Writing the perfect tagline

Adding a tagline to your blog or business name can enhance the understanding, depth, and position of your brand.

A tagline can explain what you do, highlight benefits, provoke thought, and communicate your place in the market. A great tagline does all of these things at once.

When writing or selecting a tagline, you should:

Keep it simple.This forces you to focus on a core idea and message, one that will be easy to pull into your advertising and marketing efforts and strong enough to support your corporate culture.

Keep it short, and it's more likely to be memorable and to work in a variety of graphic design settings.

Think big. Don't try and list everything you do or sell in a tagline. Take a bird's eye view of your value and your offerings.

Think benefits.  It's not what you sell that matters, it's the problem you solve for your customers and the benefits you deliver to them that make you valuable.

Think on multiple levels. Let your tagline's words suggest as much as they say. Do your best to mine all the layers of meaning from each noun and verb.

Wal-Mart's tagline is a favorite of mine: "Save money. Live better." In only four words it gets to the heart of Wal-Mart's position in the market (discount retailer) and its benefits to its customers.

GE's taglines over the years have repositioned the company as it evolved, worked on multiple levels, focused on benefits, and taken a bird's eye view of the company. One of its early taglines was "We bring good things to light," a reflection of its roots as a pioneer in delivering electrical services and lightbulbs to America. Later its tagline became "We bring good things to life," which embraced its history as well as its expansion into the home appliances and electronics people relied on. Now GE's slogan is "Imagination at work" which suggests it's not a stodgy bricks and mortar company left over from a more domestic era but an inventive manufacturing and consulting company offering business solutions.

Do you have a favorite slogan or tagline? What is it and why do you like it?