“Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too.”
— Blaise Pascal
A Clear Eye.
On marketplace success
by Tom Asacker
“Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too.”
— Blaise Pascal
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“Agencies waste countless hours concocting slogans of incredible fatuity.”
Here are a few taglines (a.k.a. positioning statements?) from a few magazines on my coffee table: Inspiration comes standard. ~ Know How. ~ We move the world. ~ Thousands of possibilities. Get yours ~ Document efficiency at work. ~ We never stop working for you. ~ The power to know. ~ What it means to be sure. ~ Engineering the flow of communication. ~ Seeing the market from a different perspective. Yours. Can you identify the organization behind the tagline? I didn't think so.
Millions of dollars are spent contriving these platitudes, and billions more are spent communicating them to us. And we can't remember them. They're irrelevant. So what if companies took the millions and billions of wasted capital and invested in their people and in innovation? What do you think would happen? I think we'd end up with more cool products like the iPod.
Henry R. Luce, the entrepreneurial founder of the great Time Inc. media empire, once remarked, "Business more than any other occupation is a continual dealing with the future." Let's stop spending hard earned money trying to brainwash people with pithy prose, and let's start creating the future: those great products and experiences, which will light up the darkness of people's lives.
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Couldn't agree more, these taglines are completely asinine. Amazing to contrast their absurd implausibility with the hours of expensive executive time wasted agonising over them!
Posted by: Johnnie Moore | July 26, 2004 at 03:49 PM
I always liked the slogan:
"Volvo. They're safe because they're boxy."
Seriously, These slogans are representative of the systemic failure of advertising. The age of the image is over, which advertising could support so well...Your examples are the dying breaths of an old man, dying like people do gasping for last ray of light.
Posted by: alan moore | July 30, 2004 at 10:41 AM
I'd love to show my managers your promo video but can't seem to download to my pc. Any Tips? Their in town from the east coast next week and i'm preparing a short PP with our staff on branding in the marketplace. Would really love to show your video and get the juice's flowing..great stuff
Posted by: ryan prouty | June 13, 2007 at 09:42 PM