The word “slogan” is derived from the Scottish Gaelic word “slaugh-ghairm”. In English it translates to “battle cry”. 

A battle cry was a unique verbal shout used by Scottish clans to rally their forces at the start of bloody combat.

It was simple, evocative, consistent, motivational, and memorable.

The sound and meaning behind it helped galvanise a specific group of people to take action on a common enemy with decisive passion and intensity.

That’s what a slogan should do in the true meaning of the word.

Today, this is the bar for effective marketing slogans.

The main difference nowadays is the context.

The enemy is not pesky English invaders or some other angry Scottish clan. It’s the pain and problem that your company solves.

The battleground is not the Highlands. It’s the minds of your prospects.

Your slogan should be a provocative battle cry to uniquely crush that pain and problem.

To destroy that loathsome enemy. RARGH!!

However, I regularly see the opposite.

Slogans often do not feel like a battle cry at all.

They’re more like just a plain old cry…. “pretty please, buy me.”

They don’t live up to their intrinsic purpose.

A slogan should not be shy, ambiguous, generic, grandiose, indistinctive, inauthentic, emotionless, or benign in substance and delivery.

“Doing Things Better, For You!” or “We Are The Best, Trust Us!” or “The New Shiny Thing” is how many slogans come across.

They’re totally forgettable, interchangeable, and intangible.

Just like they wouldn’t galvanise a clansman on a bleak Highlands battlefield to bear arms and charge against the enemy, they don’t galvanise the mind of the prospect to whip out a credit card and attack their burning problem with a product.

They’re battle cries that inspire no one to come running.

Mountain-Moving Battle Cries

A powerful battle cry is concise, accessible, bold, divergent, provocative, visceral, differentiated, and memorable.

Particularly for a new brand and product, it should highlight why it is challenging the status quo.

These are all outcomes of a strong slogan design process.

So, what’s the recipe?

There’s a bunch of principles and techniques that go into designing and discovering a high-performing battle cry.

Let’s start with the most important. The ‘keystone principle’.

Keystone Principle

Shout about your Positioning! The single most important thing your battle cry should do is articulate your Positioning. The strategic position you want to own in the mind.

Why?

Positioning instils buying behaviour. It defines the problem and points to the solution (the proposition).

It’s the perceptional lens that enables prospects to “get it” and view the proposition as the clear purchasing choice.

If the battle cry doesn’t articulate this, it’s not stirring up emotion around a problem and rallying prospects in the right direction to take action.

It’s like shouting and pointing at the wrong battlefield in the Highlands, or equally bad, none whatsoever.

For a battle cry to work effectively, your proposition first needs to have a strong Positioning idea that it can own in the mind.

Here’s some classic examples:

• BMW: "The Ultimate Driving Machine" - this slogan articulates BMW’s “driving” positioning idea.

• FedEx: "When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight" - this slogan articulates FedEx’s “overnight” positioning idea.

• Oracle: "Can't Break It, Can't Break In” - this slogan articulates the “safe” positioning idea of Oracle’s cloud products.

Like your Positioning idea, your slogan should be divisive. It should both turn one set of people away and dramatically appeal to another (target customers).

The most common mistake brands make with their slogans is meekness. By trying to appeal to everyone, they resonate with no one.

What do I mean? Usually, such slogans have three attributes:

1. The competitive claims they make are ‘safe’

2. The competitive claims they make don’t communicate an idea

3. The competitive claims they make ‘overlap’ with everybody else

Example: Playtech’s slogan is “source of success”.

This tells you absolutely nothing.

How so?

• It’s too safe: who doesn’t want success from a vendor? It should be provocative. There’s no emotion being stirred up.

• It doesn’t communicate an idea: what is the unique position in the mind? None — “success” is not a position in the mind.

• It overlapping: other competitors make this claim. There is no differentiated value being communicated that only Playtech can deliver.

By contrast, let’s take a look at a divisive slogan:

Pepsi’s slogan “The Choice of a New Generation” is one of the most successful of all time. It was a key asset that helped Pepsi gain a lot of market share ground against Coca-Cola in the 1980s — to the degree it was even the #1 selling cola beverage in certain retail channels.

Why? It was divisive. It attacked a weakness in the strength of Coca-Cola’s market-leading position, by positioning Coca-Cola’s “the real thing” perception as a relic — a cola for older people.

It forced a choice: feel old or feel young. It was emotionally provocative. This is essential. Emotion stirs action. Pepsi became the cola for ‘younger people’.

Sanity-check

One way to sanity-check a slogan for its propensity to be divisive is to confirm a competitor would be willing to take the opposite point of view.

If they wouldn't, it implies the claim lacks meaning and legitimacy in the prospect's mind. In other words, if the slogan is something everybody could agree with, it is not compelling or believable.

If you position a product as "tasty" would a competitor be willing to make the claim their product is "untasty"? Unlikely.

“Tasty” means nothing and has no legitimacy.

If you position a product as "low fat" would a competitor be willing to make the opposite claim? Sure. You can see this in the snacks aisle.

Opposite claims are context and category-dependent. They can also be non-obvious and easy to miss, because they can be implied as well as overt.

A leading digital watch brand could position itself as "accurate". As a watchmaker, who would want to make the opposite claim to that? Seems crazy.

This works, because Rolex tacitly makes the opposite claim of "inaccuracy" — it’s a feature (not a bug) of the hand-crafted horology perception. It’s king status in the Swiss watch category.

Shareable Principle

A key attribute of an effective battlecry is that it’s shareable. That it can travel person-to-person easily, outside of the company.

Do not get me wrong, it’s rarely shareable word-for-word (that’s a perfect world), but the general gist of it should be.

In order to meet this standard, it needs to feel close to natural language that your prospects use in a casual setting.

Remember: your battlecry is a mobilising force that helps you recruit an army to buy into your idea. So, the more it spreads, so does your idea.

As a rule of thumb, consider the bar for this is a bar.

How so? Imagine your prospect is in a bar and they’ve had a few drinks. A friend walks up to them and asks what your company does.

They should be able to regurgitate the gist of your battlecry to their friend. Their equally inebriated friend should be able to comprehend the idea, remember it, and pass it on.

So, with a slogan like “The power of dreams” you can forget it (sorry, my beloved Honda). No one is going to remember this and say it to their friends.

Friend #1: What’s a Honda?

Friend #2: It’ll power your dreams.

Conversely, if Honda’s battlecry was “VTEC just kicked in, yo” this connotes a position in the mind that people would share.

Friend #1: What’s a Honda?

Friend #2: it has VTEC, when it kicks in it goes crazy

Seriously, though, the principle applies whether it’s VTEC or another attribute that connotes a position which can be owned in the mind.

Memorisation Principles

It’s one thing to design a punchy or shareable slogan that communicates a divisive idea. It’s another thing to make it memorable, so it sticks in the mind.

How so? By making the slogan memorable, you are increasing the chance it will be triggered (and therefore point to your proposition in the mind) at the point of need.

Fortunately, there are 5 rhetorical devices you can use to craft a memorable slogan. Here are they are, along with some ‘hall of fame’ examples:

• 🎵 Rhyme. Using words that end with the same sounds.

  • Example: "The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup." — Folgers Coffee

• 🔁 Repetition. Using the same word or phrase multiple times.

  • Example: "Have a Break, Have a Kit Kat" — KitKat

• 💬 Alliteration. Using the same initial consonant sounds successively.

  • Example: "Melts in Your Mouth, Not in Your Hands" — M&Ms

• 😉 Double-Entendre: Using a figure of speech with two meanings.

  • Example: “When It Rains, It Pours” — Morton’s Salt

• ↩️ Reversal: Flipping conventional wisdom or expectations.

  • Example: “Think Small” — VW Beetle

Now we’ve been through the main principles, let’s look at a few strong slogans through this lens.

Dollar Shave Club - Shave Time. Shave Money.

Keystone principle: The slogan is divisive, articulating Dollar Shave Club’s ‘subscription razors’ positioning idea. It stirs emotion, by both defining the perceived problem (Gillette is expensive and inconvenient) and pointing towards the antidote to that problem: subscription razors.

Memorisation: It uses repetition as a rhetorical device with the word "shave”. This is enhanced by breaking the slogan up into two very short sentences, using the word at the start of each.

Slack - Where work happens

Keystone principle: The slogan is divisive, articulating Slack’s 'IRC for the workplace' Positioning idea, distinguishing it from communication tools in other categories by focusing on a key benefit: getting shit done.

It defines the perceived pain of these other tools in a very raw and emotional way, by insinuating no work actually gets done on them — i.e. they exist to discuss work, not to do work.

It explicitly calls for the prospect to shift to a more productive work environment, asserting Slack as the essential hub to work online collaboratively.

Memorisation: It uses alliteration as a rhetorical device with the letter "W” used twice at the very start. It’s very natural language, making the idea easy to share.

Airbnb - Don’t just go there. Live there.

Keystone principle: The slogan is divisive, articulating Airbnb’s ‘homestay rental’ Positioning idea vividly into consciousness by highlighting a unique perceived feature of that idea vs. competing categories like hotels.

How so? The slogan defined the problem of ‘visiting a place without really experiencing it’ and encouraged travellers to not just visit a destination but to immerse themselves as if they were residents, not tourists. It challenged and enticed prospects to live a little more like a local on their next trip, by using Airbnb.

Memorisation: This is the inverse of the Dollar Shave Club example, using repetition at the end of two short sentences with the word “there”.

📘 Playbook

Recap:

• Focus on the Meaning

  • Recognise that slogan means "battle cry." A rallying call to action.

  • Embrace the attributes of simplicity, evocation, consistency, motivation, and memorability.

• Galvanise Action:

  • Ensure the slogan resonates emotionally, spurring action among your target audience. Tap into a frustration or painful unmet need with provocative language.

  • It should rally people against a common "enemy"—the problem your product solves.

• Create Contextual Relevance:

  • The battlefield is the prospect's mind, not the marketplace.

  • Your slogan must fight to hammer a distinct position for your proposition in the prospect's mind.

• Craft a Provocative Message:

  • Avoid bland, safe, and forgettable phrasing.

  • Evoke strong emotions and clear, decisive action.

• Shun Generic Appeals:

  • Reject shy, ambiguous, and grandiose statements.

  • Stand out with unique, distinctive, and genuine slogans that avoid being generic.

• Ensure Memorability and Distinction:

  • The slogan should be unforgettable and not easily interchangeable.

  • It should distinctly relate to your proposition, not just any proposition.

• Be Daring and Challenging:

  • Challenge the status quo and highlight your proposition’s unique approach.

  • Inspire by being bold and taking a stand.

• Focus on Positioning (Keystone Principle):

  • Articulate your Positioning clearly.

  • Positioning should instil buying behaviour by defining the problem and the proposition as the unique solution.

  • Without strong Positioning, the slogan will lack direction and impact. Nail this first.

Implementation Steps:

• Develop a strong Positioning idea.

• Determine the main "enemy" or problem your proposition addresses.

• Develop a slogan that encapsulates your approach to overcoming this challenge, emphasising the Positioning idea.

• Use rhetorical devices such as rhyme, repetition, alliteration, double-entendre, or reversal to enhance the impact.

• Test the slogan for emotional resonance and memorability with your target audience. Does it improve metrics?

• Ensure the slogan aligns with all branding and marketing materials for consistency.

That’s it for today! I’ll be back in your inbox again soon.

Martin 👋

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