If you are going to create a tag lines please make it:

  1. funny
  2. memorable
  3. meaningful
  4. metaphorical
  5. helpful

If not all of those elements then pick one at least.

I am as guilty as anyone for using lame tag lines

I still have a sign which has ‘websites that work’ on it. Honestly that seemed like a sensible thing to say at the time, and 10 years ago when I wrote it there were a lot of websites that didn’t work properly. Enough with the justification though.

Hopefully we won’t try and use a tag line like that anytime soon.

An example of boring tagline invented for this discussion.

“Jezweb – website designs for businesses”

Here are some classics that you might see out in the world:

  • worlds best _____
  • Australia’s favourite
  • Peace of mind
  • Customer service first
  • We put customers first
  • Excellence and quality
  • We put you first
  • Making you smile
  • We’re different

If you are thinking of using those in your tag lines, write it down and then shred it and pretend it never happened.

One purpose of a tagline is to communicate core values to employees, the other is to communicate with clients. If yours does both then great, but don’t just make it speak at staff, be sure it works in the outside world at least as well as it does inside your culture.

Here are a few things not to do when writing a tagline:

  • Don’t have a tagline because you think you need a tag line
  • Don’t make it more than a few words
  • If you must have a tag line make sure it doesn’t box your company in to a certain customer or product
  • Make sure that it will read ok on TV, brochures and sound ok in language and radio
  • Please for the love of reading, do not use a fancy font that is hard to read
  • Don’t talk to your company a tagline, its not a mission statement
  • Don’t write meaningless taglines
  • If it is pointless and generic then try again
Boring tag lines are pretty useless and unless you can afford to turn them into a brand like multinational corporations do then you might as well just clarify the services or products you provide if you have an ambiguous sounding company name and logo. Or, just get a new company name and forget about the logo and forget altogether about tag lines.