face without first wading through the process of researching, positioning, defining your brand identity and protecting a brand name, realize that branding isn’t like a game of Monopoly. You can’t just jump to “Go.” The only way you end up with a logo that accurately reflects the essence of your brand is by defining the essence of your brand before you begin the logo design process. If you haven’t yet done so, do yourself and your brand a favor by going through the steps presented in Chapter 6. They help you clarify your understanding of your brand’s mission, values, vision, culture, and character so that you can create a symbol — a logo — that serves as an accurate presentation of who you are and what you stand for in your marketplace.

If, however, you’ve taken the necessary steps and are truly ready to create a brand logo, this chapter guides you as you dive right in.

Planning Your Logo: The Face of Your Brand

Your logo is the graphic design — in type or symbol form — that conveys your brand name and character in your marketplace.

The best logos are unique, simple, and strong representations of the brands they identify. To those seeing your signage, letterhead, packaging, ads, brochures, website pages, and any other communication that carries a visual representation of your brand, your logo is the face of your organization.

This section is full of advice on how to proceed with your logo design, but above all else, remember these three all-important points:

• Keep your logo simple. Simple logo designs work best for a number of reasons:
  • They stand out in the sea of visual complexity and chaos that exists in today’s busy and image-saturated marketplace.
  • They enjoy longer lives than complicated logos that go out of style and require redesign to keep them in step with market tastes.
  • They contribute more significantly to a brand’s awareness and recognition than logos that need frequent and significant updates. Look at the long-standing logos of well-known and leading brands, such as Nike, Google, and the Red Cross; they display an amazing amount of visual restraint.
• Design a logo that can be presented consistently across all communication channels. You want your logo to show well on everything from business checks to vehicle signage, web pages, video screens, apparel, and anywhere else you choose to display it. Don’t sign off on any design until you know that it will look good large or small, and in color or black and white.
• Don’t do it yourself unless you’re a design professional or you want your logo to look like it represents a hands-on business that, in fact, created its own logo. Self-made logos are kind of like self-made TV ads; most of them are obvious for their lack of polish.

  If you’re not sure whether a do-it-yourself logo will present your company adequately, review your business vision (see Chapter 6 if your vision isn’t totally clear in your mind). If your vision is to provide the lowest-cost, quickest, bare-bones solution in a low-competition market area, a self-created logo may work just fine. However, if your aspirations for your business involve a long life and a broadly recognized reputation for quality in a competitive field, investing in a professionally designed logo is a moderate down payment on your dreams.

What your logo is and isn’t

This short section aims to diffuse the biggest myth in branding: Your logo isn’t your brand. We said it in Chapter 1 and it’s worth repeating here.

Your brand isn’t how you look or what you say or even what you sell. Your brand is what people trust and believe you stand for. Your brand is the set of impressions and beliefs that resides in the minds of others as a result of every encounter and experience with you, your product, your services, and your business. Your name and logo are like keys that unlock that set of beliefs. That’s why it’s so important to choose identifiers that are apt representations of the brand image you want people to hold and believe.

Matching your logo to your brand image

Whether you do it yourself or hire a professional to develop your logo, you need to think in advance about what image you want your logo to convey.

Any graphic designer can tell you that clients who give no direction, saying that they’ll simply know the right logo when they see it, burn through a lot of time and money while they wait for the perfect look to miraculously emerge.

Instead, begin the logo-design process with clear input about the type of image you want to develop. Use the worksheet in Figure 8-1 to assemble your thoughts and give your designer — whether that person is yourself, someone on your staff, or an experienced professional — good directions to work from.

Choosing your logo approach

Most logos take one of the following forms:

• They feature the name of the business in a unique type presentation called a wordmark.
• They feature the initials of the business in a symbol called a lettermark.
• They feature a symbol that represents the business, called a brandmark.
• They combine the preceding logo elements, for instance using a lettermark or a brandmark accompanied by the full name of the company, and sometimes the company slogan or tagline as well, in a unique configuration that becomes the company’s brand symbol.

Take care when combining elements in your logo design. Multiple elements can result in a visually complicated, difficult-to-reproduce logo. If you choose to combine elements, be sure that each component is visually clean and strong. For inspiration, consider the multielement logos of top fashion industry brands. For example, Chanel’s wordmark is used in conjunction with the iconic overlapping double Cs to create a strong symbol and fashion icon.

Spelling it out with a wordmark

A wordmark (sometimes called a logotype or typographic symbol) turns your brand name into your logo by presenting it in a unique typestyle, often with some artistic element that adds flair and memorability. Wordmarks are gaining in popularity among brand builders, as explained in the sidebar “What’s in a logo? Increasingly, a name.”

The best wordmarks are easy to read and distinctive. A few examples include the logos of FedEx, Google, Kellogg’s, and Yahoo!.

Consider a wordmark especially if any of the following circumstances apply to your marketing situation.

• You want your logo to build recognition for your name.
• Your marketing budget is lean, and realistically, you aren’t able to gain widespread recognition of a symbol, so you’re better off gaining recognition of a distinct presentation of your name instead.
• You intend to develop subbrands under your primary brand, and you want a strong wordmark that can serve as an umbrella over each line.

Using your initials in a lettermark

Lettermarks turn the initials of brand name into a brand symbol. In some logos, the lettermark appears all on its own, as in the IBM logo, which long ago dropped reference to the name International Business Machines. Other stand-alone lettermarks include the logos of GE, CNN, and Louis Vuitton.

In other logos, the lettermark appears along with a wordmark that presents the full name of the brand, such as in the logo of McDonald’s, which features the restaurant name along with an oversized “M.”

Lettermarks are good logo choices in the following circumstances:

• You want to make your name the primary emphasis of your logo, but you feel that your name is too long to be a good wordmark.
• You want to add a stylized monogram to a fairly straightforward presentation of your name in order to convey your brand personality.
• You have the budget necessary to develop awareness for your lettermark so that, in time, people will see the initials and think of your brand name.

Creating a brandmark or symbol

Brandmarks range from fairly literal to abstract designs that symbolize brand names. The best brandmarks become so associated with brand names that, in time, people automatically think of the brand name when they catch a glimpse of the logo. Think of the Nike Swoosh or the Starbucks or Mercedes symbols as examples of the power of great brandmarks.

Of all the logo approaches, developing a customized, trademarkable brandmark requires the highest level of design expertise and investment. And even the best one-of-a-kind, tailor-made mark requires a strong marketing investment before it becomes a meaningful symbol in consumer minds.

Consider a brandmark when these circumstances apply to your business:

• Your name is too long or cumbersome for a wordmark.
• A lettermark doesn’t fit the character or image of your brand.
• A symbol will help you communicate the benefit, promise, distinction, or character of your brand.
• Your market spans the globe, and you seek a symbol that can represent your brand regardless of the language of the consumer.
• You have the budget required to build your logo into a recognizable, meaningful symbol that communicates with such strength that it can carry meaning even if it doesn’t appear with your name.

Most brandmarks fit into one of these categories:

• A representation of the business name. For example, the Target logo is, unmistakably, a target. The Apple logo is an apple, the Red Cross logo is a red cross. The Shell logo is a shell. The Taco Bell logo is a bell. The Dropbox logo is an open box. You get the picture.
• A representation of the brand’s primary offering. For instance, the brandmark for YouTube features a video play button. The Best Buy mark features a yellow sale tag. A catering service might use a knife and fork or a wine glass as its mark.
• A representation of the brand’s promise. For instance, the Morton’s brandmark shows a little girl sprinkling salt in the rain. The Amazon logo features an arrow reaching from A to Z. An educational organization might feature a child holding a book, and a yoga studio could feature a body in motion.
• An abstract symbol that, over time and through marketing, is instilled with meaning for the brand it represents. Examples of this kind of brandmark include the “good hands” of Allstate Insurance, the rings of the International Olympics, the Nike Swoosh, and the triangle-faced man on the cover of For Dummies books. All are highly visible brandmarks that are meaningful to consumers because of diligent use and marketing by the brand holders.

Logo Design Resources

The process of designing your logo begins with a big decision: Will you do it yourself or call on professional resources?

• Do it yourself only if you’re artistically skilled and have time to commit, or if someone in your business or close circle can lend great design sense to the task. Realize that the logo you’re creating will make a lasting impression for your brand, so be sure the skills you can assemble match the image you’re aiming to create. If you do proceed on your own, follow the advice in the upcoming sections on logo design and logo taboos.
• Hire a professional designer if your design abilities are subpar or your time is better spent developing your business than creating your logo. Turn to Chapter 12 for descriptions of creative resources and advice for hiring and working with a graphic designer, ad agency, or branding firm. The choice will involve a not-insignificant investment that will pay dividends for years to come, especially if you’re building a brand in a competitive arena or one that you expect will expand over broad market areas and possibly grow into an asset you’ll someday want to sell.
• Turn to online services that range from free to hundreds to thousands of dollars if you’re short on both time and money.
  • You can enter “do-it-yourself logo creation” into a search engine to reach links to logo-generating websites and logo-development software. For example, Supalogo.com and LogoGarden.com are free services that deliver professional-quality graphics, though without the benefit of personalized or customized design.
  • You can enter “crowdsourced logo design” for links to businesses offering a new approach to customized design services. Sites such as 99designs.com and CrowdSpring.com have enlisted tens of thousands of designers who provide rapid-fire response to logo requests that are treated like design contests. You submit a design brief specifying your requirements and within days you receive ideas to choose from, with the number of responses based on the amount of prize money you offered. The outcome is efficient, relatively inexpensive, fast, and even social, since several services host polls for you to obtain input on your top-choice designs. TaskRabbit and Cloudera are examples of startups that turned to crowdsourcing sites for logo design. This option isn’t for everyone, but when time and budget are pinched, it may be a good choice.

Developing Your Logo Design

Whether you do it on your own or call upon professional expertise, start developing your logo design by completing the worksheet shown in Figure 8-1 so that you or your logo-design team members understand the brand your logo must reflect before the creative process begins.

Also, provide the following information to help guide creation of a logo that fits your brand and its market:

• A description of your clientele: For instance, are your customers predominantly male or female, urban or suburban, of a particular age group or income level, and do they share common interests or activities?
• Three to six words that you think best describe your brand and offering: For example, stylish, high quality, contemporary, classic, casual, professional, and so on.
• Samples of logos you like and don’t like, along with some idea of why you feel the way you do about each one: Designers can’t read minds, so the more input you provide, the faster and better the process will go.
• Input regarding design, color, and shape considerations: If you know that your logo will need to work well in horizontal signs, for instance, or if you know that you hate the color brown, say so early on, not after you see the first round of design suggestions. Give creative professionals everything they need to do the job right from the start, when creativity is at its highest. You’ll save them the agony of creative death through a thousand little cuts while saving yourself time and money by arriving at a solution that reflects your brand and meets your needs without rounds and rounds of costly revisions.

Design ingredients

As you go through the design process, be aware that typestyle, colors, and shapes have a bearing on the way a logo communicates.

What’s your type?

The typestyle you choose — and the way you arrange the type in your logo — has an impact on the impression your logo makes. Follow these tips:

• Choose a typestyle that matches the character of your brand. If your brand character is buttoned-down and professional, choose a typestyle that looks professional and even formal. If your brand character is casual, choose a typestyle that looks casual, too.

  For a quick orientation to the world of typestyles, open your word-processing program and pull down the menu for fonts to see samples of a wide variety of typestyles. Fonts that feature small lines adorning each character are called serifs; those devoid of letter enhancements are called sans serif. Courier and Times New Roman are examples of serif typestyles; Helvetica and Geneva are examples of sans serif typestyles. In general, serif typestyles convey a more traditional character and sans serif typestyles are more modern.

  When choosing your typestyle, opt for a look that can withstand the test of time. For instance, the FedEx wordmark is derived from Helvetica type, which was designed by the typographer Max Miedinger in 1957. How’s that for proof that classic styles enjoy long lives?

• Customize the presentation of your name in your logo. There’s a world of difference between a uniquely designed wordmark and type straight off your word processor. Type produced directly from a word processor is evenly spaced so that all letters and words are the same distance apart. Type that’s professionally arranged has its spacing adjusted, called kerning, so that letters are placed in uniquely pleasing configurations. The difference is almost imperceptible, yet it makes a dramatic difference in the appearance of a wordmark, and it’s one of the reasons logo designers earn their fees.

A primer on colors

Your logo’s color scheme can become an essential element of your brand identity. Coca-Cola is red; IBM is blue; John Deere is green. For that matter, think of your favorite college or pro team. Put the players in different colors, and fan confusion sets in.

As you choose colors for your brand identity, consider the following:

• Establish a color scheme that differs from the scheme used by your major competitors. People relate to color so strongly that you’ll cause confusion if you adopt colors already associated with another key player in your market arena.
• Choose a color scheme that reflects your brand character. If your market is comprised of young children, logo colors that resemble decorations on a birthday cake may be ideal. The same colors would hardly work for a respected plastic surgeon or corporate law firm.

  Most people perceive neutral tones such as grey, taupe, navy, dark green, or burgundy as subdued, mature, and professional. Pastels convey calmness. Blues and greens are cool. Red, orange, and yellow are warm and energetic.

• Choose colors that reflect your brand and the expectations customers have when selecting your offering. For example, if your brand and your customers’ expectations are professional, choose colors that are subdued and cool. If you offer and your customers seek lively entertainment, choose colors that are energetic.
• Consider how your colors will be interpreted in other cultures or countries if your brand will be marketed internationally. If you’re not sure, ask for advice from a university professor of the language or culture you aim to target.
• If your logo will appear on apparel or specialty items, consider how the colors will look on uniforms, golf shirts, ball caps, coffee mugs, or the dozens of other places it may end up. If the colors can’t be reproduced consistently, alter your color scheme accordingly. Alternatively, decide on an acceptable range of colors in which the logo can be presented without breaking your logo management rules (See the section “Managing Your Logo” later in this chapter for more information.)
• The fewer colors you employ, the easier your logo will be to manage. Logos with full-color illustrations or photos require full-color printing — an expensive and time-consuming process that you should adopt only after serious consideration. Plus, the Internet further restricts color options because the web’s color palette is limited.
• No matter what color scheme you adopt, be sure your logo works beautifully in plain old black and white. After all, that’s how it will look on business checks, in photocopies, in many ads, and in low-cost communications that will carry your brand identity far and wide.

Logo shapes and sizes

Most logos need to work well in a horizontal configuration that’s about half as tall as it is wide. In other words, they need to look good in the return address portion of a business envelope, in the top corner of a web page, and on the shirt pocket of uniforms or logo apparel.

Whatever configuration your logo takes, be sure it can reduce down to the size it will appear on a business card. If it becomes blurry or unrecognizable, simplify the elements so that it reads well even in minute presentations.

Logo design evaluation

When reviewing logo designs, put them through a preliminary test to see if they incorporate the traits of most good symbols.

• Do you think the logo makes a good impression for your business? Does it reflect the character and standards of your brand?
• Is it easy to see and remember? Try this test when reviewing a logo design: Look at a proposed design; then set it aside and draw a quick rendition on a scrap of paper. If you come up with a sketch that’s close to the design, then you can be pretty sure that the logo is memorable.
• Does it work in a single ink color and at a small size? If the rendition you’re looking at is in color, run it through the photocopier and see if it looks good in black and white and at a size that fits on a business card. If fine lines disappear in the reproduction and reduction, the design and artwork probably won’t withstand a broad range of applications.
• Is it original? Airbnb is an example of a business that unveiled a logo only to have fans and detractors howl over the symbol’s similarity to logos of other brands. Protect yourself: On Google, click to search images. Then click the camera icon and upload an image of your proposed logo. In seconds you’ll see whether similar designs already exist.

Logo design taboos

Economy is a virtue — but not in logo design. The biggest mistake that new brand marketers make is saddling themselves with logos that scream homemade. Follow this advice to avoid common logo-design pitfalls:

• Think twice before handing the logo-design task over to your cousin’s nephew or undertaking it on your own. Your logo visually represents your brand and the caliber of your offering. If you want to compete with great brands, hire an expert who specializes in logo design.
• Don’t let the design get too fussy. Keep it simple. The best logos are clean and refined, conveying leadership and longevity.
• Avoid clip art. The archives of symbols that you can freely drop into your logo are huge, but they’re also generic, say little about your brand and its character, and can show up in someone else’s logo in the future.
• Don’t be a copycat. Use other logos for inspiration, but invest the time and money necessary to create your own unique mark. For one thing, you end up with a distinctive logo. For another, you avoid the legal landmines that infringing on another company’s brandmark can set off.

Your logo makes the difference between a strong and a weak first impression for your business. It also makes the difference between a brand of choice and a product purchased simply for its price or availability. Want proof? Take the alligator off the shirt, and what is Izod selling? A shirt like any other shirt you can get anywhere — for less. With the alligator, the shirt becomes an association with the success and stature of the Ivy League.

Preparing your logo artwork

If you feel up to the task of designing your own logo, follow this advice:

• If you create your logo by using the templates available online or in publishing programs, customize colors, symbols, and typestyles so that you end up with a unique look for your business.
• Use the same design software that professionals use. Most designers use Adobe Illustrator, known as vector-based graphic design software, which means that the final logo design can be enlarged or reduced without design distortion or loss of quality.

If you hire a professional for your logo design, take these steps:

1. Choose a professional whose expertise, size, and fees fit your needs.

   Options range from freelance artists to small design studios to local, regional, national or global ad agencies to internationally renowned identity developers. You can spend anywhere from several hundred dollars up to the million-dollar range. If you want a logo that competes well in a local market, set aside a small budget and find a local resource. If you aspire to make the list of the world’s top brands, turn to the talents of award-winning brand specialists, and plan to invest accordingly.

2. Review work samples to be sure that the designer’s style matches with your expectations.
3. Be clear about your budget and obtain cost estimates before authorizing design work to begin.
4. Stipulate that you will own all rights to your logo after you pay in full for its design and production.
5. Upon approval of your final logo design, obtain copies of the artwork in EPS format for printing purposes and in JPG and GIF formats for online use.

Putting Your Logo to Work

After you approve your logo design, apply it consistently to every single communication that carries your name into the marketplace. Use the worksheet in Figure 8-2 to list all the places your logo needs to go. Then aim to get your logo into place on all items just as quickly as possible.

If you apply your logo in a piecemeal fashion, applying it to some brand presentations immediately and others over time, you’re setting yourself up for a weak identity and marketplace confusion.

Saving Face: Giving an Existing Logo a Makeover

In today’s world of split-second attention spans, it’s easy to assume that change is good and rapid change is even better. Just don’t apply that logic if you’re thinking about updating an already-established logo.

People form a relationship with your brand, and your logo is the visual link to the positive images they hold in their minds. Unless you believe that changing your logo will strengthen your identity and deepen the customer relationship, and unless the story of your business has changed, leave your logo alone.

Chapter 16 is your guide to assessing the current strength of your logo and other brand assets and deciding whether evolutionary to revolutionary changes are necessary.

Making evolutionary logo changes

Evolutionary logo changes accompany evolutionary changes to your business and brand strategies. They retain the essence of your logo but modernize the design to make it visually stronger and more in step with your business and market.

Sometimes a logo gets tired. Perhaps it’s been used inconsistently and, as a result, it loses the ability to represent your brand. Maybe it’s failed to keep pace with changes to your brand’s offerings, character, and target market. Or maybe it’s just plain gone out of style.

If you think that the time has come to update your logo, begin by evaluating your needs. Consider whether you seek a quick nip and tuck or a more extreme logo makeover.

To come to this conclusion, answer the following questions:

• What image do you want to project, and how does your logo fall short?
• What about your business has changed since your logo was created? Is your target market different? Has your product offering changed? Do you still make the same brand promise? Has your brand character changed?
• Can you update your current logo to reflect your updated situation, or do you need an altogether new symbol even though the complete change may result in short-term market confusion?
• What elements of your logo are most important to your identity? The symbol? The colors? The wordmark? If you could keep only one portion of your logo, which would it be?
• Do you have the budget required to change your logo throughout all brand communications?

  Look back at Figure 8-2 for a list of all the places your brand logo goes. In addition to the cost of redesigning your logo, you need to be prepared to update every single place your logo appears, and the sooner the better.

Making revolutionary logo changes

Revolutionary logo changes are necessary when you want to signal a major change of strategic direction, when you want to raise a new flag and say, essentially, “This is what we now stand for.”

Before designing an altogether new logo, assess the level of recognition, understanding, and loyalty your customers have for your current mark. If value for your current logo is high, think long and hard about changing the symbol people fondly link to your brand image. (See the sidebar, “The high cost of underestimating brand love,” for case histories summarizing what can go wrong.) On the other hand, if the value customers place on your current logo is low or severely damaged, start the redesign process following every step in this chapter, including and especially planning a budget to get your new symbol into your marketplace.

Managing Your Logo

To ensure that your logo is presented consistently, create a set of usage guidelines to be followed by everyone who produces marketing materials for your business. This section provides a logo-management outline to follow.

Creating standards and usage rules

As a first step toward controlling the presentation of your logo, create high-quality artwork and stipulate that your logo must be reproduced only from approved files.

Beyond requiring use of approved artwork, also control how your logo can appear by establishing usage guidelines in each of the following areas.

Presentation of your logo as a single unit

Too often, those with creative urges want to take liberties with your logo by increasing the size of one element and decreasing the size of another, or by moving elements into different positions to alter the shape of the logo in order to fit it into a space it otherwise doesn’t fit. Ban individualized treatments by providing artwork for your logo in several allowable shape variations — horizontal and vertical treatments — along with the stipulation that any alternative configuration must be approved prior to usage.

Placement of your logo

Define how your logo can appear in printed materials.

• Clarify how much open space must exist between your logo and surrounding design elements. For instance, if a wordmark begins with the letter T, instructions may require that the logo be surrounded by open space at least equal to the size that the T appears on the page. This rule ensures the logo won’t be crowded by surrounding artwork.
• Define how your logo can be positioned. Indicate whether it can appear on its side or in a diagonal placement or whether it must always run parallel to the bottom of the page or screen.
• Define the smallest size in which your logo can appear. Especially if your logo involves type or fine lines, it may become illegible at small sizes, which reflects poorly on your brand image.

Color treatments

In your guidelines, define the colors in which your logo may appear.

• Stipulate whether or not you allow the logo art to appear in white on a black or colored background (called a reverse treatment).
• Clarify whether you allow your logo to appear on colored paper or in colored backgrounds and, if so, whether background colors are limited to a range of allowable colors.
• Spell out the colors in which your logo can be reproduced. If your logo is to appear in green, for example, take the guidelines a step further by telling exactly which shade of green, giving the ink number from the Pantone Matching System (PMS) used by most printers. Also stipulate how to build the approved color through the four-color printing process (called CMYK for cyan-magenta-yellow-black) by defining what percentage of each of the four inks a printer should use to create the desired tone. Further, define how to arrive at the color through the RGB (red-green-blue) process for computer screen display.

Naming a brand cop

People don’t fiddle with your logo to be mischievous; they think they’re being creative on your behalf without realizing that their help is apt to harm the strength of your brand identity. That’s why you need to create and circulate usage guidelines and name a person who must approve any variations from the approved usage of your logo.

Chapter 17 includes detailed information on writing and enforcing your brand usage guidelines.

Creating a Tagline

A tagline, also called a slogan or motto, is a phrase that accompanies your brand name to quickly translate your positioning and brand statements into a few memorable words that provide an indication of your brand offerings, promise, and market position.

Discovering what makes a great tagline

Great taglines have a number of common attributes. When writing your tagline, see that it meets these criteria:

• It’s memorable. You hear it, remember it, and repeat it with ease.
• It’s short. Great taglines have as few as ten syllables so that they’re quick to recite, easy to tuck in alongside logos, and short enough to include in the briefest of communications.
• It conveys a brand’s point of difference. A good example of this element is Zipcar: “Wheels when you want them.”
• It differentiates a business from all others. In fact, a great tagline is so unique that it doesn’t work when linked to a competitor’s brand name.
• It reflects the brand’s identity, character, promise, and personality.
• It’s believable and original.

A great tagline excels on most or all of these fronts while also avoiding a couple of major tagline mistakes:

• It invokes positive feelings without running the risk of triggering sarcastic retorts.
• It appeals to consumers. In other words, the tagline doesn’t get bogged down with the input of executives who inadvertently turn the slogan into a corporate rallying call rather than a consumer magnet.
• It adds to the meaning of the brand name without repeating any of the same words or concepts.

Deciding whether you need a tagline

Taglines carry your brand identity and promise where your logo can’t go, like your e-mail messages, word ads, voicemail greetings, and other nonvisual communication channels.

Some brand names tell a pretty complete brand story (for example, Coppertone, Jiffy Lube, U-Haul). Other brand names benefit from some quick explanation, which is where taglines come to the rescue. Plus, even seemingly self-sufficient brand names gain dimension through their slogans.

To determine whether you need a tagline, answer these questions:

• Does your business offer consumers distinct advantages that aren’t conveyed in your name?
• Would your brand character be more clearly presented with a line that travels with your brand name?
• Is your company best at something that you want consumers to know about but that isn’t conveyed by your name?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, a tagline may well be a strong addition to your brand name, logo, and marketing program.

Tag(line), you’re it! Coming up with your slogan

In crafting your tagline, follow this advice:

• Know your positioning statement. What meaningful and available niche in your market do you fill better than any other brand? (Turn to Chapter 5 if you’re not sure.)
• Based on your unique position, come up with a list of quick, memorable one-liners that convey your special distinction.
• Put each of your tagline contenders to the test by seeing if they live up to the qualities listed in the section “What makes a great tagline?” For further evaluation, seek input from branding experts and take advantage of the free tagline test tool offered at TaglineGuru.com, identified by the great tagline, “It’s your brand on the line.”