Most memorable brand slogans

What do brands aspire to when they set out to create a slogan? They want to be remembered. I was inspired to make my own list of memorable slogans to identify my own favorites get the dates down for each. The baker's dozen below are selected to represent some ranges. I don't mean to endorse any of the products or stores listed only to applaud excellent copy.

1. Apple – “Think Different” The slogan was introduced in 1997, way before most of the world adopted the ubiquitous smartphone. It was born as a decided twist on  IBM's "Think",  the brand identity established in 1915 when Thomas J Watson expressed his frustration at the lack of thought:

“The trouble with every one of us is that we don’t think enough. We don’t get paid for working with our feet — we get paid for working with our heads,” he intoned in a noteless lecture that continued for several minutes. “Knowledge is the result of thought, and thought is the keynote of success in this business or any business.”

Watson then wrote the command "Think" on a blackboard. The rest is history, literally IBM history that was the backdrop for Steve Jobs' differentiation of his computer brand.

2. The California Milk Processor Board — “Got Milk?” Goodby Silverstein & Partners originally came up with that slogan in 1993, and it was such a hit that it was licensed for use by milk processors and dairy farmers.



 

3. De Beers — “A Diamond Is Forever” A woman named (Mary) France Gerety came up with that
slogan back in 1947, and it has been used ever after and been further immortalized in a James Bond novel and film.  It was named ‘The Slogan of the Century’ by Advertising Age in 1999.

4. FTD — "Say it with flowers" This one dates all the way back to 1917 when people were generally familiar with the connotations of different blooms. See The Language of Flowers.


5. Greyhound — "Go Greyhound and Leave the Driving to Us" dates back to 1956



6. M&M's  — “Melts in Your Mouth, Not in Your Hands.” The slogan was trademarked in 1954, though that was the goal of developing this form of candy in the 1940s. The unlikely source for this information is the explanation of a work of art on the MoMA site.

7. Maxwell House — “Good to the Last Drop” slogan dates back to the 1920s. The company played up the attribution to one of the most memorable presidents,  Theodore Roosevelt.

8. Kellogg’s Rice Krispies — The words "Snap! Crackle! Pop!®" first appeared in a print ad in 1929. Four years later, the artist Vernon Grant created the whimsical elves named for those sounds associated with the cereal. They then began appearing on ads, posters, and, of course, cereal boxes.

9. L'Oreal — “Because I’m Worth It" dates back to 1971 to position the brand as a  premium one because it cost more than its main competition Clairol.

10. MasterCard — "There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's MasterCard" 1997 was the year that the credit card first branded itself as "priceless" by capturing the thrill of experiences one can enjoy, thanks to the card. It was a brilliant play on the truism that money can't buy happiness. The elephant example is of the heart-warming variety, though many take a sassier approach.

11. New York State — "I Love NY" " was created by graphic artist Milton Glaser  to boost tourism to New York State (not just NYC) in 1977. But it only became the the official state slogan in 2009, the year that the "I Love New York" song by Steve Karmen was also adopted as the official state song. In the age of emojis, we're used to symbols standing in for words, particularly the heart for love, but likely we owe that to Glaser's vision.

12. State Farm — “Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm Is There.” Barry Manilow composed this memorable jingle for the insurance company in 1971.

13.Virginia Slims —" You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby" The cigarette brand launched this campaign in 1968 and kept it up for decades (of equating feminism with the freedom to smoke a cigarette made specifically for women and gain equal opportunity for lung cancer). New iterations came out to match changing fashions and to reflect on "bad old days" for women. 


If you're interested in what makes people like and/or remember a slogan, see A study of the antecedents of slogan liking. According to its abstract, "the liking for a slogan may be unrelated to media expenditure, and driven largely by the clarity of the message, the exposition of the benefits, rhymes, and creativity."

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Amazon uses snail mail for direct mail

I got mail from Amazon. I don’t mean a package for something I ordered or the usual email marketing marketing message but an honest-to-goodness paper letter that was folded into an envelope and sent to me via the post office. 

So here’s my response:

Dear Amazon Prime Video,

I have received your letter and do appreciate your taking the time to reach out to me, though I do wonder at your inability to match the personalized envelopes with a letter that would address the recipient by name. 

 The real reason I don’t use Prime Video is because there is nothing on there that I would want to see.Let me correct that. There are a few movies that have caught my eye, but they all require another paid subscription on top of Amazon Prime. In other words, they would not be included free with my membership.

As with any business, don’t assume people aren’t using your service simply because they don’t know about. Consider the possibility that your service doesn’t meet their needs or interests.

Thank you,

Ariella Brown

To read my analysis of what Amazon got right, see Dear Amazon Prime Video Team

Related: Ryan George shows best and worst marketing practices

Seeing stars

Nearly everything you wanted to know about NFTs but were afraid to ask

Some non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have sold for millions of dollars, and experts expect the market will exceed the billion dollar mark by a couple of hundred million within 2021. What is this thing that is creating new markets and has captured the attention of creators, collectors, and crypto-enthusiasts?

An NFT is a specific type of digital asset. The token refers to a virtual entity. Cryptocurrency like Bitcoin and Ethereum are examples of tokens. However, cryptocurrency is by definition fungible. It is meant to be mutually interchangeable with other forms of money. In contrast, something that is non-fungible is truly one-of-a-kind.

It brings to mind the descriptive phrase in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, “unique in all the world” that the prince applies to his rose as distinct from all others. In contrast Gertrude Stein declared there is no difference among roses: "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose."

Money in all its forms, including digital tokens is the interchangeable rose. But an NFT is a token immortalized as something distinctive

 Read more in  NFT Explained: How to Make, Buy and Sell Non-Fungible Tokens

Marketing opportunities in Clubhouse

What’s in this article:
Audio platforms have exploded over the past year – Clubhouse is one of the best-known names
Clubhouse allows brands to connect with their customer through the engaging power of live events on a virtual platform that keeps the focus on the content of the words and ideas rather than looking good on the screen

With so many social media platforms out there, how do you select which one is a good fit for your B2C brand? The answer is the one that delivers an engaged audience, which may just be an audio platform.



Read more in Why Marketers Are Jumping on Audio Platforms

First and best are not the same for holiday marketing

Snapchat already announced the launch of its  holiday resource hub for marketers in early June. to get marketers to start thinking December holidays before summer has even arrived, it offered an eight-page long US Festive Shopping Season 2021 Handout guide.

Within the handout, it offers some very flattering statistics for Snapchat. For example, “89% of Snapchatters are interested in try-on AR experiences.” While that number could well be arrived at through a selection of people loyal to the platorm, that doesn't mean that Snapchat would be the best vehicle for most marketers.

In fact, as Retail TouchPoints reports, Snapchat has the smallest market share for social shopping:

“Facebook and Instagram are the clear leaders in the social shopping space: 34% of those surveyed purchased on Facebook, and 23% purchased through Facebook-owned Instagram. All other platforms, including Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok and Snapchat, were in the single digits.”

Snapchat garners just 2% of purchases through a platform where TikTok and Pinterest garner 3%. Snapchat only goes up to 3% for the category of “clicked ad and later purchased” where TikTok and Pinterest garner 6%.

Read more ins Snapchat plans for December Holidays in June

What you need for imaginative play

"Timeless Toys. Endless Possibilities" is the title of the first-ever marketing campaign for Melissa & Doug. Of course, the brand believes that its toys are the key: “When playing with a Melissa & Doug toy, imagination runs wild — a toy broom isn't just a broom, it's a rocket ship heading to the moon.”

It’s a nice idea, and there is something, indeed, timeless about low-tech toys. However, in truth, even a real broom or even a stick that fell off a tree or an empty box left from another purchase could also serve as a rocket ship for the kid with imagination.

In fact, if imaginative play is your goal, less is more. It’s when you can’t buy everything you want to play with that you are forced to improvise and get more creative.

Read more in Toys Powered by Imagination

Related post: http://writewaypro.blogspot.com/2020/10/now-you-can-revisit-your-childhood-on.html

The Value of Zero: Accuracy and Trust

Data-driven marketing has always focused on getting as much information on your customers as possible through various channels. As privacy grows increasingly important and tracking becomes increasingly limited, zero-party data (ZPD) is on the rise.

Conventional marketing wisdom has always been that the more you know about your customer, the more effectively you can target them. For that reason, marketers have always been trying to get their hand on as much data as possible, relying not just on their own first-party data but even paying for second-party and third-party data. 

To clarify terms, here’s a rundown on the differences in data sources.
First-party data

First-party data is what a business receives directly from a customer typically as a result of purchases, subscriptions, or points of contact. It can be the result of what a customer actively fills in on a form or passively shares as a result of cookies that the customer accepts by using the brand’s site or the tracking that comes through use of an app.

While a complete record of information given by a customer is valuable, for businesses that haven’t had much time to gain a complete history, it may not suffice to inform truly tailored experiences. That’s why businesses will pay for access to additional information through second and even third parties.
Second-party data

Second-party data is first-party data acquired by another company that is then sold to a business that wants more information about its customer base. Drawing on the more thorough information can fill in more of the customer picture, but it’s still limited to what a single business has been able to gather on the customers, which is why some will pay a broker for data.


Third-party data

Third-party data is different from first and second party in that it draws on multiple sources of data that a separate company puts together into a single dataset to be sold to those in the market for that kind of customer information. Typically, the company in the business of delivering data will purchase first party data from a number of companies to create these data packages for others to buy through the data exchange marketplace.
Data drawbacks

While going from one to three increases your data resources, it’s not without its drawbacks. As anyone can buy third party data, what a business buys is not unique to it. As a result, it is very likely that all businesses competing for the same customers are working off the same data set.

Also since the establishment of GDPR in Europe and CCPA in California, marketers have had to respect consumer-set boundaries for the collection, use, and sale of their data.

The rise of such legislation has shed more light on privacy issues that has created pressure for platforms to stop enabling data collection without users’ knowledge. That is the story behind Google’s resolution to phase out third-party cookies and Apple’s new iOS setup for informed consent on apps.

The new frameworks don’t only curtail marketers from using data obtained from outside sources. They can even limit some first-party data that businesses have obtained without informed consent by tracking consumer behavior with cookies, pixels, or cross-device identification (XDID).

That is why a couple of years ago, we started hearing about zero-party data or ZPD. The term has been credited to Forrester, which presented it in Predictions 2019: B2C Marketing Report.

This approach has gained momentum over the past couple of years. AW360 predicts that a quarter of CMOs will be looking to implement ZPD in 2021.
The zero-party solution

As both zero-party data and first-party data take in information directly from the customer, there is some overlap between the two. The crucial difference between them is that zero-party data only includes what a customer knowingly and willingly shares.

That means that customers are in full control of the information they share with the business. They are willing to give their data if they feel they can trust the brand and are getting something of value in return.

Read more in  Zero to Hero: Providing Personalization & Privacy