Pull up a chair. Here is the thing nobody tells you before you write your first tagline, the one you will be very proud of for about a week: the line you love on Monday is usually the one the public forgets by Friday.

Good slogans are not clever sentences. They are compressed decisions. The cleverness comes last, if it comes at all.

A slogan or tagline is a short, repeatable phrase that carries a brand’s central promise or attitude in words people can remember and say aloud, so that the line keeps doing the brand’s work long after the advertisement around it has gone.

The word itself comes from the Gaelic sluagh-ghairm, a host’s battle cry: the thing a clan shouted so its own people could find each other in the noise. Hold on to that. A slogan is how your customers find you in the noise.

Slogan or tagline: is there actually a difference?

People ask this constantly, usually right before a meeting. In practice the words are used interchangeably, and you will not lose a pitch by mixing them up.

If you want a working distinction, use this one. A tagline is the permanent line that sits beside the logo and expresses what the brand is for. A slogan is often tied to a campaign and can change every year or two. Nike’s “Just Do It” behaves like a tagline because it has outlived dozens of campaigns since 1988. A seasonal line about a summer sale is a slogan.

What matters more than the label is the job. Decide if your line needs to last ten years or ten weeks before you write a single word, because the two are written very differently.

Start with the decision, not the words

The most common mistake I see, from start-ups and multinationals alike, is opening a blank document and typing “Ideas for tagline”. That is like opening the oven before you have decided what to cook.

Before you write, you need three things on one page:

The one thing. What single idea should people associate with you? Not four. One.

The proof. Why is it true? A line that promises something your product cannot deliver is a liability with a typeface.

The tone. Are you the confident expert, the cheeky friend, the calm guide? The same idea sounds completely different in each voice.

Consider “A Diamond Is Forever”. Frances Gerety, a copywriter at N. W. Ayer, wrote it for De Beers in 1947. The decision behind it was enormous: diamonds should be bought as permanent symbols, never resold, and tied to marriage. The four words simply wrapped that decision in something people could say. It was later named the best advertising slogan of the twentieth century, and it earned that title because the strategy did the heavy lifting.

What actually makes people like a slogan?

Ask a few hundred people which slogans they remember, then ask them how much they like the ones that stuck, and a humbling pattern appears. Of the fourteen features copywriters usually argue about, only three reliably predict liking. Creativity of phrasing. Clarity of message. A stated benefit.

The surprises were what did not matter much. Including the brand name barely moved the needle. Neither did people’s familiarity with the brand. And the rules of thumb we all repeat in workshops (keep it short, make it rhyme, add a jingle) turned out to be far less reliable than we pretend.

That does not mean rhyme is useless. People judge a rhyming statement as more truthful than the same claim without the rhyme, a quirk known as the rhyme-as-reason effect. Rhyme helps a line feel right. It just will not save a line that says nothing.

So, a hierarchy. Clear first. Beneficial second. Creative third. Musical fourth. Most bad slogans have that list upside down.

The techniques that work (and why)

You do not need a hundred tricks. You need a handful you understand deeply.

Make it a command or an invitation

Imperatives are short, active and personal. “Just Do It” works because it talks to you and tells you something to do. Dan Wieden, whose agency wrote it, said he adapted it from the last words of a man facing execution, “Let’s do it”, which tells you how far raw material can travel once a good writer reshapes it.

Kit Kat’s “Have a break, have a Kit Kat” is a gentler invitation. Written at JWT London in 1957, it turned a chocolate bar into a ritual: the pause itself. That is a remarkable piece of positioning in six words, and it worked so well that Nestlé spent about a decade trying to register the “Have a break” part as a trade mark, with Mars contesting it, until the European Court of Justice sent the matter back to the British courts in 2005. When a competitor fights you over your line, you have written a good one.

Break a rule on purpose

“Think different” is grammatically wrong. Apple’s agency, TBWA\Chiat\Day, considered “Think differently” and rejected it. Steve Jobs wanted “different” to function almost as a noun, a thing you think about. The slight wrongness makes your brain stop and reread. That pause is the point.

Use this sparingly. One rule broken, deliberately, in service of the idea. Not three broken by accident.

Hedge when everyone else boasts

Carlsberg’s “Probably the best lager in the world”, created in 1973 by Tony Bodinetz at the agency KMP, is a masterclass in confident modesty. Every beer claims to be the best. The word “probably” made Carlsberg sound wry, adult and somehow more believable, and the line ran for decades before the brand moved to “That calls for a Carlsberg” in most markets in 2011.

A qualifier can be the most persuasive word in the sentence. Try it on your own line. Does a little humility make it more credible?

Let the pronoun do the work

L’Oréal’s line, written by copywriter Ilon Specht at McCann in 1973, began as “Because I’m worth it”. It was revolutionary at the time because the woman in the ad was speaking for herself, about herself. Later it became “Because you’re worth it”, and in 2009 “Because we’re worth it”.

Same idea, three different relationships. “I” is a declaration. “You” is a compliment from the brand. “We” is a community. Change one small word and you change who is speaking and who is listening. Try each version of your line before you commit.

Can a slogan get a brand into trouble?

Yes, and more often than you think.

The most famous example is “Red Bull gives you wings”. Nobody believes they will literally fly. Yet in 2014 Red Bull agreed to a US$13 million settlement of class actions in New York that alleged it had overstated the drink’s performance benefits. The line was not the whole case, but headlines everywhere led with the wings. A metaphor that sits too close to a functional claim can be read, by a court or a newspaper, as a promise.

The second risk is ownership. On developer forums you will find founders proudly sharing a tagline, only to have a commenter point out that a well-known company already uses something confusingly similar. Search trade mark registers and the open web before you fall in love. Ten minutes of checking can save a rebrand.

The third risk is edge. Founders often ask whether a provocative or crude line will make them memorable. Sometimes. But it also filters out every customer who does not share the joke, and it can trip workplace web filters, which is an awkward problem for a business-to-business firm. Edgy is a strategy, not a shortcut. Choose it only if your audience genuinely shares that sensibility.

Lines that belong to a place

Some of the best slogans in the world are rooted in a specific culture, and they travel because of that, not despite it.

When Singapore Airlines launched in 1972, its agency, Batey Ads, built the brand around the Singapore Girl and a promise that described not the plane but the experience: a great way to fly. A Singapore Girl theme song followed in 1973. The phrasing is warm, almost old-fashioned, and it has anchored the airline’s identity across five decades because service is the one thing the brand can genuinely own.

In India, Amul has run topical hoardings featuring its little Amul girl since the 1960s, commenting wittily on news and politics with a pun-laden line that changes with the news. The lesson there is different: a tagline does not have to be one fixed sentence. It can be a voice. People look for the next Amul line the way they look for the next newspaper cartoon.

In Japan, Kit Kat found a gift nobody planned: its name sounds close to kitto katsu, roughly “you will surely win”. Students buy it as a good-luck charm before exams. No copywriter can engineer that, but a smart brand team noticed it and leaned in.

And in Kenya, Safaricom introduced Twaweza in 2017, a Kiswahili line carrying the idea that great things happen when people come together, as part of its shift from telecoms company to digital lifestyle brand. By 2019 it had moved on to “For You”, with a commitment to simplicity and transparency. A line can be right for a strategic moment and still be retired when the strategy changes. Do not be sentimental.

Five tests before you ship

Here is the checklist I run on every line, mine or anyone else’s.

1. The swap test. Cover your brand name and put a competitor’s in its place. If the line still works, it is not yours. “Quality you can trust” fails instantly. “Probably the best lager in the world” does not.

2. The opposite test. Write the opposite of your line. If no company would ever say the opposite (“We deliver poor service at high prices”), your line contains no information. Rewrite it.

3. The pub test. Say it out loud, to a friend, without the logo or the advert. Does it sound like something a person would actually say? Can they repeat it back to you five minutes later?

4. The ten-year test. Will this still be true if you launch three new products, open in two new countries and double your staff? Taglines tied to a single product feature age badly.

5. The legal and language test. Search trade mark databases. Then have a native speaker check every market you operate in, because a phrase that sings in English can mean something unfortunate elsewhere. In Singapore that means at least English, Chinese and Malay; Tamil too, if your audience is broad.

A small worked example

Picture a family-run kopitiam in Toa Payoh that roasts its own beans and wants a line for its new takeaway cups.

First draft: “Quality Coffee Since 1985.” Fails the swap test; half the island could say it.

Second draft: “Roasted Here, Every Morning.” Clearer, specific, true. Better, but flat.

Third draft: “Roasted Before You Woke Up.” Now there is a benefit (freshness), a gentle image, and a little warmth towards the customer. It passes the opposite test, because nobody would boast “Roasted weeks before you woke up”. It sounds like something an auntie behind the counter might say.

Is it the final line? Maybe not. But notice what happened. The words improved only after the decision (we roast fresh, daily, on site) was clear. That is the order. Always.

The work after the writing

A slogan becomes memorable through repetition, not through brilliance alone. The famous lines above are famous partly because brands ran them consistently for years, often decades, while lesser lines were swapped out every time a new marketing director arrived.

So once you have a good line, protect it. Put it in the brand guidelines. Use it the same way everywhere. Resist the urge to tweak it because you are bored; you will be bored years before your customers are.

And if you are writing your first one tomorrow, remember the clan on the hillside. A slogan is a rallying cry. It should be short enough to shout, true enough to stand behind, and distinctive enough that your people know, instantly, it is you calling.

Before you go

What makes a slogan memorable?
A clear message, a stated benefit and creative phrasing do more than length or rhyme alone. Consistent use over many years is what turns a good line into a famous one.

How long should a tagline be?
There is no fixed rule. The famous lines in this article run from two to six words, and shorter lines are easier to repeat, provided they still say something specific.

Should a slogan include the brand name?
It is not necessary. Including the brand name makes little difference to how much people like a line, and many famous slogans, such as “Think different”, leave it out entirely.

If you want a line built on a decision rather than a brainstorm, talk to us about brand strategy at Firefish.