Taglines are the hook, the slogan, and the catchphrase to snag attention. The best of these memorable phrases influence a buy-in for ideas and identity with your message. Taglines aren’t crafted, they are carved. Your tagline emerges from the shape and focus of a few satisfying words to be remembered.
Attractive ideas get a closer look in much the same way a shopper fingers the texture of fabric when considering a clothing purchase. If it feels right, it may also fit just right. Attracting a cursory examination leads to futher consideration and engagement with an idea.
When I led marketing and communications for the National Turkey Federation, their special marketing program needed a tagline raising public awareness to consider the value and benefits of quality turkey meat. I developed their tagline from a background packed with generations of grower experience.
Writing that tagline began with leafing through that backstory: Growers often involve their families in the attentive care with a flock of tens of thousands of these birds. Families have raised turkeys on their farms throughout several generations. Raising newly hatched poults to 40-pound market-ready birds takes four months of constant attention to their feed, water, temperature and overall health. Farming is never a 9 to 5 job with vacation benefits. The commitment from a turkey farmer produces a lean protein meat enjoyed in the daily deli sandwich and in national popularity of the Thanksgiving holiday dinner.
Carving away at the words as if carving a turkey, I needed a tagline brief, memorable and meaningful to attract interest. Stepping back from the details, the focus is why consumers can expect quality turkey meat: Conscientious growers produce good quality food. That’s a meaningful message but it needed a memorable balance of words for emphasis. Shortening the phrase created the tagline: Turkey. Good food from good beginnings.℠
Creative results happen while keeping your balance by stepping back, focusing without stumbling over the details. Because much work goes into the planning, drafting, writing, testing, and finalizing of a project, the benefit of stepping back brings creativity into focus. Without some distance, being too close to the story clutters the ability to focus.
Keith Williams 