Did Mr. Whipple take the tagline with him?
Since last week marked the passing of Mr. Whipple, whose “Don’t Squeeze the Charmin” commercials I was mercifully too young to remember, and whose name inspired the title of one of the best books on ad copywriting books ever, “Hey Whipple, Squeeze This,” perhaps the universe is now ready to revisit the relevance of taglines.
Sure enough, yesterday a Brandweek article proclaimed the tagline’s impending death. Is this true? Will the tagline go the way of the radio jingle? Is it as precarious & vulnerable as an aging TV-commercial actor?
According to the Brandweek article, audiences are becoming increasingly splintered, rendering many taglines irrelevant. In other words, a tagline that resonates with one market may flop with another. Which may explain why taglines in the movie industry are still, according to the article, going strong. A movie doesn’t get made unless its producers know how to market it. By the time they get around to a tagline, they know their target audience eats Wheaties for breakfast, took up knitting last year for a day, and lost 6 pounds over winter break. So they can write a tagline that hits home with that audience.
What about the rest of us? Has the universe at large moved on from taglines? Not in the business-to-business world, where taglines are as relevant and useful as ever. B2B marketers can’t release a commercial featuring thousands of bouncing rubber balls & wait for sales to roll in. They actually need to say something compelling. To make a promise & show how they’ll keep it.
You may not need a tagline for your company itself. But you do need tiny, bite-sized phrases that can manifest themselves as headlines, ads, subject lines to e-mails, and more. Taglines are still very necessary. (Said the copywriter.) A tagline can function as a headline or quick summary of your value. It can help you differentiate yourself from your competitors. It can attract your target audience. In the B2B space, taglines are still profitable.
So, please. Don’t Squeeze the Taglines.