What Not To Do When Choosing a Slogan

Don’t copy or model your slogan on another slogan. Obviously, your slogan should be original. If it is even remotely close to another slogan in use, it will violate copyright law.

Your slogan should not prompt a negative or sarcastic response. The example of the over-the-top claim by the sandwich chain that their sandwiches are the "best in the world" only begs for people to contradict this.

The slogan should not be pretentious. It shouldn't indicate directly that your company is better than all others (which is a negative association) and should

instead indicate how good your company is at what it does and leave the comparison up to the customer to make.

Your slogan should not be corporate doublespeak, management-speak, or "waffle." This is particularly important, as people outside of the corporate world either don't understand the corporate jargon (in the best case) or laugh it off as satirical (in the worst).

Terminology such as leadership, solutions, innovation, strategy, and excellence, are all words that have meaning on their own, but in the context of corporate doublespeak, they ring hollow.

Most of these corporate slogans are actually meaningless when you analyze them. Take, for instance, the all-too-common slogan "Where people make the difference." Well, you might say, yes. People make the difference. As opposed to intelligent machines or dolphins. Of course people make the difference. What people and what difference, however, is an area for speculation.

Make sure the slogan flows off the tongue. Say it out loud. A slogan that is complicated, long, or clumsy won't be as effective as one that is concise.

When designing your tagline or slogan, be sure to focus on the inferred meaning of the words and their meaning in context rather than individual definitions. Make sure that several people agree that it's effective before you deploy it for use in letterhead, stationary, or your website. Test your slogan on strangers, rather than friends and relatives – your friends will want to "spare your feelings" and won’t tell you that your slogan idea is lousy.