Every Little Helps. Just Do It. Maybe She’s Born With It.
You know these slogans; no one has to tell you who they belong to, either. But while they are consumer-facing slogans (and so appear more regularly), they show why a concise, memorable phrase is important.
In a bustling and competitive commercial landscape, standing out can be a challenge, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises. While you might excel at innovation and service delivery, wouldn’t it be great if people who hadn’t worked with your business before could, after just a glimpse, recall you? Be that because they’ve seen your vehicles, a brochure or a display ad.
The last thing you want is for someone to see your brand name/logo, wonder what you even do, and then completely forget.
What is a brand slogan?
Brand slogans for B2B SMEs are no different to ones featured at the top of this blog. It’s a memorable phrase designed to encapsulate the essence of your brand value, proposition or mission.
You may also see them referred to as taglines or even straplines, but whatever you call it, it needs to be persuasive and/or memorable. We’ll look at the different slogan types shortly, but here is the role a well-thought-out slogan can play for your business:
- Provides clarity and instant recognition. In a crowded market, this can help potential customers to grasp what you do immediately and your core benefit. This is useful for SMEs if you don’t yet have the extensive brand recognition or a larger corporation.
- Makes you stand out from competitors. Having a unique line will set you apart from your competitors. It could highlight what makes your offering better or simply carve out space in people’s minds ahead of other businesses in your field.
- Captures the attention of your audience. Something that sticks with potential customers and clients long after the initial encounter will help them to recall you when they need your services. If someone can remember your company by the slogan, and not have to search for generic companies, you’re one step ahead.
- Makes an emotional connection. Sometimes a slogan can just reinforce your brand identity, putting your values and vision front and centre as part of a cohesive brand.
Does a slogan need to be on my logo?
Not necessarily. It’s always nice to have a short, snappy line that fits a logo, but it depends on how many visual elements already exist - i.e. a logo mark and the written name - it may be that a cleaner, iconic logo by itself works best.
A slogan and a logo are two key brand elements that can pair together, but don’t always have to appear in the same place. You should have both, but a design based on the application gives you more ways to capture the attention of audiences.
For example, while you could emblazon the side of your van with your brand logo and slogan, the slogan doesn’t have to be crammed into a social media icon, as it becomes hard to read — save it for the messaging in your posts!
Different slogan types: Finding the right one for your business
Choosing the right type of slogan depends on your brand and the message you want to get across.
As a rule, if your business name already states what you do - The Fencing Company, for example - you have more room for creativity, as you won’t need to spell it out in the slogan. You should instead focus on making something memorable that captures the interest of your target audience so that they recall you later. Here are some common approaches:
| Slogan Approach | Brand | Sector | Slogan/Tagline |
| Benefit-led | Mailchimp | Email Platform | “Turns emails into revenue” |
| Descriptive | Knight Frank | Property | “The leading global property adviser” |
| Emotive | Arup | Engineering | “We shape a better world” |
| Unique selling point | Royal Mail | Mail & Parcels | “The UK’s greenest parcel operator” |
| Call to action | Black Sheep Coffee | Food & Beverage | “Leave the herd behind” |
| Short and catchy | Reed | Recruitment | “Love Mondays” |
| Legacy | HSBC | Banking | “The world’s local bank” |
How a copywriter can unlock your next slogan
While you might get lucky and stumble across the right slogan, it needs more than just a good idea. It needs linguistic precision, strategic thinking and a dash of creativity. That’s where the copywriting team at Adtrak can help, providing your business with an invaluable asset as part of your wider branding.
Here are three key steps to highlight what we do when creating slogans and straplines:
- Competitor analysis - It’s always worth seeing what others in your industry are doing. That makes it easier to identify a gap and create something unique to help you stand out.
- Linguistic craftsmanship - Our copywriters are experts in language, capable of distilling ideas in impactful phrases. We focus on clarity, creativity and memorability, utilising linguistic devices that have the desired ring and resonance.
- Brand voice and tone - We specialise in creating and writing in distinct tones for clients, so we’ll ensure your slogan aligns with this for consistency.
Breaking down our work: A case study in crafting the perfect line
Here’s one we made earlier! Accent on Travel required, as part of their brand overhaul, a new slogan. Here’s how it went:
- Does the brand name say, or at least allude to, what they do?
- Yes — they’re travel advisors, and it already states travel in the name, so we have more freedom to get creative.
- What are their competitors in the market doing?
- Other luxury travel advisors focused on using words like “luxury”, “world” and “travel”. It was unnecessary for most brands and didn’t offer anything inspiring to make readers remember one over another.
- We wanted to create a line that evoked the benefit of travel: the joyous feeling you get each new day you start.
- What was the brand’s tone of voice?
- Our tone of voice guidelines were designed to showcase the Accent on Travel team’s genuine passion for travel and their warm, approachable nature.
- This, again, led to the need for something which offered both inspiration and reassurance. So we created….
This fits the brief because it:
- Makes them stand out from competitors
- Inspires the reader to recall the feeling of being on holiday; the joy of being elsewhere, free of ordinary life each day
- Applies both the passion and a knowing warmth from their tone of voice, showing Accent on Travel understands the customer’s brief
- Uses the literary device of alliteration: wake, -where and wonderful to add extra memorability
Ready to take your brand to the next level?
If you want to inspire more potential customers and get the edge over your competitors with your branding - from your logo to your slogan - then we’re ready to help. Talk to us about your business and our branding agency services, and start commanding more attention in a busy marketplace.
