Good blogging is more than good content. Presentation matters. The food might taste good, but if I can’t cut it, lift it, chew it, swallow it, and digest it…that’s a problem.

Popularity: 14%

I stumbled across some new research on taglines and slogans on Brandchannel.  Tagline Guru, an agency dedicated to taglines and slogans, has released its analysis of more than 150 corporate taglines debuting in 2009, aiming to “discover the most frequently used words in this year`s taglines, and whether they reveal how companies are strategically recasting their brand message to forge a closer connection with their customers.”

Do you think you can name some of the top ten words used in new taglines? I got five of 10.

The most commonly used words or concepts (alphabetically):

1. believe
2. far/further
3. future
4. imagine/see
5. innovate/innovation
6. more
7. new
8. save/savings
9. together
10. you

This info would be more interesting with some historical perspective. For example, I would like to know if numbers eight and 10 have recently cracked the top 10, or are they perennial favorites.

Paola Norambuena, Interbrand’s head of Verbal Identity (ed. yes, that’s really his title), says that keeping on top of commonly used taglines is important for two reasons:

• First, it can highlight how companies are responding to shifts in the market
• Second, it highlights what to avoid. Using only popular words creates lack of distinctiveness

Norambuena notes that different words aren’t enough to create distinctiveness. The same idea can be expressed in dozens of ways. Take, for example, Target’s “Expect More. Pay Less.” It feels very similar to Wal-Mart’s “Save Money. Live Better” and even similar to Home Depot’s “More Saving. More Doing.” In the current economy, we know consumers are looking for ways to save, but what in the taglines truly drives differentiation?

Keep in mind that brand identity and equity consists of much more than a tagline. That’s why I wonder if these monster brands worry much about overlapping taglines/messages. They are simply tweaking and reinforcing what they’ve already come to stand for in the mind of the consumer. And what they’ve come to stand for is the sum total of many types of inputs.

When choosing taglines, most companies explore options along a continuum of “descriptive” to “timeless.”  There are arguments for both, especially if taglines and slogans are to be applied at the corporate, divisional, and product levels. (The only universal rule is to never invite lawyers or accountants to these meetings.) Four51′s current tagline is On-Demand Smart Catalog Technology. This is mostly descriptive. A tagline like “Think Ahead. Stay Ahead” is timeless. In other words, it’s hard to imagine a time when this tagline would clash with the company’s strategy and goals.

Parting thought: remember that the burden of telling your company’s story doesn’t rest solely on the tagline. Don’t try to make it do too much. It can’t. It needs help from the compelling content on your website, the skill and friendliness of your customer-facing employees, and the professionalism of your reps.

Popularity: 24%

This is a post about two aspects of marketing that I find fascinating:

1. Brand and product line extensions
2. Slamming the competition

Popularity: 69%

You gotta be kidding me. Lazy marketing is never OK, but you’re absolutely doomed if your current marketing strategy is kickin’ back, spamming the world with jargon and asking the prospect to do the work. You will get out-hustled, out-muscled, and buried. Check out these two emails I just received.

Popularity: 70%

When looking for the most up-to-date and fresh marketing techniques, I like to think we all have a go-to source for information.

I usually consult my RSS reader which keeps the list I have built containing the sites and blogs I think supply me with me with the most valuable and accurate information on a regular basis. If I heard about a new trend somewhere and wanted to learn more about it, odds are I will type it into my Google Reader and see what it returns so that I can read some off-the-cuff evaluations from what I consider to be trusted opinions.

Recently though, I was thinking that the most cutting-edge marketing techniques are probably being employed in the race for the president. Our presidential candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama, have full-time teams devoted solely to the task of getting their names and messages out into the masses. Isn’t this in essence what every marketer is trying to do for her own business? So what are some of the elements of the marketing mix that our candidates for president are employing in their campaigns?

The traditional: the campaign slogan. It bring us back to the building blocks of defining the message we will bring to our target audience. It begs the question: How can I consolidate my entire offering into a five to seven word sentence that people will remember and associate with my product; or, in the case of the election, with my ability to lead the country. Salon.com provides an interesting rubric that personifies the brand equal of each of the candidates.

The trends: social media. Anyone who is part of a social networking community has invariably noticed the presence of a presidential candidate on their site of choice. Most notably for me has been the blatant endorsements on sites such as Facebook, where Barack Obama’s page boasts over a million supporters and John McCain’s page has just under 200,000. Now, these numbers could be an indicator of many factors: the candidate’s ability to leverage the social networking site, the demographics of the users on the site, the amount of time spent pursuing social networking as a viable tool for getting the candidates message out, and so on. Either way, it is just another method in the marketing mix that our presidential candidates are employing to win our votes. We are the judges of whether or not it is working.

In the battle of new vs. old marketing techniques, we will have to wait to see who wins this battle. One thing is for sure, there is no shortage of information on the refutation of old techniques and, conversely, the endorsement of new strategies. For more information on the subject, I strongly recommend the writings of David Meerman Scott, author of many marketing and PR thought leadership books and articles.

Mara

Popularity: 12%