It’s not as easy as you think. (Nor is it as difficult.)

Photo by Marc Nozell, used under a Creative Commons license.

Yes we can.

Of course we can. But exactly what is it that we can do?

Well that’s the great thing about Barack Obama’s tagline. It means whatever you want it to mean. It creates a sense of possibility, of potential, of empowerment.

The same goes for his change taglines: Change can happen, Change we need, Change we can believe in.

It’s like tofu: sweet or savoury, tangy or velvety. You decide. But whatever you do, you can’t contradict it: because the election was going to bring change anyway, since George W Bush couldn’t stand for a third term.

So it promised everything, without really promising anything.

The perfect tagline.

You want it? You got it.

Promises are at the core of taglines. Just look at supermarkets.

In the UK, Tesco has Every little helps. They’re saving you money, which is especially important in these tough economic times, when every penny counts.

Sainsbury’s takes a different tack with Try something new today. This could mean a new product, a new flavour or a new recipe. But it could also mean a new supermarket.

Both taglines look like they’re handwritten, which adds to the personal touch.

Upmarket chain Waitrose doesn’t have one. At the other end of the spectrum, neither does Asda. But Asda’s US parent company Wal-Mart has a great one: Save money. Live better.

How could you say no?

iTagline

Technology companies love taglines. And none more so than Microsoft. When I worked for them, it was Where do you want to go today? New York? The Moon? Round the corner? The White House?

No problem. We can do that.

Now it’s even more visionary: Your potential. Our passion. It says ‘you can do anything, and we’ll be with you every step of the way.’  So Microsoft is your friend, and my friend, and everybody’s friend. It’s warm and fuzzy and creates a direct connection with the reader.

Unlike Sun Microsystems’ tagline, which baldly states The Network is the Computer. That one leaves me cold - mostly because I feel as if I’m being led into a Brave New World.

And in any case, what happens when the network goes down? Does the computer go down too?

Ready, set, go.

Taglines are endlessly fascinating. And endlessly distracting. So here’s my quick-and-easy five steps to deciding what’s best for you:

• Look at your company. What do you do? How do you come across to clients? If your company had a personality, what would it be?
• Look at your audience. What do they want to hear? Will they appreciate or understand cleverness in a tagline? Do they want you to ‘tell it as it is’? Will they even read it?
• Work out your mission. What problem do you solve? What message do you want to send out? Remember, this is a mission, NOT a mission statement (nobody, but nobody, reads those).
• Don’t get into analysis paralysis. Every tagline has pros and cons. There is no right choice. And what’s right today may not be right in six months’ time. Put 10 options down on paper, then whittle them down to five, then three. Then one. Choose it and don’t look back.
• Remember, it’s just a tagline. It’s not as important as your clients, your service, your stock availability, your timekeeping, your delivery, your customer care, your responsiveness, your dedication.

At the end of the day, it really is just a tagline. And that’s just one small piece of a very big puzzle. So slot it in and admire your handiwork.

Then move on. (Yes, you can.)

[Note: the taglines in this post are all either (R) or (TM) of the relevant companies.]

…unless you’re absolutely sure about them

1. Use Latin if you’re writing in English

I’ve just been reading a blog post by one of my favourite bloggers.

He’s witty, intelligent and often makes me laugh out loud. His writes things I can’t find anywhere else (the Holy Grail of blogs) which is why he’s always on my must-read list.

And one of the things I really like is that his spelling is impeccable. Or at least, it used to be.  Because his latest post contains a glaring error.

Homo sapien.

It brought me to a juddering halt. In my mind’s ear, I could hear Mr Watson drumming his thin, bony fingers on the blackboard.

“Sapien, Mr Walsh?” he’d intone. “Sapien? Be so kind as to tell the class what part of speech that is.”

Just thinking about it sends a chill down my spine.

And more so because sapien isn’t any part of speech. It’s just a common-or-garden mistake. I can see how he got there, though. If homo sapiens means ‘men’, then you just knock off the ’s’ to mean ‘man’, right?

If only life were that simple.

This blogger used the Latin term because he wanted to appear just a touch cleverer, more educated and…more superior?

It didn’t work.

[Note for Latin lovers - or even lovers of Latin: homo sapiens is singular; the plural, never used, would be homines sapientes. Thanks, Mr Watson.]

2. Make fun of people (unless it’s yourself)

Oh dear. Hell’s Pizza has done it again.

I’ve written about the New Zealand pizza chain before. They like a walk on the wild side when it comes to marketing.

They’re the ones that created a pizza called ‘Lust’ that shipped with a free condom. And they ran an advert with Hitler with his arm outstretched with the line ‘It is possible to make people believe that heaven is hell’. (Jewish groups were outraged and the ad was withdrawn.)

Well last week, they crossed the line again.

This time, it was a Halloween promotion that had three dancing skeletons: Sir Edmund Hillary (the first man to climb Everest), the actor Heath Ledger, and the Queen Mother.

Hillary’s family said it was “in very poor taste.” (The campaign, not the pizza, you understand.) It too has been withdrawn.

Rachael Allison, Hell’s Pizza marketing director said the company was known for its controversial advertising, and that a lot of people loved it. She went on to say:

“Interpretation of this is always up to individuals and we are always mindful of that and always keep an eye on our tone of voice and try to keep on top of that.”

A little too much sauce, I think.

3. Assume that technology works

Your website’s got an e-commerce function so you never have to talk to people. It just runs itself, right?

Wrong.

I recently (re)discovered this when I tried to buy a USB pen drive. I dropped it into the basket, then clicked ‘Next’ to enter my details. Then ‘Next’ to go to the payment screen. I filled in my card details, and hovered over the ‘Pay’ button.

And that’s when the little seed of doubt sprouted into a green shoot and pushed through the soil.

Had I ordered the 2GB or the 4GB drive? I was pretty sure it was the 4GB one. But here’s the thing: I couldn’t go back, forward, or anywhere else. I couldn’t view the basket. It was ‘Pay’ or nothing else.

So I opened another browser, brought up the website again, found the contact number, phoned them up, got them to pull up the (pending) order and check that it was 4GB. It was, so I clicked ‘Pay’.

Not an example of technology at its best.

It’s also important to remember that technology is logical - ruthlessly logical. The sort of ruthless logic that caused AOL and Google to blacklist the northern English town of Scunthorpe as an obscene term (think about it).

The sort of logic that meant Google Alerts I set up a few months ago never reached me. Why? Because they were blocked by the Google’s Gmail spam filter.

The bottom line is this: technology is only as clever as the people who design it (not to mention the people who use it).

And that’s a pretty scary thought.

Find out more:

• Tasty pizzas and tasteless humour: ‘Grotesque’ NZ pizza ads dropped on the BBC news site.
• Brush up your Latin with Harry Mount’s Amo, Amas, Amat… and All That.
• Get all the dirt on the Scunthorpe Problem at Wikipedia.
• Want to set up a Google Alert? Click here. Then cross your fingers.

…plus personalisation that’s not so personal and a (quick) grammar lesson.

This week, it’s time for words to make way for pictures again.

Yes, it’s Copycam: my occasional series feauturing copy that’s grabbed my attention - and not always for the right reasons.

Dr Doctor

Last week, this flyer slipped through my letterbox and landed on the mat.

Now if you were looking for an osteopath, wouldn’t you feel better knowing you were in the hands of this chap?

Who cares what the copy says? His name alone is enough to inspire confidence. 

You couldn’t make it up, could you? And luckily, he didn’t have to.

Blankety blank

Personalised marketing routinely results in a much higher response rate: sometimes, as high as 10% (remember, the typical response is 2%).

But personalisation means getting it right. And Konica Minolta got it wrong - twice.

First, I asked them to exclude me from their mailing list. They didn’t, and this arrived:

Isn’t that nice?

You remember a couple of weeks back I talked about Laura Trice, who said we don’t get thanked enough because we don’t ask for it.

Well how about this? A thank you - and I didn’t even ask. They’d made a mistake, but at least they were nice people.

I got that warm fuzzy feeling.

It didn’t last. Inside, here’s what I saw:

Doesn’t really make you feel special, does it?

Apart from poor marketing, it’s also a perfect example of a common grammatical error: the dangling participle. ‘As a valued customer’ should logically be followed by ‘you’ (not ‘we’).

Because I’m the valued customer - not them.

Or at least, in theory I am. In practice, I’m a nameless record in a database - but you get the picture.

Fowl play

And speaking of grammatical errors, here’s a sign I noticed in the centre of Cambridge recently. Can you spot the mistake?

Well done. It’s ‘lie down’ not ‘lay down’. Unless you’re a chicken after some winter sunshine.

And finally

In a footnote to last week’s entry on country branding, I see that Iceland has launched a bid to restore its tarnished image.

You may remember that Gordon Brown said it was “totally unacceptable and illegal” that Iceland failed to guarantee British savings in Icelandic banks. And he went further, freezing Icelandic assets using anti-terror legislation.

Not very good PR.

Well now, Iceland has fought back. The Icelanders are NOT terrorists website is simple, charming and effective.

A stroke of genius.

Find out more:

• Bristol University’s Improve your writing page will help undangle your participles.
• Can’t decide whether to lay an egg or lie down? The University of Kansas comes to the rescue with a simple explanation.

For country, read company

Let’s pick a country at random.

How about Brazil? (Top row, second from the left.)

What images come to mind? Sugarloaf Mountain? The long sandy beach of Copacabana? Ronnie Biggs?

It it stable? Safe? Corrupt? Would you consider living there? Retiring there?

And where did you get that impression from?

If it’s blues day, it must be Belgium

I’ve just been reading an interesting report from Interbrand on country branding.

Yes, it really does exist - and countries spend huge amounts of money trying to control and manage their brand.

The Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index rates 50 countries based on various criteria (exports, governance, culture & heritage, people, tourism, investment & immigration).

And the winner is…

Germany (yes, I was surprised too).

The questions they asked included:

“If money were no object, would you like to visit this country on vacation?”

And a little more chillingly:

“If you were going to be falsely arrested for a crime you didn’t commit, in which country would you prefer this to happen?”

Hmm. I’ll have to think about that one.

We know what you’re thinking

Countries go to enormous effort to change the way we perceive them. And a big part of that effort is coming up with a tagline.

Some are obvious (Andorra - the Pyrenean country). Others are a little optimistic (Iran - the land of flowers and birds). Others are baffling (Philippines - more than the usual).

Some use humour. Remember Australia’s Where the bloody hell are you? campaign from a few years back?

And just occasionally, they say something they don’t really mean (Visit Berlin once).

But all are trying to achieve the same aim: managing their country’s brand by creating an image that attracts you.

To brand or not to brand

Interviewed by Sandi Toksvig a couple of years ago on BBC Radio 4’s Excess Baggage programme, Simon Anholt (of the Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index) made a fascinating point - because it applies to companies as well as countries.

He said that the alternative to branding your country is not not branding your country.

It’s letting someone else do it for you.

He also says that at some level, “every country has the reputation it deserves.” Again, something that could be said of every company.

Which is why it’s worth controlling your brand. And sometimes, that means taking the long view. Very long indeed.

Anholt said he was talking to a member of the Swedish royal family once, who asked how long it would take to change the image of the country -  if they felt it was necessary.

“About 20 or 30 years,” Anholt replied.

“Oh, that quick?” she said nonchalantly.

Find out more:

• Rating nation brands: what really counts? on Interbrand.com.
• Excess Baggage on BBC Radio 4: Sandi Toksvig talks to Simon Anholt (starts at 10′12″).

Silly socks, dripping taps and fishing for compliments

OK, it’s been one of those weeks.

No one thing has inspired me, but lots of little things have caught my attention - like fireflies in a garden at dusk.

And I’ve learned three interesting lessons.

The colour of money

First was a really silly idea - that’s been fabulously successful.

Let’s play a word-association game. Think socks and you think what? Matching. Pairs.

Wrong. 

Little Miss Matched is a hugely popular site that sells socks that don’t match in odd numbers.

So you don’t get two red-and-white socks. You get three socks - a pink one with yellow polka dots, a blue one with turquoise stripes, and a puce one with orange polka dots.

Pick any two and wear. And if you lose one, who cares? You’ve still got two (that still don’t match).

A crazy idea - that works.

Lesson 1: don’t discount crazy ideas. They might work (and make you lots of money).

Water, water everywhere

I’ll never be able to look at a grande skinny sugar-free hazelnut extra-hot decaf latte in the same way again.

Last week, it was revealed that Starbucks wastes 23m litres of water every day, by leaving a cold tap (translation for US readers: tap = faucet) running in each of its 10,000 stores worldwide.

Why? To prevent germs forming in the taps, apparently.

In one of those gloriously irrelevant comparisons, The Daily Telegraph in the UK reported that this was ‘enough to fill an Olympic swimming pool every 83 minutes’.

Starbucks cited ‘health and safety’ as the reason.

A spokeswoman for Starbucks said:

“We recognise the opportunity exists to reduce our total water usage. Starbucks’ challenge is to balance water conservation with the need for customer safety.”

No kidding.

Lesson 2: discount crazy ideas (when they’re certifiably crazy). And when you’re caught out, don’t resort to corporate double-speak.

Because you’re worth it

Over at TED.com, I watched a brief talk by Laura Trice, a ‘counselor, life coach - and purveyor of wholesome junk food’. (Did I mention that she lives in California?)

She says we don’t get enough thanks for one simple reason - we don’t ask for it. So we should ask for it.

Intriguing.

Lesson 3: intriguing ideas aren’t necessarily good. Just intriguing.

Find out more:

• Get in touch with your inner child at LittleMissMatched.com.
• Watch those Olympic swimming pools filling up at The Daily Telegraph: Starbucks ‘wastes 23 million litres of water each day’.
• You’ll thank yourself for watching Laura Trice at TED.com.