Monday, November 30, 2009

Shortest tagline in the world?

If.

Tagline of SciFi Channel. Is that the shortest?

Monday, September 14, 2009

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Tag Fght #3

In which we make our daily taglines go head-to-head against one and other. Today's smackdown: Momentum, We believe in people who believe in themselves v/s Knorr India, Tummy bhi khush, Mummy bhi khush I say: Knorr India, Tummy bhi khush, Mummy bhi khush. (Hit me!)

The Daily Tagline # 17: Scientology

Know yourself. Know life.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Tag Fight #2

In which we make our daily taglines go head-to-head against one and other. Today's smackdown: Pop Tarts, All for fun. Fun for all v/s Kozel Beer, A taste of the Czech village. I say: Kozel Beer, A taste of the Czech village. (Hit me!)

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Tag Fight # 1

In which we make our daily taglines go head-to-head against one and other. Today's smackdown: Aviva, For life's little dreams v/s Sprint, The Now Network. I say: Sprint, The Now Network. (Hit me!)

The Daily Tagline # 16: Aviva

For life's little dramas.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Friday, August 7, 2009

The Daily Tagline # 14: Pop Tarts

All for fun. Fun for all.

The Daily Tagline # 12: Kozel Beer

A taste of the Czech village.

The Daily Tagline #11: Momentum

We believe in people who believe in themselves.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

The Daily Tagline # 10: Knorr India

Tummy bhi khush, Mummy bhi khush.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Do we need taglines?

It will seem odd to some of you that I'm even asking this question here. Trust me, it seemed so to me too when a Creative Director I have a bit of respect for (no, I kinda do) once told me he found taglines most inessential. In a world full of taglines, and blogs devoted to taglines, it does seem a mite incongruous to believe they aren't required. No? Unless you happen to be fortunate enough to have a brand name like FCUK, a brand name and tagline all rolled into one. Speaking of which, any other brand-cum-taglines that come to mind?

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Every little helps

In itself the tagline for Tescos, the British supermarket chain, this bit of insight on what makes for an effective tagline from someone who writes a not-so-bad post on taglines, but can't quite manage to come up with a decent tagline for one's own blog. Quite. Still, every little bit of gyan helps.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Trailer Trasher's 10 Funniest Movie Taglines

Trailer Trasher has put together a list of mock taglines for some movies. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull's reads: We should have stopped after the first one! For the full list, go here.

Monday, July 13, 2009

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Film taglines

"The Fiery Cross of the Ku Klux Klan."
"6 reels of Joy."
"The epic of the American doughboy."
"Love, Locomotives, and Laughs."
"Warner Bros. Supreme Triumph"
"Garbo TALKS!"

To find out the names of the films these taglines belong to and many many more like so, go here. Legendary stuff.

Friday, July 10, 2009

Classic taglines #1

The Daily Tagline # 4: The Onion

America's finest news source.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

How movie taglines are born

Boston Globe had this great article on How movie taglines are born. This was way back in 2004. Here's an extract from it to get you tempted:

In-house copywriters at specialized poster design firms (virtually all in Los Angeles) may collaborate with freelancers and the studios' own marketing departments to churn out as many as 1,000 tagline ideas for a given film. Writers are shown a rough cut of the film, a script, or even just synopsis. Turnaround times range from a year to a few days.

"I usually sit down and if it's there, it's there. It's not the kind of thing, at least for me, where you sit and stare at your computer screen," says Mike Kaiser of the design firm Concept Arts, who has been writing copy for 25 years. (His father was a copywriter, and so is his son.) Kaiser will jump around a thesaurus or Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, looking for phrases he can "spin or twist." His most famous line -- "The first casualty of war is innocence," for "Platoon" -- grew from Senator Hiram Johnson's 1917 assertion "The first casualty of war is the truth."

Stuart Bauer of the marketing firm BLT & Associates pored over countless radio stations' listener-favorites lists from the 1960s and `70s in search of tagline fodder for last year's "School of Rock." He ultimately pinched a line from Pink Floyd's "The Wall": "We don't need no education." Bauer's line for "Sylvia" ("Life was too small to contain her . . .") alludes to the title of Sylvia Plath's most famous work, "The Bell Jar." For "Scooby-Doo" ("Be Afraid. Be Kind of Afraid.") he reworked the seminal tagline for The Fly ("Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.")

For the whole nine yards, go here.

Chennai's best known tagline

Ad folks may cringe at my choice but the tagline that almost everyone knows by heart in Chennai is the 11-word, 2-sentence long one for Menaka Cards. It reads: Marriages are made in heaven. Marriage cards are made in Menaka. This tagline has been etched on the company's HQ and serves as Menaka's only ad. So it's a headline, slogan and tagline, all rolled into one. I think it's a functional baseline. Nothing hot about it. But one has to admit and appreciate the fact that millions of Chennaiites can mouth it if you utter the word Menaka.

Monday, July 6, 2009

The Daily Tagline # 2: Intel

Sponsors of Tomorrow.

The Tyranny of the Tagline

"Taglines used to be called slogans, and in the days of hard sell advertising mavens like Claude Hopkins and Rosser Reeves, they summed up the product and the promise in one viciously efficient little package: Winston tastes good like a cigarette should. Somewhere along the way, though, slogans turned into taglines, vague bits of poetry that sought to transcend the mundane commercial world and commune with the divine. Hence: Get the feeling. (That one's for Toyota.)

Ad agencies put a great stock in taglines, hoping that with a simple phrase they can create the indestructible core of an evergreen advertising campaign. There is a holy grail, of course -- Just do it - the three words that have anchored Nike's presence in the marketplace for what now seems like eternity. It's a hard act to follow, though. Nike's agency, Wieden and Kennedy, won the Microsoft account in the mid-nineties with a tagline they hoped would surpass Nike's: Where do you want to go today? It came and it went."

Extracted from an article penned by Michael Beirut in Design Observer. To enjoy the entire piece and the accompanying comments, go here.

What is Vorsprung durch Technik?

Size Does Matter Reenergized



"It can be so easy to make big things happen. When you're a giant."

Big Ruckus Over Small Miracle

On June 23, the Sri Lanka Tourism Ministry launched its new identity and tagline with much fanfare. Small Miracle was the approved tagline. But now the news is the biggies in Sri Lanka are a little peeved with the line. Reason being, they feel it belittles their beloved country. Phoenix Ogilvy, the agency behind the tagline, must be shitting their load. They've rolled out the communication after approvals and research. They would never have expected this googly. Poor chaps. My sympathies are with them.

Sunday, July 5, 2009

The Daily Tagline # 1: Cargill

Nourishing Ideas. Nourishing People.

Saturday, July 4, 2009

A different kinda tagline

Randall Woodman thinks a tagline is the witty signature line people use in their email messages. Using this assumption, Randall has put together a virtual treasure trove of 'taglines'. Here's a charming selection from his collection...

Every time I open my mouth my foot falls out.
Law of Human Quirks: Everyone wants to be noticed but no one wants to be stared at.
Photographers are better developed!
This Tagline is printed on recycled pixels!
Heaviest thing to carry-A grudge.
Snakes don't have tails...snakes ARE tails.
The only thing some people do is grow older.
A loose tongue often gets its owner into a tight spot!
Philosophy is to the real world as masturbation is to sex.
What Aussies lack in Humour they make up for in Beer!
Give the gift that keeps on giving: a female kitten.
My name is Annie Key. Please don't hit me.
Nitrates - cheaper than day rates.
Zen Meditators do it thoughtlessly.
Parachute School Dropout
People who give up smoking live to regret it.
Until I discovered women I thought love was a pain in the ass.
Incredible as it seems, my life is based on a true story.
XEROX never comes up with something original.
Nothing improves with age.
Whatever it is, whenever it occurs, I'm against it.