How To Write Compelling and Engaging Ad Slogans (That Make Sense and Drive Revenue)

From Nokia’s “Connecting People” to Wal-Mart’s “Save Money Live Better” and “Just do it” from Nike, the world or better say, the virtual world is dominated by the inundation of advert slogans from different start-up to established brands worldwide.

What do they mean?

Ever thought how come a slogan less than 100 characters making a business of million dollars for a company?

OR, ever thought what was the most compelling factor in those slogans that drove people into buying a product of a brand after reading its slogans?

What was the reason?

I can’t say about others, but I just see it in the following way:

Suppose you’re jogging on a track. After running few miles, naturally you feel parched. As it happens, you grab a bottle of water, uncork it and gulp down the fluid. Inside the mouth it goes down to your belly and thence the fluid circulates through all parts of your body.

What do you feel at last?

A thirst that is quenched, right?

Now, ask yourself, “Why did you go for water when you felt thirsty?”

You could have gone for a bottle of beer or other fluids to quench your thirst.

BUT, you felt for the water, BECAUSE it agrees to your common sense that THIRST CAN ONLY BE QUENCHED BY MEANS OF (DRINKABLE) FLUID OR WATER, NOT BY OTHER MEANS!

Means, you went for it because one of your sense organs, responsible to ignite such an urge, signaled it to the thought-processing faculty of your brain about the immediacy of water in order to quench the thirst. To state otherwise, the temptation to quench the craving drove you to drink water.

That’s exactly the advert slogans all about, OR to be precise, they are designed to sound so, TEMPTING (most of my friends call ad slogans, a TEMPTRESS). In other words, the ad slogans are (deliberately) meant to work as a temptation to PROMPT YOU INTO ACTION.

More often than not, these slogans serve "CALL TO ACTION" purpose of a service provider.

How To Write Compelling and Engaging Ad Slogans?

What if your client tells you to make an ad slogan without giving you any specific information, say for instance, where it will be published?

OR, suppose your client doesn’t give you any clue about what kind of audience it wants your slogan to focus on.

No need to tax your brain as the conclusion is quite clear – you’ll barely make a good marketing slogan.

Why?

Because lack of exact knowledge about the nature of an advertising slogan (that you are supposed to prepare) will involve you make a certain amount of guesswork as to what the prospect of its presentation will be.

Apparently, you won’t be able to write a compelling ad-slogan.

In view of the situation wherein you know that absence of ideas can’t help you conjure up exact picture of your slogan, you should better not be forgetful to consider some key things:

• Where it will be posted (on magazine or on websites?)
• Is it clickable?
• Does the advert sound more like a machine than a human?
• Does it have the FEEL?

So, basically how to write slogans that can win the trust of people is to understand the NEED or PURPOSE behind its creation. Also, do not forget to ask for the AUDIENCE. You have to have good information about your prospective audience.

Since we have already witnessed the penetration of technologies in virtually every household or area in the world, the technology-assisted communication, has therefore become the most indispensable tool to spearhead success of an online marketing for a brand.

However, the audience remains the driving force behind ensuring success of such a communication-based online campaign for any brand. Therefore, absence of knowledge about audience can spell loss for any business.

Does a technology-focused slogan have anything to do with benefiting the audience looking for guidance about gardening? Is “connecting people” of Nokia helpful for the people not interested in buying Nokia smartphones?

Overlooking audience while writing an ad slogan will perhaps make it look like a traveler not knowing which direction will lead him to his destination. I believe that if you don’t know anything about audience, you can’t create an impactful marketing slogan.

As a rule of thumb, you should better keep your ad-slogan as simple, as lucid, as sweet and as catching as you probably can.

It depends on how you've mapped out a strategy and in what way. However, simplicity doesn’t cast dull feeling. On the contrary, it helps your audience understand your slogan much better than any esoteric, difficult and abstruse advert slogan.

If you are a student of biology or you've read the ANATOMY OF MIND in certain science books, you may recall that human minds take less than 14 milliseconds to interpret an image or text. A team of neuroscientists from US found an interesting and quite a remarkable processing speed of brain, saying it takes less than 14 milliseconds to interpret an image that the eyes see.

At the same time, the mind doesn’t take much time to interpret a simple written text as compared to a difficult one. So, basically a simple message does do wonder when it comes to conveying a strong message through ad slogans.

Writing ad slogans which are too difficult to be interpreted is not a good sign of agile marketing campaign.

What was the remarkable trait of Charles Dickens’ writing style?

The answer is Mr. Dickens knew how to strike the right chord in the hearts of his readers. He made the characters of his books so memorable (because of their name’s whimsicality) that most of them became a slang expression (remember Mrs. Gamp being a slang for an umbrella?).

"We remodel our psychological geography when we read Dickens as he produces "characters who exist not in detail, not accurately or exactly, but abundantly in a cluster of wild yet extraordinarily revealing remarks.” Virginia Woolf (Wikipedia)

Humans are made of feelings. I barely believe the theory saying humans who control feelings are invulnerable to any feeling-driven thought impulse. I sincerely believe that feelings, certain feelings are uncontrollable.

Had we been so smart on controlling our feelings, we wouldn’t have burned holes in our pocket in a mad rush to buy things from brands just because their slogans triggered a burning desire within us to purchase their products.

"Write an ad slogan that triggers an emotional response right away as (most) people act on impulse!"

Not by a long shot.

As I have said before, humans are made out of feelings which are prone to be influenced by temptation. However, this theory doesn’t entirely vindicate that every person’s feeling is prone to temptation. Some are too adept at handling feelings, so basically they can block all the ways rerouting them into being crazy to buy things recklessly.

Under such circumstances, one has to have in-depth understanding about target audiences, and what message could trigger their response.

Please note that this session of description is entirely personal which may or may not accord to your belief.

If the brand for which a slogan is prepared is very popular and has good market reputation, then even the simple slogan can trigger response assuming that the brand has blind trust of its customers.

For instance, in India, Fair and Lovely, a brand for cosmetic products, doesn’t have catchy headline in ads. However, they trigger people’s response because of the blind trust that it has earned.

First of all, the brand is very popular which makes the job for a slogan writer easy.

However, it doesn’t mean to say that the writers (copywriters) forsake the habit of writing emotion-driven slogans just because the brand is very popular. Also the Indian brand earned trust of customers due to its quality products and certain slogans that persuasively made people believe that, if they used it, the facial complexion they have now would change from an average look to a very striking fairness. The trick worked as the product is still held in high regard by consumers.

For long, some advertising agencies accentuated the irresistible temptation in their advertising slogans. They were not highlighting the beneficial aspect of the product. They would often work as consumers lacked the means to ensure trustworthiness of products being advertised in such a way.

However, things changed as buyers are no longer to blindly support ad slogans. As a matter of fact, most consumers tend to research before buying a product. They ask friends, relatives, read reviews, and if needed, they go for the helpline center before making any decision to purchase a certain product/service.

Advert slogans must feature the trait of CALL TO ACTION. They shouldn't lack the spirit of telling people about the beneficial aspect (have you, for example, seen Miller Lite’s slogan “GREAT TASTE, LESS FILLING).

It is, because that lends trustworthiness or credibility over the slogan you write. From classified ads to best ad campaigns, highlighting benefit solidifies their trust and sincerity.

How will people trust your slogan if you don’t give them a reason to believe in it?

What you can do, then?

Well, apart from how to write engaging ad punch lines, ensure that the half portion of your punch lines tells people the benefits. Means, if one side of your slogan speaks about a product or service, the other one should talk about the benefit that the service would fetch to buyers.

Always remember that the flipside of your slogans must accord to discretion of your target audiences.

I strongly believe that those slogans sounding like they care people have fair chance of getting noticed. After all, humans are humans; they can’t pay heed to things that they can’t relate to.

Make yourself sound caring to their needs.

Remember these famous business slogans: Accenture’s “High Performance Delivered” OR Apple’s “Think Different”? OR, “Just Do It” (from Nike)?

What are they in common with?

If you look closely, you don’t have to tax your brain hard to figure out the difference.

For sure, they are LACONIC.

To say the least, it is not the long-tailed slogans, but brief ones that steal the show (and they often do).

The importance of ad slogans is beyond explanation. It solidifies a company’s advertising campaigns and increases customer engagement significantly. Best slogans in the world have their needless explanation as to how successfully they’d created fortune for their brands.

In today’s media-dominant world, overlooking this aspect of marketing will spell regression for any brand. Best and engaging advert slogans have been linchpin of developing brand image of many organizations in the world.

Undoubtedly, ad slogans carry delicate responsibility to popularize and ensure competitive lead for a brand. That’s why; when it comes to writing ad slogans, many key things must have to be considered beforehand.

If you want to write catchy ad slogans for your advertising campaigns, you should consider these things as narrated up in the article. However, if writing slogan is beyond your ken, you should outsource your need to a company that can do this for you very easily. Not surprisingly, such a company is in numbers all over the world today.

The internet is full of options. You can easily choose one of the best companies or freelance copywriters who specialize in writing user-friendly and brand-centric ad slogans.