How to create a super slogan for brand communication?

A super slogan is one that uses the least words to convey the most information, prompting the other party to take certain actions, thereby establishing the corporate brand image and helping the company gain fame. So how do you create a super slogan for brand communication? This article introduces six core evaluation criteria and four types of thinking routines to share with you!

Today we are going to discuss the more practical part: How to create an excellent super slogan?

1. Six core evaluation criteria

First of all, we need to have the most basic judgment ability on whether a super slogan is good or bad, otherwise there is no way to start creation.

I think there are six core judging criteria, namely: instantly understandable, colloquial, valuable, actionable, long-lasting, and with a brand name. Whether you are creating or checking after the creation, these six criteria can help us output better slogan ideas.

Let's expand on this one by one:

1. Understand immediately

The time your brand spends facing customers at the terminal may be only one second, and understanding it within seconds is the most basic quality of a super slogan.

For example, if the GetApp wants to promote a new course, it will usually pop up a window when the user opens the App to actively recommend it to you. The moment the promotional poster pops up, how the slogan introducing this course is written will largely determine whether he will place an order for this course.

Imagine if you say something and the other person doesn't know what you are talking about, or needs him to think around before he can understand, wouldn't that cause trouble for him?

Sometimes, in order to make our brand appear high-end and cultured, we deliberately make the slogan more beautiful and obscure. Because it seems to have more room for imagination, this is actually the biggest misunderstanding of super slogans. Any practice that may create communication barriers is not worth promoting.

In the previous article, we mentioned that “slogan is message”. You need to convey the key brand message to your consumers without loss of quality. If you "intentionally" create reading barriers, customers' understanding will vary, and they may even ignore you directly, and the quality of information communication will be greatly reduced.

We need to try to use simple, plain words that are easy to understand when creating our works. Slogans are copywriting, not literature. Only simplicity can touch people’s hearts. Even if the audience is a novice with no cognitive foundation, they can still understand what you are talking about.

Remember to use homophones with caution because they do not follow the principles of auditory communication. (Regarding auditory communication, we have previously written an article specifically for you to read.)

In addition to not beating around the bush in expression, the number of words should also be kept as low as possible. It is easiest to remember words within 8 words, and the longest word should not exceed 14 words. No matter how many words there are, customers will not be able to read it all at a glance and may easily feel resistance.

On the basis of accurate expression, you need to simplify the text again and again. If you can express it with one word, never use two words.

In fact, understanding in seconds means reducing communication costs. This is not only the principle for creating super slogans, but almost all creative ideas in the business environment need to follow this principle.

2. Customer communication

Although the super slogan may be spread by the brand (or customers) in the beginning, it is the customers who can really promote it.

The ideal situation is that when someone talks about your brand, they will mention the super slogan, which will truly give the slogan life.

Therefore, the super slogan must be colloquial, the kind that can be uttered directly during daily communication. To judge whether a slogan is colloquial enough, just see whether the front-line sales staff use it frequently when selling products, and whether customers use it when evaluating you.

When Lao Luo started live streaming on Douyin to sell goods, the super slogan he used was "Don't make money, make friends", as if he was standing in front of you and saying it directly from his mouth.

On the other hand, many slogans that pursue literary elegance are rarely used in daily life, so they cannot be considered true super slogans.

Pacific Insurance is a typical example. Their slogan is "Add a drop of water in normal times, and you will have the Pacific Ocean in difficult times."

Excessive pursuit of beautiful symmetry in words often deviates from the principle of spoken language. Therefore, it is destined to be a one-man show of the brand itself, lying quietly in the book.

The most powerful super slogan is the one that can evolve into people’s daily catchphrases, such as “Say Tianqi when taking pictures” and “Drink Wanglaoji if you’re afraid of getting a sore throat”, which have become part of our social culture. This is the pinnacle of sloganeering. It is difficult to do this if you are not a spoken language.

3. Create value for customers

The essence of a value-added enterprise is to create value for customers, and the super slogan is to convey the brand’s most unique value point (from the customer’s perspective, value is his reason for purchase: why should he buy from me instead of others).

In my experience of consulting for companies, the most common phenomenon we encounter is that companies often advertise for the entire industry.

For example, the slogan of a certain smart lock company is: Get rid of keys; insurance companies are telling consumers that you must buy insurance, buy insurance, because there will be many risks in the future. But have you ever thought about why customers would buy from me instead of other companies? Even if customers really have the urge to buy, they may turn around and go to other stores.

On my way to work this morning, I saw an advertisement for a plastic surgery company on a bus and it had the same problem: XX plastic surgery, beautiful once and for all, beautiful forever. The premise of the existence of a plastic surgery company is to make your customers beautiful. If a brand only emphasizes the attributes of this industry, it is equivalent to using the money to advertise the entire industry, which is almost a waste of money.

A super slogan must carry unique value that can instantly hit customers, and it must participate in competition and make competitors hate it. Unfortunately, most companies are often trapped in internal thinking, and the advertising slogans they write are neither differentiated nor competitive.

4. Help consumers make decisions

I have repeatedly emphasized before that super slogans ultimately point to customer actions, and the purpose of marketing communication is to help consumers make decisions.

Therefore, the slogan must have a clear action orientation, so that customers will have the urge to take certain actions after reading the slogan. Otherwise, communication resources will be wasted.

How to improve the ability to persuade people with slogans?

The structure and rhythm of sentences are very important. The sentence structure of the super slogan must be decisive and inflammatory, and it is best to have rhythmic and rhyming sentences; secondly, it is best to have some action command words, which will make it easier to form behavioral impulses.

A case that those born in the 1980s should all know: If you want to find the best excavator technology, go to Lanxiang in Shandong, China! It is a classic passed down by word of mouth. The clever use of the verb "find" points to the customer's action, and "qiang" and "xiang" rhyme, making them easy to read. Imagine if its brand name was Lanfei instead of Lanxiang, wouldn’t the effectiveness of this slogan be much weaker?

It is particularly important to remind you that action does not equal emotion. A large number of brand advertisements have touched customers but they only remain at the stage of touching and cannot be transformed into customers' motivation to take action.

"If you know where to go, the whole world will make way for you." I believe you are very familiar with this advertising slogan, and it has even touched you before, but do you know what brand is behind it? Did you have any motivation to buy it?

Whatever action you want customers to take, reflect it in your super slogan.

5. Durability

Unless there is a major adjustment in the corporate strategy, it is best not to change the super slogan. The cost of reinvesting in a new super slogan and implanting it in the minds of customers is huge. Therefore, a super slogan must be able to withstand long-term baptism and be classic and not easily outdated.

For a super slogan to be long-lasting and effective, it must be consistent with the long-term value of the target customers and meet their pain points that will not disappear in the short term.

For example, Alibaba’s slogan “Make it easy to do business anywhere” means that “difficulty in doing business” is a long-term problem in this society.

The super slogan we created for Henghua Insurance: Buy the right insurance, customized by Henghua. Because the domestic insurance industry will be in a chaotic development period for a long time, the pain point of customers "buying the wrong insurance" will also exist for a long time.

We believe that for a long time to come, "one-on-one personal customization to help customers buy the right insurance" will meet customers' long-term value needs.

A super slogan is not for a short-term gimmick or a shortcut; it is not about writing an eye-catching copy to trick customers into clicking in. Good slogans last for a long time and are still useful decades or even hundreds of years later.

6. With brand name

In addition to the above 5 principles for carrying brand names, there is another key point: it is best for the super mouth to carry the brand name.

We found that some super slogans are extremely successful, so successful that everyone is spreading them, but you don’t know what the corresponding brand is called.

“Diamonds are forever, one will last forever”, “It doesn’t matter how long it lasts, what matters is that you once had it”. These are all popular slogans, and have even evolved into our daily expressions. Unfortunately, most people don’t know which brand they correspond to.

However, the actual situations of each brand are different, so it is not necessary to force the brand name to be included in the slogan. If you don't have one, you must also bundle the brand name and the super slogan together during the communication process to promote them so that the slogan is deeply bound to your brand.

Four types of thinking routines

Having said the above six principles, I would like to make a small patch at the end.

All principles and standards are relative rather than absolute. Super slogans are most suitable for the mass consumer goods industry. In some high-end or niche industries, super slogans may not be able to rigidly apply these principles.

For example, high-end luxury goods impress customers through long-term investment in brand concept stories, allowing them to accept hundreds of times the premium to buy a bag. Another example is fashion clothing, which helps customers shape an ideal self, and purchasing decisions are more influenced by aesthetic values ​​and style. It is difficult to get customers to take action with just one sentence.

At this point, your company should have a clear strategic plan and have mastered the basic principles of super slogans. Congratulations, you can now start writing.

How to write a classic super slogan does not rule out the elements of luck and inspiration. For example, inspiration often comes to me when I am taking a shower.

But don’t worry if you don’t have any inspiration. After research, I found that most super slogans are created with thinking patterns. I divide it into four categories.

A misunderstanding needs to be dispelled: whether the super slogan is well written or not has little to do with Chinese grades. What if the Chinese grades are not good? Knowing basic grammar is enough and it will not affect your creation at all.

The essence of a super slogan is to understand people's hearts, spread values, and make customers take action, which has nothing to do with language proficiency.

The following four ideas are for your reference in practice:

1. Super words, word choice and sentence structure

This is a skill we all learned when we were in elementary school. Usually the teacher’s questions are: give you a few key words, and then ask you to string the words together in a sentence to form a sentence.

Creating a super slogan goes one step further than choosing words and composing sentences. You need to find these key words yourself, which we call super words.

Taking Henghua Insurance as an example, during the project process we discovered the super words: "buy right" and "customization". Then we go on to think, what other words should be included in the slogan?

The attribute word "insurance" is definitely required. We need customers because that’s what we do. Secondly, the brand name "Henghua" is said to be the best and also appears. So "buy right", "customized", "insurance" and "Henghua" are the four words we chose.

The last step is to choose words and create a super slogan: Buy the right insurance, customized by Henghua.

2. Binding scene

Most of our company’s products or services exist to meet “consumer needs in specific scenarios.” If a brand can find and bind to a certain consumption scenario, it will often be a great success.

This approach is widely used, and many No. 1 brands in different industry segments are using it.

Red Bull is tied to the consumption scenario of "tired and sleepy", and the action is "drink Red Bull"; Six Walnuts is tied to the scenario of "frequently using the brain"; Wanglaoji is tied to the scenario of "fear of getting a sore throat after eating hot pot"... These beverage brands are all examples of how they achieved great success by successfully binding a product to a scenario.

We once served a toB enterprise - Yinxing Intelligence. Many Internet brands that make smart hardware do not have their own factories or core technologies, and need to find upstream suppliers to solve the problem. Yinxing Intelligence is the largest company in China that specializes in the research and development and manufacturing of sweeping robots. Most of the first-line brands at home and abroad (such as Xiaomi and Roborock) have cooperated with them.

When we created the super slogan for Yinxing, the first thing we thought about was the customer's consumption scenario: they were looking for a sweeping machine manufacturer that integrates R&D and manufacturing. Finally, the super slogan we created for it is: Develop a sweeping machine and go directly to Silver Star.

A special note should be added here: If you are not the top name in the industry now, the consumption scenarios you bind should not be too broad, otherwise the credibility will be very low.

For example, “If you want to learn how to drive, go to XXX”, “To buy insurance, go to XXX”, these scenarios are too broad and it is difficult for customers to believe and take action. For non-top well-known brands, it is best to choose relatively segmented consumption scenarios at the beginning.

3. Give Action

Giving actions and indicating benefits is somewhat similar to the second idea. First, give clear actions (of course, usually related to your own brand), and then tell the other party what benefits and interests they have, or what pain points they can help you solve.

“With the BBK reading machine, just click on what you don’t understand”, “Just search on Baidu and you will know”, “Once Remy Martin is opened, good things will come naturally”…all of them follow this line of thinking and method.

Sometimes, this method can be used in conjunction with point 2, namely: bind the scene, give actions, and indicate benefits.

Our client, Aung Guan Hat Industry, is positioned as a small-batch baseball cap manufacturer. Based on strategy and customer pain points, its super slogan directly brings out the benefits: "Aung Guan Hat Industry, delivery in 15 days, starting from 25 caps". Behind the slogan is the company's continuous iteration of production efficiency and efficient organizational capabilities based on strategy.

We once served an educational entrepreneurship organization - Qiuxue. Its target customers are teachers who want to start their own businesses, and Qiuxue provides them with an entrepreneurship platform. During the preliminary interviews and surveys, we found that the biggest pain point of this group is that the initial cost investment is too high. Come to Qiuxue and you can move in with just your luggage.

So we created the super slogan "Teachers, come to Qiuxue to start a business, start with 0 yuan and have less worries." The scenario is "teachers starting a business", the action is "come to Qiu to learn", and the benefit is "starting with 0 yuan and less worries".

4. Get straight to the point with strong facts

If the brand itself has some obvious facts that can impress customers, saying them directly will also have a good effect.

There are so many promotional slogans for mobile phone brands on the market, which one do you still remember?

I believe most people will mention OPPO, "5 minutes of charging, 2 hours of talk time." It directly stated a fact that seemed counterintuitive, and became one of the few advertisements in the mobile phone industry that was able to gain popularity.

There is an offline black hair brand called Shibiman, whose slogan is: Don’t dye your grey hair until it grows black. This is also a counterintuitive fact that customers are very interested in. They have opened hundreds of offline stores over the years.

If your brand has similar, unconventional and powerful facts, please tell your consumers directly.

The above four points are the basic ideas, which can probably cover more than 85% of the excellent super slogans on the market. Of course, there are some creative ideas that are “unconventional”, but I won’t go into details here.

3. Summary

Following the six principles of slogans can help us come up with better slogan ideas. They are: instantly understandable, colloquial, valuable, actionable, long-lasting, and preferably with a brand name.

In addition to relying on inspiration, there are actually some fixed thinking methods when creating slogans. I summarize it as: super words, word choice and sentence structure; binding scenes and giving actions; giving actions and indicating benefits; and directly giving powerful facts.

Well, that’s all I have to say about the theory and methods of super slogans. I hope it will be inspiring to you. You are welcome to leave us a message at the end of the article and write down the nuclear warhead of your brand communication - the super slogan.

Author: Uncle Volcano

Source: Uncle Volcano