What’s your tagline? The stories of some great ones

All of us have favourite taglines – some of which are liked because they are funny, a few because we love the product so much, we naturally recall the tagline. Sometimes this is just due to the fact that the brand being promoted ran the ad so many times that everyone remembers the tagline. 

A couple of them from my childhood – ‘Utterly Butterly Delicious Amul’ and Thums Up – ‘Taste The Thunder’ continue to remain the brands’ current tagline. 

Then there are some amazingly memorable global brands with sticky taglines. Nike – ‘Just Do It’. And McDonald’s – ‘I’m Lovin It’ to name just a few. One of the older ones still in vogue is the KFC – ‘Finger Lickin Good’. 

What’s also interesting is that each of these tag lines have very surprising stories associated with them. Tales that makes you sit up and think. 

The story around Nike – ‘Just Do It’ – perhaps is the most surprising, and even a tad morbid. Gary Gilmore, a double murderer, became the first convict to be executed in the USA in nearly a decade. Seated there strapped on a chair ready to be executed by a firing squad, he was asked if he had any last words and he said, “Let’s do it.” Apparently he was unflinching till the very end. 

Many years later Dan Wieden, the copywriter on Nike, remembered this line and went to the Nike team with the tagline ‘Just Do It’. He remembered the killings in Utah and the execution. 

The first reaction from the client was not good but Wieden ‘stuck to his guns’ and asked that he be trusted on the ‘Just Do It’ tagline. They did. And the rest as they say is history. The amount of inspiring content that Nike created under the ‘Just Do It’ tagline belies the grim story underlying it.

An Indian brand Amul has an enduring tagline – ‘Utterly Butterly Delicious’. Dr. Kurien, the client from Amul, was responsible for the success of the ‘white revolution’ in India, he wanted to add some zing to the marketing with an exciting slogan. 

Sylvester Da Cunha, the copywriter, recalls how his wife Nisha suggested: “Why don’t you say utterly Amul?” and he modified that to ‘Utterly Butterly Delicious’. This met with skepticism at the client end, as there was no word called ‘Butterly’. 

Dr. Kurien ultimately said: “It’s utterly mad, but if you think it will work, let’s go ahead.” Thus was born a campaign using a grammatically wrong word, but which created a huge impact for the brand Amul. 

Another Kurien, this time Ashok Kurien, was responsible for the tagline Thums Up – ‘Taste The Thunder’. Ramesh Chauhan, the company owner (ones who owned Thums Up), tasked Ashok Kurien to coin a tagline for the brand. 

Kurien visualised the mind of the 18-year-old in India and came to the conclusion that they were extremely insecure about their future prospects, given the economic environment and he said any success would be like thunder. Based on that he came up with the tagline ‘Taste The Thunder’. 

The rest of the team argued for days against the idea. They felt it was absurd to say that since ‘thunder cannot be tasted’. But Kurien persisted saying that he believed the line would resonate with the target consumer. The stalemate in discussions was finally resolved when Ramesh Chauhan decided to go ahead with the tagline based on Kurien’s belief in it. And as of today it is one of the most loved taglines for a brand in India.

The story of the KFC tagline also shows the accidental and unusual way in which a world famous tagline was created. A franchisee to KFC, Dave Harman, would do his own advertising to attract customers to his store. He had recruited a manager Ken Harbough, who would film the ads and voice the films. Dave would often feature himself in these ads eating KFC chicken in the background. 

After the airing of one such ad film, a lady called the franchise and complained angrily to Ken Harbough that the man in the film was licking his fingers. Apparently Ken Harbough spontaneously replied, “Yes that’s ’cause it’s finger-licking good”. And the line thereafter became the tagline for brand KFC.

The Marmite slogan ‘You Either Love It Or Hate It’ is bold, courageous and purely accidental. There was no brief from the client to rewrite the tagline but a young creative duo from their ad agency tried out the Marmite spread – one loved it, the other hated it. So they coined the line ‘Either you love it, or you hate it’. 

They felt it was the product truth and could be used to create authentic stories and even to persuade haters to try the product. In fact the success of this tagline is now such that it’s become common parlance in some parts of the world to say ‘like Marmite,’ when referring to highly-divisive or polarised issues. 

It was more a statement of fact and less a slogan. But an observant creative duo and a gutsy client had created a unique property that has defined the brands success in many markets.

Apple did things differently. So they actually had a tagline which was grammatically incorrect. It read ‘Think Different’. Actually this was done to differentiate itself clearly against their main competitor IBM whose tagline was ‘Think’. 

So the team came up with the line along with a script featuring many historical figures who used to ‘think differently’. Some accounts say Steve Jobs was scathing in his disapproval of some of the ideas. But eventually many parts of the idea including the tagline stayed as it was originally conceived and was a path-breaking campaign for the brand.

These stories about taglines illustrate some key points. Advertising is a creative pursuit where it takes guts and gore to create masterpieces. Strong opinions, gutsy creative people and equally brave clients and sometimes inexplicable accidents combine together to create great pieces of work that change the fortunes of brands. And build reputations of creative people. 

Everyday clients and agencies are on a journey to create and manage brands. They must appreciate that the process involves risk taking and leaps of faith. No pain no gain is an axiom true even for ad campaigns as it is for other aspects of life.

(Santosh Menon is a marketing communications expert with 20 years of experience in multi-national locations. He can be reached at [email protected].)