The Lowdown on Your Tagline

The Lowdown on Your Tagline

Among my favorite of the many things that I get to do here at Cronin Creative is the crafting of taglines that summarize, energize, and reinforce the brands we design in collaboration with our clients. A tagline is that short phrase that accompanies your logo, succinctly communicating your personality and the unique value your company offers. It’s the most concise way of defining your brand for a curious consumer.

Creating a great tagline is really a process of digging down to find the authentic “why” of your business and distilling it to its essence. The right tagline will be easily understood, memorable, and consist of just a few words. Short-and-sweet taglines are more easily digested and make a bigger impact. 

Don’t confuse the terms “tagline” and “slogan.” Although they’re often lumped together, they are really different animals. While a slogan usually is paired with a specific product, your tagline describes your entire business.  

So, how does one go about developing a killer tagline? While there’s no set way to go about it, it’s important to keep the process simple and fun (like a great tagline!). The first thing to remember is that what you’re looking for is already there. This is not a process of “making something up” as much as it is an exercise in peeling back the onion to get to the heart of the matter.

Conversations with your team members and with your clients can help unearth those key words and phrases that hit a nerve. Keep whittling those words down, stay open and receptive, keep your customer in mind, and remember that landing on the perfect tagline can take time. It’s an evolutionary and often collaborative process. Toss some ideas around, share them with colleagues, and even trot them out in social situations to test their effectiveness and authenticity.

Working together, riffing off of one another, your logo and tagline express a lot about who you are, what you do, and how you do it, differentiating you from the pack, and creating a vital connection between your company and your customers.