I’m sure you remember those wonderful fill-in-the-blanks books, “Mad Libs.” You know, you just insert your own verb, noun or adjective in the blanks and see how silly the sentences come out. Mad Libs are great for kids and fun at parties, but they have no place in expressing your marketing message. Yet, as I look through the pages of ads in magazines, or surf companies on the web, I see all kinds of Mad Lib slogans and taglines, which are in effect condensed marketing messages:
- A Global Leader in [ activity ].
- Building tomorrow’s [ product ] today.
- Putting [ people, needs or ideas ] first.
- [ kind of people ] helping [ other kind or same kind of people ]
Perhaps most the most egregious users of Mad Libs marketing is the funeral industry. The marketing messages are so generic, any competitor in the same category could put their name in the space:
- A tradition of caring. [ company name goes here ]
- Dignified, compassionate service. [company name goes here ]
- Serving [ location community ] since [ year founded ]. [ company name goes here ]
They don’t communicate anything genuinely unique about the service provider other than the category in which they operate, putting them at the same level as everyone else who offers a similar product or service. They could have come out of a catalog!
By comparison, here are a few examples of taglines in the funeral industry that stand out because they have something unique to say:
- A Fresh Approach to Funeral Care – Bunker Family Funeral Home
- Creating Funerals as Special as the People they Honor - Bonaventure Funeral Home
- Your Legacy Deserves A Place Like This - Rose Hills Memorial Park and Mortuary
I would have included more examples of good taglines, but frankly, I couldn’t find too many. So here are some from other industries:
- The Ultimate Driving Machine
- Think Different
- The Uncola
- It’s everywhere you want to be
As the new year progresses, it’s worthwhile to look backwards to some of the strategies and tactics you’re bringing into 2012…starting with your basic marketing message. Ask yourself, is our message so familiar, expected or generic that it could apply to any of our competitors? Does it fully express our unique point of difference? Is it fresh and “sticky”?
Without having a strong point of view and a distinctive message risks your customers seeing your business as a commodity or generic service, and they’ll be happy to shop your competitors when they think price is really the only difference.
This may require a bit of corporate soul-searching, but it belongs on your marketing must-do list for 2012. Otherwise, you’re just [ verb ]-ing your marketing dollars [ preposition and place ].
