How can a startup write a hit ad?

When startups are refining their slogans, it is easy for them to come up with something very exciting on the spur of the moment.

" Starting a business is about changing the world. Can't you just speak out your ideal/original intention/vision?"
Well, not very good.

You should know that Nike did not tell you JUST DO IT from the beginning. That was the slogan it came up with N years after it was founded. Startups refine their slogans more to influence consumers and convert sales. 80% of start-ups are not suitable for making empty statements.

So what to say? Speak the product slogan.

What is a product slogan? A product slogan is a sentence that expresses the benefits of a product in a very intuitive way. It can influence consumers who don’t know you at all and make them interested in you or even make a purchase. This phrase often appears in sales-oriented advertisements. There are several ways to refine this sentence:

01 Present product attributes

In the millennium, Apple discovered that the music player experience was extremely poor, so Jobs asked hardware guru Jon Rubinstein to make something reliable. So the first generation of iPod was launched in 2001. Its configuration was amazing, and its size was significantly smaller than other MP3 competitors at the time, so the following statement came about.

This is the product fact that the brand can convince consumers to believe. When consumers are not familiar with you, you have to find evidence to support your point. For example, when a boy expresses his financial strength to a girl, saying "I am rich" and "I have three houses" will have completely different consequences.

When expressing arguments, you cannot be empty and pretentious. You must be specific, imaginative, and visual so that consumers can demonstrate it in their minds, and then believe and remember it. The product's origin, production process, raw material sources, physical properties, product presentation... are all "arguments" that can be used.

02 Define your brand persona

In Starbucks ' philosophy, there are three main reasons why customers come to the store: coffee factors, human factors, and feeling factors. Schultz believed that Starbucks stores needed to be filled with a pleasant experience, allowing customers to relieve stress from work and family in such a space - hence the phrase "the third space outside of home and office" came into being.

To define the role of the brand, it is necessary to add differentiated expressions based on category relevance, so that fresh things feel familiar and familiar things feel fresh. This makes it easier for consumers to understand the product and reduces learning costs. It also brings surprises and increases consumers' interest in the product. It is suitable for products that innovate or redefine the category and can differentiate themselves from competing products.

03. Directly communicate the benefits

If you can find user pain points that no one else has discovered before, you can directly demonstrate the benefits of the product and hit the pain points quickly and accurately.

There are a few things to note when doing this. First, it is best to add some product attributes that support this "benefit" after this sentence to enhance persuasiveness; secondly, use contrast, antithesis, homophony and other copywriting modification methods to make it catchy and enhance the spread of this sentence; finally, this type of slogan is suitable for large-scale delivery and can quickly capture the minds of consumers.

04 Provide an action plan

When Red Bull first entered the market, it used the slogan "Drink Red Bull when you are tired or sleepy". When consumers realize that they are "sleepy and tired", they will remember that Red Bull can relieve fatigue and achieve purchase conversion. For fast-moving consumer goods that do not require too much decision-making time, directly providing an action plan and allowing consumers to quickly associate themselves with the product may be a more effective method.

We also need to use images to enhance consumers' awareness of their own status and then connect them to products. For example, in the advertisements of Jiaduobao , scenes of eating hot pot and skewers often appear, so the saying "Drink Jiaduobao if you are afraid of getting a sore throat" comes naturally.

Of course, consumers will not help you tell their relatives and friends about such a harsh slogan. So if there is no large-scale launch, this sentence may become a self-congratulatory nonsense: (

05 Build a Trust Arch

When a brand achieves initial success, has high visibility, and is in a leading position in the industry, it can apply the positioning theory of "brand is category" to consolidate its success. This approach can reduce consumers' risk concerns, build trust, and help make consumer decisions.

To sum up

1. Present product attributes: specific/imaginable
2. Define brand roles: Category-related + differentiated expression
3. Directly tell the benefits: hit the pain point + catchy
4. Provide an action plan: Contact yourself + provide a plan
5. Build a trust archway: high visibility and consolidate status

Seeing this, some of you may be thinking, after saying so much above, which way should my brand choose to refine this slogan? There doesn't seem to be any necessary standard.

Well, yes, so my advice is, try writing them all!

The book "The Lean Startup" was once very popular in the entrepreneurial circle. When it comes to refining slogans, the same principle applies. Through a large number of small-scale campaigns, different slogans are constantly tested. If they succeed, continue; if they fail, adjust or even transform. The effects may be different for different groups of people and in different scenarios, so just adapt to the circumstances.