sluagh ghairm = slogan, from the Gaelic: war cry

What better start to talk about claims, payoffs, baselines, taglines, headlines… slogans.

You cry out, I cry too. It could be a slogan in the communication war. Whoever knows how to do it stronger and clearer is the best.

Dictating rules to get to the right slogan is not an easy task, but everyone can write it, so they say in the advertising world (while only good copy can make a good text). Everyone can have the right insight to get the winning phrase pop in their head, the one that will be remembered and repeated until it becomes a real catchphrase.

A slogan with character is the lure that attracts in the desired direction, towards the advertising promise, which makes you read the text of an ad or invites you to watch the commercial. First of all it must be repeatable and captivating, then differentiate the brand and communicate the main benefit . But, last but not least, it must go hand in hand with the personality of the product. Just to be clear, if it is an off-road car, it must be able to evoke strength and determination with an energetic and resolute tone; if there is a city car at stake, communicate agility and practicality with sympathy and panache. The personality of the product is thus identified with the target to be hit.

Difference and main benefit

What is the characteristic that distinguishes the product and which, possibly, the competition does not have? This is the pivot on which to rotate the fateful phrase because it is on that characteristic that the product acquires strength and personality.

What is the actual benefit it offers? As always in advertising, it is necessary to create a need and show how it can be satisfied.

But our sentence must also - and above all - sound good; therefore, free space for metaphors and associations of ideas, which recall memories, images, sensations. The use of rhymes, assonances and consonances is welcome, creating a rhythmic and catchy rhythm. Perhaps, you could use a cliché or a famous quote, immediately recognizable. Maybe, used in an ironic way. How many maybe ... to get to the mythical slogan. Perhaps, the very examples of successful slogans can better than any rule exemplify the 1000s and a strategy to be implemented to artfully construct the memorable sentence.

Here are a few.

Simplicity

Simplicity is often the winner. It is simple, very simple, what I consider one of the most beautiful slogans ever conceived:

Got milk?

It was an American thematic campaign to promote the consumption of milk, intended as a healthy and tasty food. The success was immediate and resounding: sales recorded a sudden surge. It was 1993. The campaign later landed also in Italy (and beyond): do you remember the cute white mustache, which many celebrities wore jokingly on the pages of our magazines?

Simplicity is disarming, as such. It strikes us in its immediacy.

But do we have milk? How can we have forgotten?

The first commercial that appeared on American television remains an advertising cult.

Another beautiful and simple slogan is that of Vodafone:

Life is NOW

Catch the moment! The world turns and you have to be part of it. Life needs to be lived moment to moment, and using the right mobile phone provider can certainly help.

  Puns  

Repetitions of sounds and words, rhymes, parallels… endless possibilities. They are the easiest slogans to create and, for this reason, very exploited. Their musicality makes it possible to find happy combinations both on a phonetic and mnemonic level.

Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is.   (Alka-Seltzer)

Clairol herbal essences. A totally organic experience.

My goodness, my Guinness

Cats like Felix like Felix.

The more you swallow it, the more it pulls you up! (Lavazza)

I have a good wax, excellent I would say, it's Gray wax!

Whoever does not eat Goliath is a thief or a spy.

With Canon you can.

Bizarre oddities

If simplicity disarms, complexity intrigues. The ear tensed; the mind, doubtful, questions itself.

Put a tiger in the engine. (It)

It was 1959. The American Exxon launches what will become one of the most popular slogans in the whole world: Put a tiger in your tank. But it is the Italians who perform the real advertising “miracle”: for Esso Italia a tiger - a simple tiger - becomes a tiger. A what ?? A TIGER: the winking tiger, who smiled slyly at you, and whose thing dangled from the rearview mirror of many cars of those years, was a tiger ... not a tiger.

Who Vespa eats apples.    (Piaggio)

We are at the end of the 1960s. Piaggio struggles to keep up with the times and has to relaunch its strong point: the Vespa. Apples come to help… yes, apples! An apple a day keeps the doctor away. The commercial is a great success. In difficult years, of protest and revolution, he knows how to talk about freedom, ecology, savings. The message is dreamy, illogical, out of time, and becomes an attitude of life. And even Vasco went so far as to tell us, albeit ironically, that those who do not eat apples, make pears.

coca cola who
coca cola who wasp eats apples
coca cola who?!?
coca who no longer wasps and makes pears
with all those all those medicines

On that wave it passed to

Apple I buy the wasp!

then, for the Ciao moped (and again for the Vespa) we came to the sardomobili.

The sardomobili have long snouts. Beautiful "who hello"

The four-wheeled boxes, stuck in the middle of the metropolitan traffic, were mockingly mocked by the slender Ciao: he handsome and nice, they ugly and sulky.

Not so tight, but still unsettling is the 1980s series of Goliath slogans. In the commercial and in the announcement, the faces of the funny characters acted as true visual onomatopoeias.

White Goliath sizzles the hanging veil  

is

Titilla the papilla

Evocative to effect

The slogans of the cars are almost always evocative and refined.

Not at all Hollywood Boulevard: Richard Gere prefers to imprint his handprints on the snow at the top of a Tibetan mountain. That's fine because Gere has decided to donate his compensation to the just Tibetan cause.

The power to be different   (Lancia)  

Today. Tomorrow. Toyota.

It beats. Strong. Always. (Unieuro)
Feel    (Ford)

Coop abandons the catchy Coop is you, who can give you more? and decides to focus on the suggestive

By your side. We.  

ready answers Conad

People beyond things.

similarly minted Gabel

Beautiful house. Well, you.

Provocative-malicious

The commercials of this MasterCard campaign, which have followed one another over the years and around the world, are beautiful. The crescendo of purchases made with the card, listed one after the other with a lot of caption, is shattered by an event for which no price can be paid. Among the most beautiful, that of the musician in the mood for revenge who, radiant, finds himself exhibiting his talent at the wedding party of his ex-girlfriend, presented to us with a grim and haughty look.

There are things that cannot be bought. For everything else there is MasterCard.

Playing at the wedding of someone who told you: “either me or the music” is priceless. Yes you know, some things cannot be bought.

It is always a purchase card, but in this case American Express is at stake.

Don't leave home without it.

Aggressive-peremptory

The aggressive-peremptory are often exclusive of clothing and accessories, that is to say, those products that must suggest security and appreciation, which serve to make us beautiful and provocative.

Just do it.    (Nike)

Swatch. The others just watch.

In case of snow. Colmar.

Or so. Or Pomì.

Romantic-reassuring

On the other side: the romantic-reassuring ones. Often, these are foods, products that must inspire confidence in the consumer and that know how to create reassuring domestic atmospheres with fairytale tones and pastel shades.

Where Barilla is, there is home.

Knorr. Fall in love in the kitchen.

Ceres is there

Chicco. Where there is a child.

Pet store. Pet stories. (Arcaplanet)

Quotes

The quotes are another shortcut. They tap into an almost infinite universe of possibilities.

The morning has laughter in his mouth. (Kellog's)

It is, in fact, puffed rice for breakfast.

Who breaks, Attak.

No fear! There is nothing to pay, with Attack it is as good as new.

Round dance of senses for Bang & Olufsen avant-garde electronics, which becomes a multisensory experience

Who has eyes for t   must listen.     (Bang & Olufsen)

Ironic-mocking

Those who inspire a smile, and are remembered for sympathy.

The product surpasses its testimonial.

Nespresso. What else?

A nice little girl with a sly expression, struggling with a plate of spaghetti, sucks in a single spaghetti, which dangles from her mouth. This is an advertisement for Nardi appliances.

I'm inspired. And u? (Nardi)

Not bad with these spaghetti! What if, you too, you get an inspiration?

Polo shirt. The hole with the mint around it.

Scottex. The softest place to put your nose.

Worthy of a long list, the hilarious Esselunga 2001-2004 campaign, which played with the name of the products to be advertised, distorting them and merging them with the names of famous people who, in turn, came to life by identifying themselves with the product itself. The similarity leaves you speechless.