How to create an effective brand slogan?

Why do brands and marketing companies pay so much attention to brand discourse?

Because it is something that can be seen and heard directly, people always pay attention to the brand's actions that are revealed outwardly.

Why do many brands pay so much attention to discourse but don’t have an effective brand discourse?

It is also because I only focus on the surface. If others say something, I also want to say something. As for whether the brand really needs such a sentence, I have never thought about it seriously.

Moreover, the strategic crystallization of many brand planning companies is finally reflected in one sentence. For example, some companies output xxx leading, XXX hot selling; some companies output a slogan; or a unique selling point...

This sentence is the crystallization of strategy, and then the brand spends money on this sentence, but is it worth it? Is there a better decision at the same cost?

——The vast majority of brands have not thought about it carefully.

What is the purpose of a phrase like strategy crystallization?

——This is the core discourse of the brand’s external communication. Brand communication is always bound by such a sentence to attract consumers to buy products, thereby driving the brand.

Some call this sentence brand positioning, some call it brand slogan, unique selling point, advertising language, slogan... Each company has its own definition, and because the definitions of the words are different, the products produced by each company are also different.

Today, I will help you understand it thoroughly and master another weapon to create brand assets. Does a brand necessarily need a brand voice? Must the ultimate manifestation of strategy be words?

In fact, it may not be the case. It depends on the brand operator, where to put the words and what role the words play.

1. What role does brand discourse play?

Where do you place your brand discourse?

You must rank the brand elements (name, logo, packaging, words...), where do you put them? Who is first and who is second? We need to clarify this issue first.

Don’t start with a few words right away, do things according to habit, maybe your words are well-crafted and well-thought-out, yes, but they are of no use in developing the brand. It is necessary to examine the development of the brand and figure out what role brand discourse plays in brand building.

To figure out the roles, we have to go back to a higher-dimensional perspective and re-examine the situation. If we cannot see clearly when we are in the situation, we can often look at it from a higher-dimensional perspective and the chaos will become clear at a glance.

Let’s look at it from a brand level, or even a higher dimensional perspective - the corporate level. From the perspective of the enterprise, brand is a means to better create value.

The purpose of the brand?

——Enterprises create and provide value to society, and brands are used to distinguish differences in value and gain benefits from consumers by providing value.

From this perspective, the brand’s main actions should all comply with this purpose. Brand discourse plays a major role in this task, and discourse is used to convey information. Help brands deliver value, and best of all, create brand assets and become a part of the brand.

This is the role of discourse, to help brands convey information. Once this goal is achieved, the mission of brand discourse is accomplished. Continuing to ask, is it possible for a brand to not have words?

That's fine, but you don't need brand language. You need other actions to complete the mission of information delivery, such as vision, sound, etc. For example, the third asset of some brands is not language, but IP, etc.

But when we decide to use words, we must use them well, because words also occupy the space of other brand actions. Being in this position, we must play our role.

2. What exactly is brand discourse?

Now that we have figured out the roles, let’s define the discourse.

As we said above, words should help remember, differentiate, and state the value provided by the brand, and ideally, build brand assets. Brand discourse is an action of the brand, which helps the brand achieve its commercial goals and helps the enterprise achieve its operating goals.

So, what exactly is brand discourse? It is nothing more than a sentence, or more essentially, a piece of information code. Use a combination of words and phrases to encode information and accurately convey it to consumers.

There are generally four types of brand discourse on the market: brand slogans, product discourse, advertising discourse, brand association vocabulary, etc.

These are all brand discourses, and their purpose is to convey the brand’s information to the outside world. From a brand perspective: the brand needs to have a unified external discourse and consistent communications so that information can be delivered efficiently.

From the consumer’s perspective: I also hope that brands convey consistent information, otherwise it will be misleading and I will not be able to figure out what the brand is for me for a long time.

• From the nature of language, there are already requirements for discourse. First of all, the information must be accurate, otherwise the passage is meaningless, and the more it is spread, the more wasteful it is.
• At the same time, the brand hopes that consumers will remember the information after it is disseminated. This places higher demands on discourse, requiring discourse encoders to make full use of language skills to make discourse easier to remember.
• This is not enough. Brands also hope that the words can be remembered by consumers and spread again. The requirements for this dialogue are higher, and the discourse encoder needs to master the laws of language dissemination. It can be summed up in three principles: the information must be accurate, easy to remember, and retransmittable.

Therefore, when you regard speech as the core action of a brand, the requirements for brand speakers are very high. This person is a creative, a linguist, a communication scientist, and even a psychologist.

Once you’ve decided on your brand message, should you stick with it?

Most brands are imitators, they watch what others do and then do the same? This is a lack of business ideas of its own, and the entire brand movement is chaotic.

As far as brand discourse is concerned, the discourse is different at different stages of brand development. Don’t just follow the industry leaders. The key is to speak your own words and see what they have said along the way. He is successful and everything he says is right. If you try to learn from him at this time, it is very likely that what you learn may not be suitable for you.

Therefore, the most important thing is to establish your own discourse system, form your own school, and firmly convey the information you want to convey. Why is it that the discourse system is different at different stages of brand development?

——Because at different stages, the enterprises transmit information to different objects; the same object, the information transmitted is also different, for example:

• For a start-up brand, the most important thing at this time is to solve the problem of selling products. You need words with sales power to solve the problem of survival first.
• Brands in the mature stage diversify their external communication discourse, spread the brand’s core values, begin to build emotions, and have their own communication themes. At this time, they are not only speaking to consumers, but also to the brand’s entire business chain.
• After brand extension, each sub-brand under the main brand has a different communication discourse.
• Group brand: The group brand mainly promotes the value proposition it provides to society, and lets the brands below talk about the specific business.
• …

Therefore, the key lies in what stage the brand is in and what responsibility the discourse bears for the brand, is it sales? Is it to create emotional resonance?

Don't apply it rigidly or keep using the same sentence. The key is to see the development of the brand and how the words can help. Always remember the role of words. Brand words must also change.

3. If you only say one sentence, value comes first

Now that there are changes, what exactly should brands say?

There are many types of brand discourse. Judging from the current situation in our country, developing enterprises account for the majority. Developing brands are in urgent need of branding actions, and they hope that the actions will be effective and truly helpful for brand building. Therefore, it is important to be practical with words, which is why the strategies of many marketing companies are crystallized into one sentence.

A reminder here is that brand management is a complex and long-term task, and words are only part of the brand. Whether it is the brand or the marketing company, do not bet too much on a single sentence.

In the early years, brands were all about advertising. Advertisements had a core message, and when it was said more than once, it became a fixed brand message, or the advertising slogan.

For example, the classic slogan:

• In the early days, MM chocolate only melted in the mouth, not in the hand;
• Dove, moisturize your skin;
• Nike’s just do it;
• Dove chocolate, rainy days go best with chocolate;
• Septwolves men's clothing: men should be a little harder on themselves;
• Little Sunflower Children's Medicine, Little Sunflower Mom Class has started;
• Melatonin, I will not accept any gifts this year, and I will only accept Melatonin;
• Apple, think different;
• Wanglaoji: If you don’t want to get angry, drink Wanglaoji
• …

These are the slogans that eventually become part of the brand discourse and help to remember the brand. Please note that there are two types of these: one is to convey brand value; the other is language skills that make people remember through strange combinations of words.

Later, we started talking about brand slogans. Brands need a catchy slogan, such as the classic slogan:

• Gree, mastering core technology;
• Nongfu Spring, Nongfu Spring is a little sweet;
• JD.com, buy genuine products, go to JD.com;
• Pinduoduo, buy together, cheaper;
• Vipshop; a website that specializes in special sales;
• Li Ning, everything is possible;
• Mengniu, a glass of milk every day, makes Chinese people strong;
• Google's most famous slogan, Don't be evil;
• Coca-Cola has many flavors, changes frequently, and the most frequently used one is refreshing and cheerful.
• …

Brand slogans always accompany brand communication and are used for a longer period of time, even if the advertising content changes but the slogan does not. The slogans above can be roughly divided into two categories: one is rational value promotion, and the other is the transmission of brand values.

Since the current reality is that most companies are developing, let us use this situation to explain how to create an effective statement. If the brand only says one thing to the outside world, what would it say?

The best thing is to convey the value of the product/brand. Some brands integrate the brand slogan with the product. For example: Gree, which masters core technology; Nongfu Spring, which is a little sweet.

This type of brand discourse expresses the core value of the brand and is effective in brand development. Compared with discourses that use word tricks, these discourses are more long-term. So when a brand only says one sentence to the outside world, I think value comes first, and you should always publicize the value you bring to consumers.

Looking at the top 100 brands in the world, it is difficult to tell their brand slogans because they use different slogans at each stage of development. But although the discourse is changing, the core remains the same, which is to express the value that the brand brings to consumers.

For example, Apple, the top of the pyramid, we may not remember what it said, but we can remember its product value and even its product parameters. Products are what people need and the value that brands want to provide to society; brands are an extension of people and a representation of people.

The best effect is to combine the two.

4. How to create an effective brand slogan?

If I had to put it in one sentence, it would definitely be the brand slogan. To create effective brand discourse, you must first understand two facts.

• First: There is no such thing as brainwashing consumers with words that make them buy immediately and take action immediately, like superstition. This is bullshit.
• Second: Discourse creation can be divided into two parts. One part is to follow the rules to ensure that the discourse can reach 70 points, and the other part is creativity, which is too accidental.

According to the rules, the brand’s discourse should at least exceed that of 70% of its peers, and every product it produces should be on average. It relies entirely on creativity, which is too random. It may be amazing once in a while, but most of the time it is very mediocre.

Therefore, from the perspective of long-term brand management, we should ensure that we outperform most of our peers every time. Even if we don’t win by much, we win a little bit every time. We should spend our energy on honing basic skills to ensure the accuracy of our attacks.

So, how do you create an effective sentence?

In fact, the answer has been discussed in the previous section. If the brand has only one sentence to say, value comes first, then you should spread your value without hesitation. Whatever you sell, convey the value of your brand/product.

• The first step is to find value. First you have to find value. Although it seems easy, most brands have not found their own value, so they cannot say anything effective.
• The second step is to connect brands and categories. To put it bluntly, who you are and what you do must always be communicated to consumers, otherwise no one will know whose value you are spreading.
• The third step is the use of language logic and creativity. At this time, you need profound language logic and know how to combine language to maximize its power. At the same time, you need to be creative and use creative words to make the speech smoother and easier to remember.

For example: Yunnan Baiyao Band-Aid, it heals faster with medicine. This is a standard brand statement that conveys value, and there are rules to it. The first four words introduce the brand, followed by the category, then the value comes, there is medicine, and then the promise brought to consumers is that things will get better faster.

——The sentence is very clear and meets the three principles. The information must be accurate, easy to remember and retransmittable.

Here are the three principles:

• First of all, you have to ensure that the information is accurate, which requires not to play with homophones;
• To be easy to remember, it requires some language devices, such as rhyme, conjunctions, dramatic actions, etc.;
• Being able to pass it on means giving consumers something to share, so that when consumers talk about this brand with their friends, they have something to say, and we have already arranged this topic for them.

What would consumers say to their friends when talking about Yunnan Baiyao's Band-Aids? Let’s simulate a scenario. A friend’s hand is broken, and consumers who have used it will say that they use Yunnan Baiyao, which is advertised to contain medicine and feels better.

——This is the message given to consumers.

Another similar case is that Chubang soy sauce is delicious and fresh, and is sun-dried for 180 days, which also fully complies with the above rules.

Words that convey value are more effective than empty words, especially for developing brands. The brands listed above include Gree, Nongfu Spring, Vipshop, JD.com, and Pinduoduo. During their brand development period, they all spared no effort to convey value.

The most important thing is that we can completely learn this rule. Under this rule, brand discourse creation becomes sentence construction with conjunctions. What comes out won’t go astray, and you can apply this formula to your brand right away.

V. Conclusion

The brand slogan mentioned above is the brand slogan standard that I recognize, and I think it is effective for developing brands. But someone asked, there are many forms of slogans, why do you only mention this one?

That’s true. There are many forms of language. For example, when Remy Martin is opened, good things will come naturally. This is also a slogan, but it is a creative type. Or is it a brand name? Can your brand just meet all of these requirements?

This is a low probability event. So brand discourse is partly rules and partly creativity. When rules are combined with good ideas, this sentence will take off.

Regarding the brand slogan, I will explain it based on the works in the cases to be released later. For example, our previous weight loss case of being really thin and not rebounding, looking for Xiaolujian, actually also follows this rule.

Grasp the basic rules and ensure accurate attacks.

Author: Jia Tao

Source: Jia Tao Jia Tao (ID: jtjt3456)