The Power of Slogans

Advertising Slogans, straplines, endlines, or signatures are simply statements of such merit about the company (or product) that is worthy of continuous repetition, is worthwhile for the public to remember and is phrased is such a way that the public is likely to remember it, they are the “sign-off” that accompanies the logo, it simply says: “if you get nothing else from this advert, get this!”

And for that Slogans must translate company’s Unique Selling Points; the qualities that differentiate a company or product from its competitors. The advert should address customers' perceptions and should stand out in their minds. The two most important elements in an advert are the way the advert is presented and the Unique Selling Point its slogan implies. Customers are selfish and only interested in what best meet their needs and wants. A great advert associated with a weak Unique Selling Point is indifferent to customers and will have absolutely no impact on their purchasing behavior.

For years Orange has used a weak slogan that stated: “with you, for a better life” That was preposterous and pointless, their new slogan is even worse: “Life is better without boundaries” however on the other hand, Fastlink came up with a fantastic line: “Menna wa feenna” (come together), that line clearly stated a strong unique selling point: “we are the biggest mobile operator and joining us is joining a one big family”, people ate it up, even they used to refer to the company by its slogan, but when Fastlink launched their new branding campaign, they changed their brand name to Zain and the slogan to “a wonderful world.” A Slogan that makes no sense at all!

According to Maslow, everyone is motivated by needs and wants. He defined his hierarchy of needs to range from physiological and safety needs, to feeling of belonging and love needs, to self-esteem needs and finally self actualization needs. One product can satisfy more than one need at one time; such as hamburger and Burger King: eating hamburger in social environment, it is in the interest of the marketer to associate company’s slogan with the higher level needs and to capitalize on its Unique Selling Point. A good example would be Mountain Dew; the soft drink certainly satisfies the need of thirst, but oftentimes it tries to establish an image of a more sophisticated need; the entire campaign is built on broadcasting one message: “the person who drinks Mountain Dew is daring”, and they use a nice slogan doing that: "Do you dare?”

In the past few years, Al Jazeera TV Channel passed to viewers the following slogan: "Al Jazeera, because time waits for no one", by time viewers came to believe Al Jazeera brings the news first. Al Jazeera beat all news agencies by satisfying the need to be the first to know. When Al Arabiya were planning to launch their news services, they couldn’t compete with Al Jazeera’s Unique Selling Point because even if they are faster, customers' perception was in favor of Al Jazeera. So they came up with another strong slogan to differentiate themselves: "Al Arabiaya, Closer to the Truth", they even created this fantastic advert that shows a live scene of a battlefield that turns out to be set up by actors. Nevertheless, the two TV channels were successful in their communication slogans because they advertised Unique Selling Points that met different needs for customers.

Furthermore emotional slogans are sometimes used in advertising, like Sanioura's campaign: "Life time companionship"; all used advertisements are of grown-ups having flashbacks about childhood memories with Sanioura. Another example is the "Red Bull gives you wings" campaign, the slogan presents the energy drink as mind and emotion stimulator to a high level of feeling or activity, both Sanioura and Red Bull try to meet the self-esteem class in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, sometimes a slogan is typically focused on attitude change toward a product or brand; few years ago Americana Corp products were boycotted for using American brand name, causing huge losses for the regional group, so they launched a big advertising campaign with one simple slogan: “100% Arabic”, it took them many years to change how people feel about their brand name. Favorable attitudes towards a product, service, or company have an undeniable effect on customer decisions, and changing attitude requires great advertising efforts.

On the other hand, sometimes marketers make terrible mistakes in their slogans; a good example would be Al Madina Weekly Newspaper that was launched last year. The slogan they communicate in their advertisements is: "Al Madina, too precious to be sold", a slogan that is completely inconsequential for customers, while Al Waseet uses “Your answer is at Your door” excellent unique selling point that positioned Al Waseet as a market leader for years! But the words are not enough though, having the slogan message address customers’ needs is just not enough, it should be sincere, honest, and true. Bank of Jordan's main slogan in its advertising is brief and simple: "Excel", but do customers really excel when dealing with the bank? On the other hand, Housing Bank launched a campaign few years ago that was so successful, the slogan was: “we have the largest network of ATM machines in the kingdom”. This Unique Selling Point directly caught the attention of customers because it fulfills the need to withdraw cash from anywhere, anytime and it was true (at that time), businesses should look inside for their best unique selling point and come up with a slogan that establish a perception to support it, what is the use of launching a slogan that neither implies any unique selling point nor entices the public to remember it?! Everybody remembered “menna wa fenna” of Fastlink but none recognized “a wonderful world” of Zain.

Slogans are important and may make all the difference, C-Town has this fantastic slogan few years ago: “C-Town, we save you more!” the unique selling point here is clear, Carrefour in Amman now uses similar slogan, both C-Town and Carrefour did the right thing by adapting slogans that serve customers’ best interest, save money that is, they are not ashamed of offering “cheaper prices”, rather they took that advantage and put it in a nice way to conquer the perception spot in people’s mind, Carrefour is more expensive in many areas than any other supermarket in Amman, but that doesn’t really matter, people believe it is cost effective then it is cost effective! Axes deodorant makes young males feel sexually attractive, without a shadow of the doubt Axes don’t make people sexually attractive, it simply is completely untrue. But the advertisements created this perception in the back of human minds regardless how factual it is. Slogan messages are flying all around us, whether we like it or not; they affect our perception and by time, perception becomes more important than reality.