How to write a tagline

First let's look at some examples of great taglines. 

Difference between a slogan and a tagline

Your slogan goes with the battle you are waging right now. That means slogans are often used only for one product, or one campaign. A slogan may change regularly according to your campaigns to advertise a specific aspect of a product or service, while a company tagline is used consistently for a company as a whole.

HOW TO WRITE A TAGLINE...STEP BY STEP

Having seen how great a tagline can be, what are you going to do with yours? How are you going to make it stand out? What will it say that will make people think about it long after they have seen it?

It all starts with the values and truths that make your company (or your client’s, if you work in an agency) what it is. Here is a step-by-step process that can help you create a tagline worth its weight in gold. All you’ll need is a blank sheet of paper and a pen, or a computer. But honestly, the old-fashioned note making technique is best here. If you give a tagline the attention it deserves, it can be transformative, and the foundation for a campaign that can change the way people look at your company.

1. Write Down Words About Your Business
   Every word you can think of, and anything that comes to mind. There are no right or wrong answers to any of this, so have at it. Create lists. Don’t be afraid to reach for a thesaurus at some point, but be careful you don’t get bogged down in fancy alternative terms for common words. When you look at the best taglines, they don’t read like poetic prose. They use simple words, but combined in a way that makes you sit up and take notice.
    

1. List ALL Of Your Strengths AND Weaknesses
   It may seem counterintuitive, but the latter part of that direction is important. The AVIS line came directly from a weakness; they were not as big as Hertz. But, Bernbach turned it into a great strength. So, when compiling your list, include the flaws. You want a list of PROS and CONS that you can look over. It can spark great ideas.
    
2. Examine The Benefits
   Your product is great. Your service is the best. You want everyone to know that. Well, a comedian doesn’t go on stage to tell people he or she is funny. Jokes, or amusing stories, do that. The same applies to your business. What can you say about the benefits? Is it faster, quicker, bigger, cheaper, stronger, or more reliable? Get into descriptive benefits.
    
3. Assemble Phrases
   You’ve got pages and pages of words right now. Lists of strengths, weaknesses, benefits, and more. It’s time to start putting phrases together from those words. At this point, it is very easy to think about a clever turn of phrase. Avoid cleverness at all costs. Your goal here is communication. Quick communication. Cleverness is great for headlines, and other advertising tactics. But a tagline, it needs to be direct. There is nothing clever about “Just Do It,” but it has power. So, don’t get into wordplay and idioms. Just say something memorable, powerful, and truthful.
    

1. Cut, Cut, and Cut
   You will have a lot of options in front of you now. Too many. Start testing each option out. Does it work in a variety of ways? Does it have dimensions? Does it need to be explained, or does it work on its own merit? Keep cutting until you have two or three killer options.
    
2. Give Every Tagline The Overnight Test
   You may have a few favorites, but let them sit and brew. One will stand out above the others; perhaps one you had never even considered. It should also start giving you ideas on where you can take your advertising and marketing campaigns.

Be cautious of 

• Overused words and phrases: Quality. Excellence. Trust. They sound nice, right? There’s a reason they sound like tagline words – they are painfully overused, to the point that they say nothing new about your organization. Use them and risk your message getting buried. Other words that fall into this category include: empowering, advancing, extraordinary, exceptional, tradition, opportunities, leadership, committed, dependable, world-class, expert, partnership and “since [insert year here].” These words are as bad as corporate jargon – they fall stunningly flat with consumers, they engender no loyalty or enthusiasm, they convey zero personality, and they move nobody to action. Find better words.

• Multitasking: Your tagline can’t be all things to all people. The best taglines convey one idea, and convey it really, really well.

• A message that’s not unique to you: Indistinguishable ideas are arguably worse than unoriginal words. The ideas are the crime – the words are merely the getaway car. Let’s consider this made-up tagline for a university: “Enhancing learning through educational opportunities.” Sounds fancy. It also says nothing. Don’t all universities enhance learning through educational opportunities? If your tagline is true about you – as well as everybody else in your industry – find a new one.

The Mid Term

Okay, we are going to get started on what is required for the mid-term.

Here is your product

This is what you are to do with this product.

Part 1
1.Who are we talking to? Who is your audience (list all of the possibilities)
2. Break down the audience into demographics and psychographics (have two and spend most time of the psychographics)
3. What is there to say about this (What are the features and benefits?)

Now choose one target audience and tell me why you think this is the best one to focus on. You should have some research to back up your claim. Make sure you are able to cite your research. 

Part 2
Pretend that you are now on the project team.
1. What are the possible problems with the product in appealing to the target audience? 
2. What is the single-minded communication we want to use? (The feature(s) and the benefit(s) we want to focus on for this campaign.)
3. How do we want to say it? (What is the tone?)

Part 3
Come up an idea for an ad. This can be a:
1. static "print" ad, or
2. a 15 or 30 second broadcast commercial

It should have a tag line. We will talk about tag lines on Monday.

Part 4
You will record yourself going through each of these points just like you were Don Draper presenting an idea to the client. You can do this in a variety of ways (from the technical perspective) we will also discuss on Monday. Just keep in mind that you will have to tell me all this information in no less than five and no more than seven minutes. 



 

Week 5 What is the rhetorical appeal?

What is the rhetorical situation? 


Ethos -  The ethical, personal appeal (Do I trust this person, product, brand?)
Pathos - The emotional appeal (what are our biggest emotional draws?)
Logos - The logic appeal (does this make sense?)

Logos refers to the use of logical appeals. These are the facts, statistics, and examples used in the ad. For example, we might see an ad for toothpaste that promises to make our teeth “40% whiter than the other leading brands.” This line appeals to our ability to reason. It seems to make sense that the toothpaste must be effective if it works that much better than other toothpaste brands. Therefore, this statistic helps to persuade us that we should buy the toothpaste.

Ethos refers to the ethical appeals used by advertisers. These appeals work in ads by calling upon the credibility and the reputation of a particular company or spokesperson. Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps signed an endorsement deal with Under Armour in 2010. When we see Phelps in an advertisement for Under Armour, then, we might feel persuaded to buy these products because we believe that if a remarkable athlete like Phelps trusts Under Armour, then we should, too. We might also see ethos working when a company shows that it is credible or trustworthy. Dawn dishwashing liquid advertisements have shown their product being used to clean wildlife affected by oil spills, and the company claims to donate money to wildlife charities. Seeing the goodwill of the company could make consumers trust Dawn and, therefore, this appeal helps to persuade consumers to purchase the products.

Pathos is the emotional appeal. Advertisers use pathos to evoke specific emotions in the audience. Pathos tends to be used quite often in advertisements, as emotions are easily stirred in most target audiences through vivid images and touching stories. Consider the emotions consumers may feel when they watch a commercial about abused animals. Often times, these commercials feature with sad, mistreated animals, who appear lonely and helpless. Sad music often accompanies these images, and the effect is that consumers may feel distressed, angry, or even guilty. The advertisers stir the emotions of the viewers in the hope that viewers will take action by donating money and/or adopt a pet.

Many ads will use a combination of all three rhetorical appeals to construct their arguments. However, some ads emphasize ethos, while other ads mostly make use of pathos. Still other ads may tend to have a strong use of logos. All ads will vary somewhat in their use of rhetorical appeals. Much of the strategy depends upon the target audience being persuaded and product being marketed. 

Logical Fallacies

Slippery Slope - if we allow A to happen, then Z will eventually happen too, therefore A should not happen.

The problem with this reasoning is that it avoids engaging with the issue at hand, and instead shifts attention to extreme hypotheticals. Because no proof is presented to show that such extreme hypotheticals will in fact occur, this fallacy has the form of an appeal to emotion fallacy by leveraging fear. In effect the argument at hand is unfairly tainted by unsubstantiated conjecture.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin: "after this, therefore because of this") is a logical fallacy (of the questionable cause variety) that states "Since event Y followed event X, event Y must have been caused by event X." It is often shortened to simply post hoc fallacy. It is subtly different from the fallacy cum hoc ergo propter hoc ("with this, therefore because of this"), in which two things or events occur simultaneously or the chronological ordering is insignificant or unknown. Post hoc is a particularly tempting error because temporal sequence appears to be integral to causality. The fallacy lies in coming to a conclusion based solely on the order of events, rather than taking into account other factors that might rule out the connection.

The following is a simple example:

The rooster crows immediately before sunrise; therefore the rooster causes the sun to rise.

Appeal to Authority -  because an authority thinks something, it must therefore be true.

It's important to note that this fallacy should not be used to dismiss the claims of experts, or scientific consensus. Appeals to authority are not valid arguments, but nor is it reasonable to disregard the claims of experts who have a demonstrated depth of knowledge unless one has a similar level of understanding and/or access to empirical evidence. However it is, entirely possible that the opinion of a person or institution of authority is wrong; therefore the authority that such a person or institution holds does not have any intrinsic bearing upon whether their claims are true or not.

Bandwagon -  popularity or the fact that many people do something as an attempted form of validation.

If it did, then the Earth would have made itself flat for most of history to accommodate this popular belief. The flaw in this argument is that the popularity of an idea has absolutely no bearing on its validity.

 

PR's use of rhetorical devices 

What type or types of rhetorical devices is Don Draper using to pitch “The Carousel” to Kodak?

How does his approach appeal to your emotions?

What specific words or phrases are particularly effective?

Find three ads where you can identify multiple appeals. 

What specific words or phrases are effective in this ad?

What visuals? 

Thinking subliminally

WATCH ABOUT MAN and Roof

In the book Hidden Persuasion, explores 33  tactics advertisers use while advertising their products. These hidden persuasions are a driving force behind advertising world’s efficiency. The author, Marc Andrews says:

“People think that their decisions and choices are most of the time made consciously and rational, relating to their wishes, interests and motivations,” 

“Fact is, that most of our decisions in daily life are made on an unconscious level, which means we are quite vulnerable to persuasion attempts which effect our unconsciousness.”

Anthropomorphism

The more human something seems the more we are drawn to it. 

Trustworthiness

Every face you see in an ad is carefully selected based on lots of criteria. One of those things? How trustworthy that person looks. We rely on visual cues to unconsciously figure out how we feel about something, and it turns out some people just look more trustworthy than others. Beyond obvious signifiers like a creepy mustache, things like facial width-to-height ratio (the distance between the two extremes of the cheekbones and the distance from the upper lip to the eyebrows) can clue us in to how trustworthy a person is. People with higher faces are perceived as more trustworthy than those with wide faces, as are brown eyes versus blue.

Scarcity

If you’ve ever bought airline tickets on Kayak, you’ve undoubtedly seen the little alert telling you “Only 1 ticket left at this price!” Nothing kicks you into buying mode like the fear of paying more for the same product or missing out on it altogether.

Turns out, FOMO extends to buying stuff, too. Andrews says this is partially because it’s been ingrained in our minds that the expensive things tend to be scarce (gold, diamonds). Scarcity also suggests that other people like the product (hello, social proof). Andrews writes that the last reason scarcity technique works so well is that it reminds us that our freedom of choice will soon be gone.

Social Proof

Among the most effective tactics advertisers can use is tapping into our social insecurities. It makes sense; we go to doctors, hairstylists and restaurants based on our friends’ recommendations, and we’re just ask likely to buy something because it’s gotten the stamp of approval by someone we know and admire.

“The more people who approve of something, the more likely we are to like it, too” says Andrews. Just look at Facebook and its snowball “liking” effect. Even saying something as simple as “Nine out of 10 people choose Tide” or “The majority of people prefer Wonder Bread” works exceptionally to influence human behavior, Andrews adds. So much for individuality.

Suggested sex appeal

The most prevalent social influence technique advertisers use is sex appeal. Whether it’s an ad for men’s cologne or a diet product, the suggestion that a product will better your chances of having sex subtly creates a favorable association with that product in consumers’ brains, even if they are unaware of it. Ranging from the symbolic to the overt, sexual suggestiveness in advertising goes back to ads for saloons in the 19th century.

Reverse psychology

 A technique largely tied in with acknowledging resistance, involves persuading someone to do what you want by pretending not to want it or by pretending to want something else. The principle is closely related to reactance theory, or the idea that people who feel their control is being taken away will take it back through defiance. For example, Patagonia’s cheeky full-page New York Times ad that declared “Don’t buy this jacket” helped launch its common threads initiative to reduce the company’s carbon footprint and encourage consumers to do the same. In this way, Patagonia used the ad to sell itself as a brand, and that brand is indeed, still in the business of selling jackets.

Misleading visuals

Techniques for presenting food can include spraying grapes with hairspray to create an illusion of freshness, using mashed potatoes in place of ice cream, and coloring hamburgers with brown shoe polish. Photoshopping models, a practice that has become standard, may not seem particularly dangerous, but the American Medical Association claims this practice seriously threatens the health of adolescents.

You may think you notice but this might surprise you. 

Rhetorical Choices in Advertising

The Influences of Stereotypes and Taste

How are advertising creative choices made?

The Client “Brief”

        what we're going to talk about

   (the product)

        what there is to say about it

  (features and benefits)

Review the client's budget and advise on which media are most suitable.

What you tell the creative team

Who are we talking to?

 (what's our target market?)

What are we saying?

(what's the single-minded communication?)

How are we saying it?

(what tone of voice should we use?)

What kind of media outlet is required?

(ie, 3 x press insertions, 1 x 30' TV ad)

They often start with a stereotype

Using stereotypes sets the stage for messages; they convey characters and images quickly and clearly

Unless you are oriented another way (Marx)

Stereotypes act like codes that give audiences a quick, common understanding of a person or group of people—usually relating to their class, ethnicity or race, gender, sexual social role or occupation.

Stereotypes can be Problematic

They can:

• reduce a wide range of differences in people to simplistic categorizations
• transform assumptions about particular groups of people into "realities"
• be used to justify the position of those in power
• perpetuate social prejudice and inequality

 What is the difference? 

A stereotype is an exaggerated belief, image or distorted truth about a person or group — a generalization that allows for little or no individual differences or social variation.

A prejudice is an opinion, prejudgment or attitude about a group or its individual members.

Stereotypes of Men in Commercials 

University of North Texas professor

Steve Craig argues:

•       Most commercials directed to male viewers tend to air during sports programming.

•        Women rarely appear in these commercials, and when they do, they’re generally portrayed in stereotypical ways.

•        Women tend to be presented as "rewards" for men who choose the right product. He describes such commercials as "narratives of playful escapades away from home and family."

They operate, he says, at the level of fantasy—presenting idealized portrayals of men and women.

Here are some examples: 

The Joker 
is a very popular character with boys, perhaps because laughter is part of their own "mask of masculinity." A potential negative consequence of this stereotype is the assumption that boys and men should not be serious or emotional. However, researchers have also argued that humorous roles can be used to expand definitions of masculinity.  

The Jock 

is always willing to "compromise his own long-term health; he must fight other men when necessary; he must avoid being soft; and he must be aggressive." By demonstrating his power and strength, the jock wins the approval of other men and the adoration of women.  

The Strong Silent Type 

focuses on "being in charge, acting decisively, containing emotion, and succeeding with women." This stereotype reinforces the assumption that men and boys should always be in control, and that talking about one’s feelings is a sign of weakness. 

The Big Shot 

is defined by his professional status. He is the "epitome of success, embodying the characteristics and acquiring the possessions that society deems valuable." This stereotype suggests that a real man must be economically powerful and socially successful.

The Action Hero is "strong, but not necessarily silent. He is often angry. Above all, he is aggressive in the extreme and, increasingly over the past several decades, he engages in violent behavior.“ 

The Buffoon commonly appears as a bungling father figure in TV ads and sitcoms. Usually well-intentioned and light-hearted, these characters range from slightly inept to completely hopeless when it comes to parenting their children or dealing with domestic (or workplace) issues. (Al Bundy/Homer/Peter/ . . .

 

Valence of Portrayals

•       Refers to the emotional significance of the portrayal.

•       Your significance depends on your context

Good Mom vs. Bad Mom 

Cultivation theory

–A pattern of setting, casting, action, and social typing (because there is sooooo much TV)

Expectancy Theory

–People will start to act that way because that is what is expected of them. (The “good mom” has a very specific purpose) Remember the feedback loop.

Europe Takes Aim at Sexual Stereotyping in Ads

By DOREEN CARVAJAL

PARIS

        “The essential concern that we have is that it is mixing two different things: gender stereotyping with discrimination and degrading images,” Mr. Lohan said. “That’s a real problem because stereotypes are not necessarily something that are bad. They can be totally harmless or quite entertaining.”

The European Parliament has set out to change this. The legislature voted 504 to 110 to scold advertisers for “sexual stereotyping,” adopting a nonbinding report that seeks to prod the industry to change the way it depicts men and women.

The lawmakers’ ire has many targets, from a print ad for Dolce & Gabbana (which had a woman in spike heels pinned to the ground and surrounded by sweaty men in tight jeans) to Mr. Clean, the 1950s advertising icon whose muscular physique might imply that only a strong man is powerful enough to tackle dirt. 

Here here is a more recent one from Bloomingdales

 How do we know when a boundary has been crossed?

What has offended you in a commercial?

–Fighting terrorism – don’t let the terrorist win

What is appropriate for the target audience may not be appropriate for all consumers of the media.

–Project Runway, Super Bowl


FOR MONDAY
Find an ad and post it to your blog.

Who are we talking to? 

 (what's our target market?)

What are we saying? 

(what's the single-minded communication?) 

How are we saying it? 

(what tone of voice should we use?) 

What kind of media outlet is required?
THEN

1. Define the stereotype presented (don't be afraid to challenge if you think it does not exist anymore.)
2. Reson out why this brand would use this stereotype (what do they expect the audience to know, assume or accept?)
3. Do you believe that the brand made a good choice and why?
You may have to do some research about the ad you choose to find some of these answers. Make sure that you cite anything that you find on the internet.