Stephen Houraghan here of BrandMasterAcademy.com and in this video you're
gonna learn how to use a tagline as a strategic tool using science stick around!
now 99% of brands have a name and a tagline before any brand building
comes into play and that's because the founders usually come up with the name
for the brand and then they assign a handful of words that sound catchy or
clever to who the founder is and voila you have a tagline and a brand name but
both the tagline and the brand name are very very strategic elements in the
overall communication strategy and if you understand how they're used as strategic
elements then you can put them in place within your brand so that your brand is
aligned from the very very first touch point now when we think of a brand the
first thing that comes into our mind is the logo and there's a good reason for
this it's how our brain works we are visual creatures and we can actually
digest images as quickly as 13 milliseconds and that image then is
stored in a part of the brain that's easy for us to recall so that's why it's
so easy for us to remember logos more than complex language so when we think
of a brand we tend to think of the logo first but the second thing that we think
of is the next most simplistic form of communication from that brand and that
tends to be the tagline now our brains digest images through the limbic system
which includes our reptilian brain so hundreds of millions of years ago when
we were lizards we still needed to be able to see the landscape we needed to
be able to see danger and that's how our brains back then were able to digest
that type of information and then about 150 million years ago when we started to
develop complex language our neocortex which is our new frontal brain that was
able to digest complex language now the images are digested through the old
limbic system and complex language is digested through the new neocortex
so the neocortex digests the tagline but the simplicity of the tagline makes that
a bridge between the old limbic system and the new neocortex so the logo
and the tagline creates a shortcut and that then leads back to the complex
elements of our brand now that's a lot to digest but essentially if we're able
to make our tagline memorable and simple enough so that it creates a bridge
between our easily identifiable logo back to our complex brand that is when
the tagline acts as a strategic tool and that's how you can solidify a position
in the mind of your audience now I searched high and low in all
different types of dictionaries from the Oxford Dictionary to the Cambridge
dictionary and everywhere in between for a definition of a tagline that I could
give to you that would make sense but to be honest none of the definitions that I
found really did it just as so I'm just gonna give you my definition of what a
tagline is so to me the tagline is the memorable formation of a concise set of
words which capture the unique value a brand offers its audience now there are
four key words to this definition and they are memorable concise unique and
value so memorable if it's not memorable it won't get stored in the memory and
therefore it can't perform its task concise so the tagline has to be
concise or it's not gonna be remembered so the optimal range here should be
between around about four to five words now that's not a hard and fast rule it's
just a rule of thumb but four to five words is a very good optimal level
unique if there's nothing unique about it then why is anybody gonna remember it
and of course value the offer of the brand can't be different for the sake of
being different the audience actually needs to associate value with that
difference to motivate desire for that offer now one brand element that is
never ever understated is the logo in fact if you go and ask a hundred people
to tell you what a brand is ninety at least are gonna start banging on about
the logo and the fact that I matter is that the logo and the tagline are just
two strategic elements and in fact they're just as important as each other
and they come together to act as a team to first get the audience to remember
the brand and then get them to associate that brand with an idea so the logo does
the job in planting the visual aspect in the old limbic part of the brain and
the tagline does the job of leading the audience through the neocortex back to
the complex messaging of that brand and associating that brand with an overall
idea so it does have a very very specific strategic job the tagline and
that is linking the logo to the big idea of the brand so essentially the logo and
the tagline come together to do a combined job and that job is brand
recall if they do that effectively it leads back to an idea and that idea is
the position that the brand wants to own in the mind of its audience now there
are three steps that the audience will go through before they position the
brand in that place in their mind step one they need to remember the visuals
they need to remember that logo step two they need to remember the message that
tagline and they need to create a shortcut between the logo and the
tagline and step three to remember the idea if they remember the logo they
create a shortcut back to the tagline and that leads to the idea
that is when they can begin to store the idea in their mind now there are three
different levels of complexity to these steps and each progressive level is more
complex so the first step the visuals that's stored in the reptilian brain and
that's the easiest to remember the next step involves language and that's a more
complex step and it's still simplistic so it's still easy to remember but then
that leads to the third step the most complex step which is all of the other
elements of the brand so each step of that process is progressive and each
step needs a more higher level of understanding from the brain so that's
why it's really important to make a logo as easy to remember as possible
the tagline is easy to remember as possible and for those two to align back
to the idea of the brand so the audience can store that idea in their mind for
that brand now there are two distinct stages of the tagline the stage one is
the stage that I just spoke about it's the stage of solidifying a position in
the market to be able to get your audience to understand that logo and
create that bridge back to the idea if you do that effectively then you can
solidify the position that you have identified within your positioning
strategy you want to own in the mind of your
audience for your brand now that is the first stage of the tagline and it really
needs to be considered when developing that tagline how strategic it is in
order to solidify that position in the mind of your audience if you just
develop a logo and develop a tagline without really considering the position
that you want to own in the mind of your audience then you've really missed out
on an opportunity and a strategic opportunity to solidify that position
but that is the first stage of the tagline now once a brand has solidified
its position in the mind of its audience then it'll begin to develop a high level
of brand awareness once it's done that once it enters into the long-term memory
of the audience then it can shift the job of the tagline if your audience is a
high level of awareness about your brand and you don't need to create that
shortcut anymore between the logo and the big idea then the tagline can become
an extension of the idea so that it reinforces and crystallizes that idea so
it moves from stage one where it's solidifying the position into stage two
where it's crystallizing an idea now this is reserved for brands with a high
level of awareness and you tend to see brands such as your big conglomerates
your Nikes and your McDonald's and your Apple to have a tagline that doesn't
focus on their differentiator it doesn't focus on bridging a gap between the logo
and the idea it focuses more on crystallizing that idea so the example
with Nike is Just Do It Nike isn't focusing here on bridging a gap between
the logo and the idea Nike is crystallizing their idea in the mind of
their audience and Apple with their Think Different tagline is doing the exact
same McDonald's again with I'm Lovin It these brands are not focusing on the
differentiator that they bring to their audience they're not focusing on their
positioning strategy they're focusing on the big idea and they're crystallizing
that big idea so the tagline has two stages stage one is solidifying that
position and brand builders shouldn't shift their focus here they shouldn't
think too far into the future of when their
brand is going to be a massive conglomerate and they want to
crystallize that idea they should first focus on solidifying the position in the
mind of their audience and if they do come to a level where they've got huge
brand awareness then they can shift into phase 2 which is to crystallize that
idea so there are two phases and two stages within the lifetime of a tagline
now I'm not going to wrap this video up by telling you that you know what a
tagline is you've known what a tagline is for a long time I'm Lovin It
Just Do It Think Different these are all taglines that are stored in your
long-term memory and you probably have about 20 more but those taglines that
are stored in your long-term memory probably represent a big idea and
they've probably moved from phase 1 to phase 2 so that brand can
crystallize that idea in your mind and really own that position but what you do
know now is the strategic aspect of the tagline why it's so critical in
solidifying a position in the mind of your audience in that phase 1 you
understand how the brain digests information and now you know going
forward that when you come to developing a tagline that you really need to
create a bridge between that visual aspect of your brand and the big idea if
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any questions pop them in the box below and I will be happy to answer them and I
will see you in the next video!