Using corporate slogans to spur growth is common among America’sgiant companies. For 17 years, Ford Motor Co. used “Quality is jobone,” both to convince car buyers of its emphasis on quality and toremind workers of quality’s importance. Many others, including Avis(“When you are number two, you try harder”) and Charles Schwab(“Helping investors help themselves”), have made the most ofslogans.
There’s no reason why smaller companies can’t do the same. Infact, the flexibility, low cost and high effectiveness of slogansmake them almost mandatory for companies of any size, he says. Thebest slogans are mini-vision statements. When carefully crafted,they can effectively convey a company’s key characteristics to avariety of audiences, from investors to customers and suppliers tojob applicants.
The benefit of a slogan is just that: The same memorable messagecan be used for many purposes in many different media. A brief,catchy slogan can be placed in advertisements, workplace posters,business cards and even on uniforms and corporate stationery,providing a uniform, constant reminder of what makes the companyspecial.
Slogans are particularly effective when you’re trying tocommunicate a major shift in strategy. Nike is trading in itsinfamously audacious “Just do it” catchphrase for the softer “Ican” at the same it’s trying to market more shoes and apparel towomen. Similarly, Xerox’s “The document company” describes itsrecent return to its roots after forays into financial services andother unrelated areas.
Slogans may also change to reflect societal shifts. Ford, forinstance, recently dropped “Quality is job one” because of theperception that in today’s marketplace, high quality is a given andis no longer an important marketing variable.
An effective slogan should be brief. Short or long, a sloganshould encapsulate the essence of the firm.
One way to get some guidance about your slogan is to look at theslogans used by competitors. Ideally, yours should say somethingdifferent from all of them, staking out an area that rivals haveignored. A good slogan should also be memorable.
But slogan crafting involves more than coming up with a catchysaying. As a mini-vision statement, your slogan should stateexactly why you are special as a business and how you will remainthat way. For that reason, slogan designers use some of the sametools vision statement writers do, such as weekend managementretreats.
Don’t let top management come up with a slogan on its own. Getemployees involved. One approach is to solicit employee suggestionsthrough a contest. That was the technique Ford used to select itslong-lived “Quality is job one” slogan.
Quantitative slogans can be very effective. But if you make aquantitative promise and can’t live up to it, you’ll succeed onlyin looking foolish, he warns. You may also err if you come up witha slogan that focuses attention on the wrong things. For instance,it’s probably not a good idea to have a slogan dealing strictlywith financial matters.
Slogans can be inexpensive, or they can be very costly. Manylarge companies spend millions of dollars with ad agencies andimage consultants to come up with new slogans. Communicating thenew slogans can be expensive too; Ford has budgeted $40 million forthe corporate advertising campaign that will roll out its newslogan, “Better ideas. Driven by you.” But printing slogans onposters, atop memo pads and in other visible places will work welland inexpensively for smaller companies.
Not every company is ripe for a new slogan. If your firm ischanging direction and is uncertain about where it’s going, waituntil you have a firm strategy before trying to come up with aslogan to express it.
