THE END OF THE LINE?

CreativePool Network started an interesting discussion on linkedin “whatever happened to the brilliant strapline?” It’s an interesting topic which (I hope they don’t mind) I wanted to expand on further without clogging up their threads.

Teressa Iezzi in her brilliant book The Idea Writers argues that The Big Idea is dead and it could be argued that the traditional big advertising message pushed through mass media is no longer the smartest or savviest way to communicate with people. So, if the Big Idea is dead, you’d think its natural companion, the endline, would be on its way to the chopping block too.

Well, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time that the strapline has been an endangered species. Tim Delaney, the acclaimed writer and Creative Director, has always famously been no big fan of straplines and it didn’t hinder him from winning award after award for ads that featured unadorned client logos in the bottom right hand corner.

I also feel that if straplines have petered off into irrelevance, in many ways it’s our fault as an industry. We’ve all seen those international car commercials where, just when you think the ad is over, an over-designed computer graphic appears, portentously proclaiming some meaningless corporate signoff like “born with passion, driven with precision.”

But examples like this merely taint the idea of what a strapline should be in its purest and most perfect form.

And that is – a simple expression of a brand’s DNA, a mantra for the brand’s eternal values that can remain constant through wind, hail and departing Marketing Directors.

A strapline like “just do it” sums up a spirit of athletic fortitude that shines through every piece of Nike communication whether it’s shown or not shown, said or unsaid.

Or Apple’s “Think Different” (again as mentioned in the Idea Writers – no I don’t have shares in the book, I just think it’s rather good) that was created as a stopgap when Apple didn’t really have a convincing offering, but which their subsequent products have exemplified to a T.

Or Marmite. Was “you either love it or hate it” a strapline or an insight? Whatever it is, it’s become an established idea and part of our language to the extent where you can now refer to someone as “a bit of a Marmite person” and everyone gets it instantly.

So I’d argue that the old-fashioned, portentous corporate strapline – some meaningless aggregation of the words “passon”, “innovation” and “the future” - could quite happily go the way of all flesh.

But the brand mantra – the carefully chosen words that encapsulate a brand’s core emotional essence– is more important than ever in this splintered communications age.

And how can you identify a brand mantra from an old-fashioned irrelevant strapline? One is the strong glue that holds together every word or image that a brand puts out into the world. The other is just blu-tack.