Brand taglines and slogans… on the radio, on billboards, on TV at the end of commercials, in newsletters and social media… the slogan is what you stand for, and the tagline is the stamp at the end. You don’t need both a slogan and a tagline, but whatever you use must stand out and summarize your brand’s reason to be in just a few words.
Slogans and taglines are fundamental identity content for brands. They’re the essential, memorable words that differentiate a brand or company, and ideally, serve to trigger brand awareness and persuasion.
It can take months of research, ideation, and testing to decide on a slogan or tagline. Sometimes they’re sparked by a moment of inspiration. Then, the world receives them. Hopefully, they elevate public awareness of a brand or product with just a few powerful words. Ideally, they become part of popular culture.
In this article, we’re going to cover everything slogans and taglines. We’ll cover what they are, give examples, and provide tips on how to create them. Then we’ll break down our curated list of some of the best brand slogans and taglines we’ve seen.
Catchy brand slogans and taglines:
- Brawny — “The Strength to Take on Tough Messes”
- Revlon — “Live Boldly”
- Maxwell House — “Good to the last drop.”
- Porsche — “There is no substitute.”
- Dr. Pepper — “Be a Pepper”
- Ford Motor — “Go Further.”
- 3M — “Science. Applied to Life.”
- Jared the Galleria of Jewelry — “Dare to Be Devoted.”
- Reebok — “Be More Human.”
- Gillette — “The Best Men Can Be.”
- Peloton: “Motivation That Moves You”
- Skittles — “Taste the Rainbow”
- Purina — “Your Pet, Our Passion.”
- Casper — “The Best Bed for Better Sleep”
- Harley Davidson — “All for Freedom. Freedom for All.”
- Electronic Arts Inc. — “We Exist to Inspire the World to Play.”
- Men’s Wearhouse — “You’re going to like the way you look, I guarantee it.”
- Bristol-Myers Squibb — “Together We Can Prevail.”
- Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes — “They’re G-r-r-reat!”
- Netflix: “See What’s Next.”
- American Express Co. — “Don’t Live Life Without It”
- Capital One Financial — “What’s in your wallet?”
- Microsoft Corp. — “Be What’s Next.”
- U.S. Navy — “Forged by the Sea.”
- Washington Post — “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”
- VISA — “Everywhere you want to be.”
- Marriott Bonvoy — “Travel Brilliantly”
- ClearVoice — “Better Content. It’s What We Do.”
What is a Slogan?
The dictionary definition of a slogan is “a memorable phrase” — but brand marketers see it as a much more significant piece of content. A slogan encapsulates how your brand or product differs from the rest and expresses your purpose. It also tells your potential customers why they should choose you.
While advertising slogans may have to convey a brand‘s essence, marketers can really aim big with their interpretation of it. Since slogans have never really been constrained by the rules of truth, they are free to be creative and witty at the same time.
Slogan examples
Take Miller Beer of the 1950s dubbing their product “The Champagne of Bottled Beer.” Whether it deserved the title or not is up to personal taste. But it caught consumers’ fancy and became a concept that transcended the brand. They did the same thing with “Tastes Great, Less Filling” for Miller Lite. Does the beer really taste that great? Again, that’s up to each consumer to decide. But it does have fewer calories — and that’s what primarily concerned the target audience and made the slogan work so well.
For ClearVoice, “Better Voices, Better Content” has become an overarching slogan capturing the essence of quality content — which can only be created by quality talent. The slogan is used to great effect in multiple campaigns, including this recent one geared toward the “better voices” (i.e., freelance creative) side of the slogan (but, of course, with awesome motion graphics to support the “better content” side as well).
There’s no doubt the gig economy has opened up a new world of opportunities for creative professionals. But the reality is… As a freelancer, finding the right clients isn’t always easy… Who’s a professional? Or just a rando? Who will pay you fairly? Or just ghost you in the end? You don’t have time for that. At ClearVoice, we know you want to find work that’s worth your while.
That’s why we connect freelancers with growing brands who need talent like you to power their content marketing and media channels. We want to help connect you with vetted clients who value improving the quality of the content we all consume every day. So claim your CV Portfolio right now at clearvoice.com to get started. ClearVoice. Better voices, better content.
What is a Tagline?
In the Middle Ages, knights had mottos as part of their coat of arms. The imagery was their visual identity; the motto was their tagline. It let everyone else know what they stood for and gave people a way to feel about their house.
The tagline is the modern business version of the house motto. It is typically the last couple of words at the end of an ad spot — or the bottom of a logo. It’s the phrase everyone remembers you by. It’s a catchphrase, much like a slogan, meaningful to your brand, but it doesn’t necessarily contain the same brand purpose or reason people should choose you.
Tagline examples
A tagline might contain promises, like Lush’s “Fresh Handmade Cosmetics” — or Volvo’s “For Life.” It might evoke values, it might be a “battle cry,” and it might just ask a question.
In the following campaign video from ClearVoice, the tagline is “Message on.” If you heard the tagline on its own, you might think of texting, mobile service, or social media. But, like all content, context matters.
The spot zooms in from a very broad experience — that technology is making communication and connections possible anywhere at any time — and pulls us back down to the basic elements, the actual messages themselves. In other words, “messages” are the content you create, no matter the medium, in order to connect with your audience. ClearVoice helps you do that by enabling content creation at scale.
Read the full script below and notice how it all leads to the tagline — and contextualizes it. ClearVoice = Better Content, Faster = Your Message Is Always On.
In a twenty-four-seven world, connecting is everything. And for your business, that means your message has to be “always on”… Always welcoming, informing, and delighting… So at ClearVoice, we make managing your message easy… With vetted freelancers who get you and learn your voice… With collaborative workflow to scale content for all of your brand’s touch points… And with producers who can manage content and grow your vision. So never miss a chance to connect with customers. Create better content, faster. ClearVoice. Message on.
5 Tips on How to Write Catchy Slogans
Now that you understand what brand slogans and taglines are, you can write them for your business. First, let’s look at how to write catchy slogans.
1. Think of your company’s reason to exist
What does your brand or product aim to do better than any of its competitors? What is the purpose it serves? Why was it created? A slogan should answer these questions without them needing to be asked.
2. Take the mission statement or brand manifesto and distill it down
A lot of people think a company mission statement or manifesto is the same as a slogan. In fact, the slogan is the shortest possible version of the mission/manifesto. It might be the opening line, closing line, or a selection of the most powerful defining words. If you can’t figure out a slogan, write a mission statement or manifesto, and then look for your slogan inside of it.
3. Be specific
“We’re going to make the world a better place,” really doesn’t work here, and never did. What is your brand or product changing? What area will it impact? Only ubiquitous service-provider companies like Microsoft can get away with a very broad slogan. Even giants like FedEx focus on one expertise (delivering packages). Your slogan can be very lofty in its aspirations to impact one aspect of human existence — but definitely know what that one aspect is.
4. Think past the first thing that grabs you
Sometimes inspiration really does strike fast and first, but more likely the reason that the first thing you came up with keeps jumping out is because you personally gravitate to it. Group ideation, or at least feedback from a sizable group, is the best way to find out what grabs the most people. If you really want useful feedback, put your first and favorite choice somewhere in the middle of the list and see if people choose it unprompted.
5. Know that you can change it if it doesn’t perform well
Founders and business owners tend to get way too emotionally invested in coining the perfect slogan, as they think it’s going to get them customers and recognition in just one sentence. They expect it to make or break their business. And they don’t realize that if the chosen words don’t work, new ones can be tested out. Most successful companies have launched and retired many slogans and taglines over the years.
5 Tips on How to Write Catchy Taglines
Brand slogans and taglines are a way to reaffirm what you do, how it sets you apart, and how to make your company memorable. Use the tips below to write a catchy tagline for your business.
1. See how it fits into many campaigns and initiatives
A tagline will appear in many different campaigns and many different pieces of material. It will be surrounded by other messaging that clarifies it for different purposes. It always needs to fit into the campaign of the moment and provide a consistent recognizable element. So, if you’re trying to figure out whether a tagline is right, see how it stands alone, and then how it works within other messaging frameworks.
2. Make a promise
Not a specific one — in fact, the broader and more aspirational, the better. What’s the highest purpose your brand or company aims to achieve? For example, Revlon’s Live Boldly tagline doesn’t just promise that your makeup will be bold (though it also does that); it encourages a brave, unconstrained life — whatever that means to each individual consumer.
3. Make a suggestion
Some of the best taglines aren’t statements but rather suggestions framed in the form of questions. “Got Milk?” is a great example of this. At face value, it asks what you’ve got at home in the fridge, but in the context of an advertising campaign, it was used to suggest a myriad of scenarios for milk to make things taste better or to supply nourishment and fuel.
4. Go for immediate impact
Would it be visible and recognizable on a sleeve in a crowd or on a bumper sticker? In a conversation where someone said it ironically? That’s what you want to go for with a tagline, because those are ideally some of the places it would show up — and your ultimate goal in creating it would be that people hear it and immediately, subconsciously associate it with a brand.
5. Think of a great exit
Characters in movies and TV often make great exits. They throw down some statement that has their fellow actors, studio audience, and viewers cracking up, and poof — they’re gone. Humans in real life can rarely achieve that, but it’s exactly what a tagline should do, as the last bit of an ad or the bottom of a logo. So, which of the catchy phrases you’re mulling over would sound best if a TV character pronounced it before making a dramatic exit? That’s probably the one you want to use.
Catchy Brand Slogans and Taglines We Love for Products:
When it comes to brand slogans and taglines, the catchier, the better. Below, we break down some of our favorite brand slogans and taglines for well-known products and explain why they work so well.
1. “The Strength to Take on Tough Messes” — Brawny
Brawny is a big, tough, and used-to-be masculine brand that successfully positioned itself as the trusted leader in the formerly female-targeted home cleaning product space. It did so by promising to be the strongest in its category — the least likely to fall apart. In recent years, the brand has evolved what “strong” means to encompass more fluid gender roles, but its own promise of superior mess-fighting remains the same, and this tagline stays on the front of the packaging.
2. “Live Boldly” — Revlon
This is actually the name of a 2018 campaign that celebrated groundbreaking beauty role models. It launched with five faces, including body positivity advocate Ashley Graham and African-Arabic model Adwoa Aboah. In PR surrounding the campaign, the brand ambassadors put forth their own interpretation of the campaign slogan — Aboah said it means “unapologetic, knowing no boundaries, being vulnerable, strong, authentic and yourself.”
3. “Good to the last drop.” — Maxwell House
Not only did this slogan make marketing and advertising history — having been covered dozens of times since it was coined at the beginning of the 20th century — it even managed to get itself woven into “Great Presidents of America” folkloric history. There’s an unsubstantiated but persistent origin story that Teddy Roosevelt himself came up with the slogan after having a cup of coffee.
4. “There is no substitute.” — Porsche
For decades, Porsche has intentionally targeted only the very specific consumer for whom price is no object, and who will not accept substitutions for their top choice in anything life has to offer. This car is as much about lifestyle and statement as performance — and it’s undeniably true that while other cars may be more powerful, no car looks quite like a Porsche.
5. “Be a Pepper” — Dr. Pepper
There was a time when Dr. Pepper, the soda, was a larger part of consumer grocery culture than chili pepper. This slogan really shows how strong the brand identity was at that time, that people could see the suggestion “Be a Pepper” and link it back to what type of spicy/sugary soda they bought, rather than their taste for spicy food. The brand has changed its slogan a couple of times since then, but none as bold as this.
6. “Go Further.” — Ford Motor
When this tagline came out in 2012, Ford executed an interesting PR strategy: to tell all the marketing and trade media that this statement was as much aimed at employees as customers. The executives explained it was about company culture as much as the intended physical use of the car. Whether the many thousand Ford factory employees really took that to heart in their inventiveness and work ethic isn’t as well documented, but it was very appealing to people who believe marketing should tie in with corporate culture and brand purpose.
7. “Science. Applied to life.” — 3M
We know that Romy and Michelle from the movie didn’t invent Post-Its… But who did? 3M decided it was time to claim due credit for that, along with all sorts of other essential products, including Scotch tape, in 2015 with its first creative campaign in two decades. It launched it with an experiential installation at SXSW, a digital campaign, and this slogan underlying — illuminating that one giant global company applies science to create solutions for problems large and small, from medical procedures to note-scribbling.
8. “Dare to Be Devoted.” — Jared the Galleria of Jewelry
“He went to Jared” was a tagline past its prime, even though everyone knew it due to ubiquitous television advertising. This new one is interesting because it’s a direct challenge to the Tinder dating generation. In an era where people are committing less and valuing experience over things, it’s actually controversial to suggest that traditional expressions of devotion are the strongest. But here’s the thing Jared knows, probably through extensive market research: Quite a few people still believe jewelry expresses love and that it’s a symbolic (wearable) expression of affection.
9. “Be More Human.” — Reebok
When your largest competitor has D&I athlete marketing down to an art form, what do you do? You create a different vision of inclusion — one that doesn’t just celebrate elite athletes, but people being strong in the world. Specifically, this campaign is targeted to women, and the CEO has said as much in interviews, but with traditional advertising’s history of centering on men, this is a welcome change of strategy.
10. “The Best Men Can Be.” — Gillette
Changing one word in a classic tagline can be a major statement, especially when you put out a values-driven ad spot to go along with it — and definitely when much of your advertising in prior decades had taken the opposite approach. Suggesting that men should strive to be better rather than receive better kicked off a noisy social media-driven culture battle, but it helped to modernize the brand.
11. “Motivation That Moves You” — Peloton
Peloton’s tagline speaks to consumers who want to be healthier and more active. Their product is literally motivation that moves you, but it also speaks to the “moving” community of support users find through interacting with other users and Peleton’s instructors.
12. “Taste the Rainbow” — Skittles
Simple, happy, evocative. When you look at Skittles’ colorful little packages, you know the contents are not going to taste like fruit, but that’s not why one eats candy anyway. Eating the rainbow is a fun and lighthearted concept, and since the actual rainbow is an impossible bite, this is the next best substitute.
13. “Your Pet, Our Passion.” — Purina
Purina knows its target consumer well. Pet owners really do expect anyone servicing or providing products to their pets to be as passionate about those pets as they are. And why not? If you don’t love dogs and cats, pet owners don’t want you deciding what they’ll eat every day. Purina’s current tagline promises that they get it, they see you, and they are dedicated to providing the best for pets.
14. “The Best Bed for Better Sleep” — Casper
The mattress startup wars are even more brutal and digital-age cutthroat than the mobile phone ones, and Casper dominates the field. But the name Casper doesn’t immediately imply what the product is. So the slogan has to really spell out why this mattress is superior to all competitors — and it does, by harnessing the promise of something that most adults want more of every day.
15. “All for Freedom. Freedom for All.” — Harley Davidson
Harley’s target customer values freedom not only in an ideological sense but in the logistic sense of being able to hop on their bike and go anywhere, faster, without all the traffic jams that encumber people in cars.
16. “We Exist to Inspire the World to Play.” — Electronic Arts Inc.
Along with a couple of other video game publishing giants, EA actually changed the definition of “play” over the past couple of decades, turning it from what kids did outside in free time to a mega-mega billion-dollar industry and substitute for real-life action. This slogan puts the most positive face on gaming, as it should.
17. “You’re going to like the way you look, I guarantee it.” — Men’s Wearhouse
Appealing to self-esteem, promising convenience, and reliability, this slogan is effective because it promises a no-hassle solution to something men have to consider every day. Customers of Men’s Wearhouse probably don’t worry about their attire as much as others do, but they still have to think about it, and they like a guarantee that this part of life will be smoothly handled in just one store.
18. “Together We Can Prevail.” — Bristol-Myers Squibb
This is a pharmaceutical company. Without its products, many more people would die young or be gravely ill or in pain. So, building a public-facing platform around the cures and support it provides makes a lot of sense.
19. “They’re G-r-r-reat!” — Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes
This slogan wouldn’t exist without cartoon pitch-man Tony the Tiger. His kid appeal has always been strong, and this is his line. It’s something we’ve all grown up hearing on TV and seeing in the grocery store. At this point, no one can imagine the cereal without Tony on the box and his growly catchphrase right there with him.
Catchy Brand Slogans and Taglines We Love for Services:
You’ve probably heard or seen most of the brand slogans and taglines below — and for good reason. Take a look at our top picks and why we think they’re the catchiest examples for service-based businesses.
1. “See What’s Next” — Netflix
“See What’s Next” carries a lot of meaning for Netflix as a company and for its consumers. Whether it’s innovative storytelling or simply the upcoming season of a fan’s favorite show, the phrase encapsulates anticipation, curiosity, and connection in just three words.
2. “Don’t Live Life Without It” — American Express Co.
The slogan “Don’t Live Life Without It” has become iconic. AMEX has a lot of respect as a brand, both for what it represents and for its legacy lifestyle and culture portfolio — offloaded in 2013 to Time and then absorbed by Meredith. So, what customers really don’t want to be without is that elevated AMEX lifestyle, which they get by putting that plastic to work.
3. “What’s in your wallet?” — Capital One Financial
Cheeky yet pragmatic, nosy, and a little challenging, this is one of the greatest taglines of all time. It is so on point for Capital One, which is not only daring with its creative campaigns but also is the credit card provider most likely to be in anyone’s wallet, thanks to its wide range of products at different limits and interest rates.
4. “Be What’s Next.” — Microsoft Corp.
Microsoft filed a trademark for this saying in 2010, which was right during Apple’s peak of personal computer and device innovation. There were many other “next big thing” companies coming up then, and there are many now. But Microsoft has staying power, and is universally used — and it also has very smart branding, which is why the company trademarked a slogan that every tech innovator aspires to live by.
5. “Forged by the Sea.” — U.S. Navy
The Navy’s tagline is potentially powerful, achieved by modifying an ages-old saying (forged by fire) and using the symbolic meaning of “forged” rather than the scientific one. It only launched in late 2017, so we’ll have to see if it sticks, but the implication of tested, proven strength comes through.
6. “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” — Washington Post
This might be the most impactful — and most polarizing — tagline of the decade. It’s so dramatic and bleak that nobody would have known how to receive it a few years back. Now, everyone knows, and everyone has taken a position on whether they absolutely support this statement and publisher, or absolutely think it’s fake news.
7. “Everywhere You Want to Be.” — VISA
Props to VISA for figuring out FOMO and using it for marketing purposes as far back as the Eighties. The slogan, which was previously “It’s Everywhere you want to be,” connotes the possibility of new experiences more than striving to keep up with the Joneses.
8. “Travel Brilliantly” — Marriott Bonvoy
Launched before Marriott became Marriott Bonvoy, this slogan is broad and lets each traveler interpret it in their own way. Everyone would prefer brilliant travel, however, that might be achieved, whether it’s work, play, or a mix of both.
9. “Better Content. It’s What We Do.” — ClearVoice
When it comes to creating compelling content marketing, your success ultimately depends on the creatives and voices who craft your brand’s message and story. And ClearVoice knows this and values this highly. This tagline aligns with our brand name and overall philosophy: “We believe a clear voice is the most powerful voice, no matter its volume or medium.” On a deeper level, we’re saying we can help your brand cut through the clutter (the volume of noise in our media-flooded world) and achieve something greater. By mastering a clear voice, you will rise above and be heard.
Ready to Upgrade Your Slogans and Taglines?
Brand slogans and taglines help define what you do and make your business memorable. If you need help creating yours, ClearVoice’s expert writers can craft customized options to help your business stand out and connect with your target audience. Talk to a content specialist today to get started.
