The early years (1882–1945)

In 1882, John James Sainsbury opened his Drury Lane grocery and put up a sign reading ‘Quality perfect, prices lower’. If only he’d known that over a century later, the UK’s finest branding brains would still be grappling with the problem of how to talk about quality and/or value in a convincing way.

Over the following decades, Sainsbury’s used a range of ad hoc slogans. A visit to the Sainsbury Archive turns up ‘Sainsbury’s for Quality, Sainsbury’s for Value’ (1918), ‘The best is always at Sainsbury’s’ (1920s) and ‘Help yourself to the best food at Sainsbury’s’ (1950s, referring to the innovation of self-service shops).

‘It’s clean, it’s fresh at Sainsbury’s’ (1945–1960s)

I feel like I can remember this line, which is strange, since it was phased out before I was born. Some sort of collective folk memory perhaps – or the result of carrier bags, biscuit tins and plastic syrup jars living on for decades in our house.

For some reason, I find the use of ‘it’s’ deeply evocative of decades gone by. What is ‘it’? I don’t really know, but whatever it is, it’s clean, it’s fresh! It’s whiter than white! It’s the real thing!

Imagine a food retailer claiming to be ‘clean’ in 2011, or pointing to the freshness of its products. It’s so much taken for granted that raising it would arouse suspicion. Why are you telling me that?

Cleanliness and freshness are the least we expect today, so it’s hard to relate to this line. But the self-serve supermarket experience must have felt pretty new and futuristic in the white heat of 1950s Britain, with memories of rationing and the Blitz still all too fresh.

‘Good food costs less at Sainsbury’s’ (1959–1991)

This line was devised by agency Coleman, Prentice & Varley, and is really Sainsbury’s first ‘proper’ corporate slogan. It was emblazoned on everything from paper bags to delivery lorries, and has been described by BBC News as ‘probably the best-known advertising slogan in retailing’.

How did this monster make itself irreplaceable for over three decades? By nailing the quality/value problem so brilliantly. The bulletproof ‘good food costs less’ elegantly blends goodness and cheapness in one simple, everyday phrase, without resorting to double-barrelled contrivances like ‘Sainsbury’s for Quality, Sainsbury’s for Value’.

Back in the day, it was commonplace for slogans like this to include the company name, as in ‘Get a little extra help from the Halifax’ and so on.The only modern-day equivalent I can think of is ‘You could save money at Confused.com’. These days, the standard practice is just to state the brand in the vicinity of the tagline (e.g. ‘It’s got our name on it. Wickes.’). But there’s a lot to be said for locking your brand name into a sentence that’s both natural and memorable.

‘Everyone’s favourite ingredient’ (1991–1999)

Perhaps sensing that ‘good food costs less’ was getting on a bit, the chain used this line for a serious of campaigns featuring celebrities such as Ernie Wise and Catherine Zeta Jones cooking Sainsbury’s food.

Likening a shop to an ingredient seems weird, because I buy the ingredients at a shop. The metaphor straddles two conceptual levels rather awkwardly.

Also, ‘everyone’s favourite’ sounds good at first, but we all know that different people have different favourites, so the hyperbole flies in the face of our real-world knowledge. I’m not sure that’s a good basis for persuasion.

‘Fresh food, fresh ideas’ (1998)

Not a true corporate tagline as far as I can tell, but another widely used slogan that perhaps expressed Sainsbury’s own inner longing for change.

By this time, ‘fresh food’ wasn’t really all that much of a claim. You could get fresh food everywhere. And ‘fresh ideas’ just seems too vague. What kind of ideas? About what? For whom?

For me, this one gets dangerously close to the sort of egocentric B2B tagline that’s all about the company’s own brilliance, offering no nook for the poor customer to inhabit.

‘Making life taste better’ (1999–2005)

For Sainsbury’s, the 1990s were tougher than an overcooked Value Steak. Snubbing loyalty cards, trying to focus exclusively on food and indecision over whether to market based on quality or on value were just some of the problems. Having been the market leader for much of the 20th century, Sainsbury’s ceded its position as the UK’s largest grocer to Tesco.

Before…

June 1999 saw the Sainsbury’s brand being relaunched with help from M&C Saatchi, who friendlified the logo from its brutalist 1960s all-caps style into the rounded, upper-and-lower Interstate version we know today. Sainsbury’s also adopted this new tagline crafted by Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO.

…and after

‘Good food’ and ‘favourite ingredient’ had to go because, by now, the supermarkets were selling us all sorts of stuff besides food. Sainsbury’s solution was to sublimate the food message without discarding it, with this ‘tasty life’ metaphor. Some might say it’s a bit of a fudge.

In this slogan and the rebrand that accompanied it, we can see the beginning of brands consciously becoming warmer and more stereotypically ‘feminine’. The present participle ‘making’ has no subject, making the sense diffuse and non-specific, and ending on an unstressed syllable gives a soft, yielding feel. The line was also set in all lower case, making it even more self-effacing.

A ‘feminine’ style perhaps makes sense when most of your customers are women, but Sainsbury’s had courted them very successfully for years with the bang-bang-bang-bang ‘masculine’ metre of ‘good food costs less’. (A possible ‘masculine’ version of this slogan would be the imperative ‘make life taste great’.)

There’s no mention of cost, making this a ‘quality’ slogan by default. By now, Sainsbury’s was being prodded remorselessly from below by Asda’s ‘low cost’ trident, which made Sainsbury’s look pricey even when it wasn’t. And this slogan didn’t do much to take the fight to Asda’s automatic sliding door.

In 2009, Asda caused a stir by placing full-page ads featuring the phrase ‘Good food costs less at Asda’ – although strictly as a seasonal catchline, not a corporate slogan.

Sainsbury’s didn’t pursue it, sniffing that they were ‘flattered that Asda has chosen to follow in our footsteps’. If they weren’t worried, they should have been – this ultimate compliment flagged up the unbeatable strength of the tagline they’d thrown away all those years before.

‘Making life taste better for less’ (2002–2005)

From 2002, Sainsbury’s used the line ‘Making life taste better for less’ for its Savacentre discount supermarkets. This ill-advised ‘brand extension’ practically guaranteed that the ‘real’ Sainsbury’s would be seen as expensive, if it wasn’t already.

Just seven Savacentre supermarkets opened, and the brand was soon subsumed back into the main Sainsbury’s marque. Moral: don’t use your marketing to highlight the fact that you’re cannibalising your own business.

‘Try something new today’ (2005–2011)

Sadly, life didn’t end up tasting much better for Sainsbury’s. Even its own corporate history admits that the advent of ‘Try something new today’ marked ‘the end of a disappointing period in our history’.

‘Try something new’ arguably shows marketers projecting their own worries onto their audience. Sainsbury’s sure needed a new angle, since shoppers already were trying something new – Morrison’s, which had become the UK’s fourth-largest supermarket chain.

The new slogan was launched in 2005 as part of a major shake-up aimed at boosting sales. Like its predecessor, it was created by Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO.

According to Management Today, ‘Try something new today’ was developed in response to research showing that many Sainsbury’s customers were ‘sleep-shopping’ – sticking to the same 150 products out of the 30,000 stocked by the chain.

In terms of content, the slogan stays well away from price, and indeed quality too. Instead, it positions Sainsbury’s as the source of fresh and exciting experiences with the powerful selling words ‘new’ and ‘today’.

The use of the imperative ‘try’ makes the slogan immediate and direct, telling people to branch out or buy more on impulse. This rather pushy, didactic ethos was backed up at ground level with in-store ‘food advisers’. It was all a bit patronising – and that wasn’t helped by endorsements from fat-tongued ‘naked chef’ Jamie Oliver and his food crusades.

Ultimately, though, the price of immediacy was irrelevance. Novelty, while exciting, isn’t actually a benefit. ‘Something’ is abstract and non-specific, while ‘try’ is inherently tentative and provisional. (The cheezy but much more powerful alternative is ‘discover’.)

If a slogan’s job is to promise value, this one came up short. Even though Sainsbury’s own research had shown that people didn’t particularly want to try new things, they still put novelty at the heart of their message.

‘Live well for less’ (2011–)

Fade up on a majestic glass-fronted office building in Holborn, its panes glinting in the morning sun. Caption: ‘The present day’. A tousle-haired celebrity chef, dressed as lamb, kick-starts his Vespa and melts into the rush-hour traffic. It’s another new dawn for Sainsbury’s.

Keen to shake off perceptions that it’s expensive, Sainsbury’s goes for the jugular with this four-word lethal weapon. When you look at it, it’s really a dubstep remix of ‘good food costs less’ – same four-word, four-syllable structure, and ‘less’ is back too.

‘Live well’ is a pitch to the health market, which I would say is short-sighted based on the rubbish I see in most people’s supermarket trollies. As a more general phrase to encompass food and everything else Sainsbury’s sells, it’s probably OK (see the pitch to consumers here). But it lacks the hearty, sensual appeal of ‘good food’ and, for me, does carry a tang of asceticism rather than indulgence. Perhaps that’s an inevitable token of the ‘austere’ times we live in, confirmed by the frugality of ‘for less’.

Dancing like a freak around its own brand message, Sainsbury’s is at pains to point out that, despite its clear ‘price’ message, quality is still paramount. Oh, and it’s not necessarily cheaper either. Here’s part of the refreshed brand’s ‘mission statement’:

Helping you live well for less isn’t about saying that our food will always be cheaper that other supermarkets (we’ll never compromise on quality and are committed to bringing you products sourced responsibly) but it will cost less that you thought at Sainsbury’s.

Sainsbury’s will never scream its value message in the way Asda and Tesco do, instead taking the more subtle approach to appeal to shoppers’ emotions.

So, are you cheaper, or better, or both, or (since it’s hard to tell what you really mean when you put such whacking great sub-clauses in brackets) what?

The ‘subtle approach’ is great, as long as the audience understands (and cares about) your shades of meaning. Simple messages always win. Time will tell whether Sainsbury’s has found the right one.

What’s that? What would I do? Well, I have spent most of this post sniping so maybe I should actually create something. I might go for a binary opposition like ‘Spend less, live more’, which ends on a positive. Or how about something more cheerful, like ‘The life you love for less’? But in the end, having done my history homework, I think my best shot would be to go back to the future with ‘Life costs less at Sainsbury’s’. If you can’t beat it, rejoin it.

Believe in better

actually mean? I’m not really sure, but to make sure I wasn’t being deliberately obtuse, I asked my Twitter feed what they thought. Here are some of the answers (not all serious, natch):

• Tim Rich (@66000mph) reflects both their desire to be seen as innovators (we’re NOT the BBC) and the way technology is changing TV. Vague though.
• Dan Adams (@danadamstweets) just a paraphrase of ‘expect more’ but with some alliteration thrown in for good measure?
• Zakaullah Khan (@balinor) Sounds campaignable, but incomplete… Believe in better programming, believe in better content, etc


I can't believe it's not better

• Rob Wright (@Copywrighting) It – sincerely – says to me is ‘we’re not great right now, but stick with us, ‘cos (trust us) we will get it together for you’
• Stella Eleftheriades (@stellamedia) I always want to say believe in batter #cakeonthebrain seriously tho gives idea of going extra mile, more personalised service?
• Alasdair Murray (@Alconcalcia) Got no idea what ‘Believe in better’ actually means. Who, if anyone, believes in worse? The coalition perhaps.
• Andrew Nattan (@Mr603) It means you have to close your eyes and believe really hard to think it’s worth paying for over Freeview.
• Lydia Nicholas (@LydNicholas): Externally: TV should be better, if you believe this, make an act of faith and pay for it. (so paying is a brave stand for quality). Internally- there is a more efficient, TV business & organisational model than those inspired by BBC.
• Kevin W (@CreativeCopyKC) Believe in Better? Sounds like they’re pitching improved quality (both HD picture and higher quality programming)
• Ash_Humby (@AshHumby) For me Believe In Better is Sky’s attempt to sum up the Sky experience, in a similar way to BBC iplayers Making The Unmissable Unmissable.
• Peter Baruffati (@peterbaruffati) What you are viewing may be bad, but don’t lose hope.

The range of answers confirms that, while it may or may not be effective, the slogan is certainly ambiguous. In my view, the meaning is unclear because the language is deliberately unfamiliar and clunky.

Finding clunky

A similar effect is achieved with Bupa’s current slogan:

Helping you find healthy

I didn’t ask for views on this one because I think the meaning is clearer, but it’s still been twisted slightly out of shape with unorthodox language. (In passing, note that Bupa are using the clichéd ‘we understand/that’s why’ ploy that I highlighted in this post – perhaps to redress the balance?)

Both this and the Sky slogan create a jarring effect by using adjectives as nouns, which is disorientating. We believe in fairies or democracy, but not ‘better’. We need help finding our car keys or a way forward, but not ‘healthy’.

‘Better’ and ‘healthy’ are positioned as nebulous metaphysical states that we can aspire to; the diffuse language creates (or tries to create) the impression that there’s something special or amazing about watching telly or buying health insurance.

And this is, of course, part of the seemingly endless trend for brands to be more soft and friendly, sucking up to customers and wheedling their way into their lives at every turn. Social media’s got a lot to answer for.

Awkwarder than yesterday

Another example is put forward by copywriter Kevin Mills, in his post Stumbling over copy. He cites an outdoor campaign by Fitness First featuring the line ‘Our members are fitter than yesterday’.

As Kevin notes, this is a very unfamiliar phrase. To me, it sounds like it might have been translated from French. Again, this leaves the reader slightly disconcerted and uncertain, just as they might be if a non-native English speaker came up and asked the way to the station of trains. The meaning is clear, but it’s been expressed strangely – which means the impression that stays with you is strangeness, rather than the benefit of being fitter.

Unspoken words

As they stand, these three phrases are classic cases of things that get written, but would never be spoken aloud:

• ‘I’m going to get a Sky dish because I believe in better.’
• ‘My BUPA doctor’s really helping me find healthy.’
• ‘I’ve started going to Fitness First, and now I’m fitter than yesterday.’

However, these brands aren’t going for a Ronseal-style vernacular vibe. Instead, they’re aiming for differentiation through language – using unusual construction to imply that they themselves are exceptional.

Does it work? Does the unusual slogan stick in the mind – and does that lead to a sale?

In his post, Kevin suggests that using an unexpected or unusual phrase could make an ad more memorable. I think much depends on whether it gets ‘filed’ in the zone of the reader’s mind you want it to – whether it goes in a mental category marked ‘curiosities’ rather than ‘things to buy’ or ‘things to find out more about’. My worry would be that an unusual construction would just be deleted from the reader’s consciousness because it didn’t fit the rhythm and tone of their internal monologue.

Do different

It would be easy enough to discover, with A/B testing, which slogan produced a stronger response. However, with the Sky and BUPA examples given above, I’m not sure that a desire to be understood, or even to drive sales, is centre stage. We’re in the realm of brand-building here, where the overall impression is more important than the immediate real-world result. (With Fitness First, there’s a strong suspicion that the effect is the result of carelessness rather than strategy, as Kevin notes. Of course, a campaign might still be good by accident.)

The Sky slogan, interestingly, was explicitly oriented towards internal marketing as well as external – generating an ethos and vibe within the organisation as well as outside it. It’s Sky’s own staff who are exhorted to ‘believe in better’ too.

However, I think there’s another important audience: other marketers. Whenever a campaign has a flavour of wilful differentiation, there’s always the suspicion that the client has got a bit bored of their own marketing, perhaps even embarrassed by it, and wants something out there they can really feel proud of. Something clever, edgy and modern. And what better way to signal your superior intelligence than with words that no-one’s ever spoken, or even thought before?

First, the PEC points out that commissioning and deploying these slogans uses precious resources, which could be used for ‘real work’ rather than marketing.

Evening all

This is true, but every organisation should be allowed to spend within reason to build its reputation. In policing specifically, one justification for this is that citizens want to feel that their local force is reliable, solid and professional, and public image plays a part in confidence.

Regional pride is important too. If other forces seem superior, people might feel that they live in a backwater. This can have economic as well as emotional effects.

A stronger criticism is that the police are providing a public service and are, in effect, a monopoly. ‘Customers’ don’t have any choice about who they report a burglary to, for example; we don’t shop around for law enforcement.

However, involving the police is often an option rather than a necessity. People’s perceptions will affect whether they approach the police, and how much they’re willing to help them with their work.

The PEC’s criticism focuses on external perceptions. But internal marketing is important too. In theory, slogans can help to communicate and reinforce a shared purpose within an organisation.

So police marketing can be justiied. But the actual marketing has to be up to the job. So let’s take a few police slogans down to Interview Room 1 and give them the third degree.

Northumbria

Total policing

The PEC accuse some slogans of being ‘meaningless’, citing this as an example. But lack of meaning isn’t necessarily a problem unless it makes the slogan ineffective. ‘Just Do It’ doesn’t carry a lot of concrete meaning, but it works for Nike. However, although we are nominally in the B2C realm, we’re a long way from selection goods like sportswear here.

The real problems here are jargon and egotism. Insofar as it has meaning, this slogan expresses what the force does, not the benefits customers get. And while the phrase may have some meaning in police circles, it surely means very little to citizens.

Avon & Somerset

Working Together to Make the Communities of Avon & Somerset Feel Safe and Be Safe

I pity the designer who has to fit this on anything smaller than a Transit. At fifteen words, it’s quite simply far too long.

‘Making Avon & Somerset Safe’ hits the same buttons while saving the force 66% in ink costs. (The Met opts for the similar, though still flabby, ‘Working Together For A Safer London’.)

‘Working together’ and ‘communities’ are patronising public-sector buzzwords that, in my view, won’t connect with real people.

Foregrounding the distinction between feeling safe and actually being safe was probably a mistake too – I’m guessing most bobbies on the beat don’t want to be seen as window-dressing to reassure worried grannies.

Cambridgeshire, Essex

Creating a Safer Cambridgeshire

Taking a Lead in Making Essex Safer

Laudable sentiments here, if a little dull. I never like the public sector habit of using gerunds (‘ing’ words like ‘creating’ and ‘taking’) in headlines, to form a non-finite clause where the verb has no subject. Why not just say ‘We Make Essex Safer’? Perhaps because it sounds too directly accountable?

Kent

Protecting and Serving the People of Kent

Kent appropriate the LAPD’s classic ‘To Protect And Serve’, diluting it with the same public-sector gerund as Cambs and Essex. However, I’m not against it just because it’s unoriginal – and the use of ‘serving’ and ‘people’ are nice touches, bringing at least some sense of the customer to the tagline.

Norfolk

Our Priority is You

My local force clearly want to emphasise their caring, feminine side. Unfortunately, they’ve ended up with something so generic that it could be used by almost any service provider in any sector – a trap I documented in detail in my post on company taglines. No promise of value is made, no distinctive attribute communicated. And, as with other forces’ slogans, the sense is actually quite self-centred, not customer-focused.

The force is also (in my view) stretching credibility a bit too far, risking a disconnect between marketing content and the observable reality of policing. Policemen aren’t cuddly. But who wants them to be?

Closing remarks

All in all, the PEC’s criticism seems fair. For some reason, the police seem unwilling to use language to project the brand values we’d all like them to have – strength, honour, determination. There’s no UK slogan to match the NYPD’s ‘Fidelis ad Mortem’ (‘Faithful Unto Death’) – melodramatic maybe, but memorable for sure.

Such is the pervasive influence of 60s- and 70s-vintage liberalism on public-sector language. Everything has to be soft and yielding. But in the case of the police, I don’t think that’s what people want to hear.

The PEC allude to people being ‘paid to create these slogans’, implying the involvement of external creatives (who are, as we all know, ludicrously overpaid). But to my mind, these slogans have a strong flavour of writing by internal committee. Perhaps if the fuzz involved professional copywriters, they’d have slogans that were a bit more snappy, outward-looking and memorable.

Stage 1

I build this site while still an employee, thinking of using it to find another job. It’s a simple online cv, but the graphics are animated in Flash. Although the design is lamentable, you have to bear in mind that this was developed around 2000 – lots of sites looked a lot worse than they do now.

The basic problem here – one that I wouldn’t solve for several years – is wanting to show off my feeble web skills rather than offer information in a way potential employers might actually like.

Stage 2

Freshly redundant, I create this site as a way to showcase my skills to potential freelance clients. The cyan and grey identity is done for me by a designer friend. Unfortunately the design I build around it is spindly, meek and rather self-effacing – reflecting my level of confidence at the time.

At this stage, I’m trading under my own name: this site was at the URL tomalbrighton.co.uk. (I think my reasoning was that success would be about selling my skills and building personal reputation.)

It’s still essentially a cv site, with none of the marketing copy you’d expect from a commercially minded freelance. Although I have given myself a tagline, ‘flexible editorial ability’ – I remember my sister laughing out loud at ‘flexible’, presumably because it evoked a circus contortionist.

The word ‘editorial’ shows that I’m still thinking of my skills in terms of the job descriptions I’ve had in publishing, rather than the words that potential clients might use to find someone like me. Lacking agency experience, I don’t yet feel I can use the word ‘copywriter’ to describe myself. Similarly, the ‘services’ are actually my own skill areas, rather than things a client might actually need done.

Stage 3

A slight improvement in design and a new tagline: ‘business content consultancy’, with a theme to match. I’m edging towards saying something clients might want to hear, but I’m still constrained by self-limiting beliefs about the applicability of my skills. Three self-indulgent pages on my ‘approach’ add nothing.

There are many more businesses calling themselves ‘content consultants’ these days, but I’m sure they all suffer from the same problem: ‘consultant’ sounds like someone who doesn’t do anything.

Stage 4

A new day dawns. I’ve now incorporated as a company – ABC Business Communications – and moved into a rented office. Having gained clients and confidence, my dream is to build my business up into an agency. (It never came true – or hasn’t yet.)

I’ve got a new logo (by the same designer) and some corporate colours, deployed to reasonably strong effect on this site. Unfortunately the domain I’ve chosen – abcbusiness.biz – is an absolute stinker. But I’ve still come on a lot since stage 1.

I’ve written a new tagline, ‘Are you reaching those who matter most?’ It’s not bad, but I’m not sure I’d use a question these days. It leads the reader into introspection and uncertainty, not clarity and action.

I even have some leaflets designed with this tagline and some more stock imagery. Nowadays I’d spend that kind of money on AdWords clicks rather than printed collateral – and I advise most sole-trader clients the same.

Stage 5

Now we’re cooking. I’ve finally woken up to the fact that, whatever my experience, potential clients use the word ‘copywriter’ to describe what I do. So I’ve adopted the trading name ‘ABC Copywriting’, got a new domain (this one) and built a new site.

Delighted at my discovery of <div> tags, I’ve built something that looks like it’s made from children’s building blocks. But at least it’s interesting, and shows signs of wanting to conduct visitors through information to an actual enquiry. It’s also the first site built with SEO in mind, and gratifyingly hits #1 for ‘copywriter norwich’ as soon as it’s spidered.

I’m still using the same tagline, but it’s woven into the copy much more tightly. If you’re going to use a headline, your copy needs to make good on its promise (or answer the question that it asks).

Stage 6

Boo-ya! How ya like me now baby? This is the first iteration of ABC Copywriting I’m really happy with; the first that looks and feels genuinely professional.

I’ve cleared out the solid colours and adopted a simple, flexible four-column layout (4x200px = 800px wide in total). White space gives a more relaxed feel, so visitors don’t feel so hemmed in by lines and blocks. Only the cutesy photographic images spoil the party – but imagery is a problem for almost every B2B site.

There’s another new tagline – ‘We’ll choose your words carefully’. It retains the second-person focus with ‘your’, but integrates some implication of skill on my part (which its predecessor didn’t). I’m still too close to it to tell whether it’s any good – you decide. The owner of a very reputable Norwich creative agency told me he liked it, and that’s good enough for me.

My blog’s appeared, but at this stage it’s still using an off-the-shelf theme (iBlog), so moving to the blog means encountering a completely different design style. It might as well be on a different domain.

Stage 7

Although I had a lot of enquiries with the site looking like this, I now regard it as a mis-step.

I feel the previous site is too self-effacing and discreet, so I make the home page different from the rest of the site and add these shouty all-caps headings to get in visitors’ faces a bit more. I also add a forceful (perhaps over-forceful) call to action, top right.

I scrap the imagery, realising that it serves no semiotic or cognitive purpose and also wanting to make a point about communicating only with words. But the end result is a bit obtuse and blocky, and arguably too copy-heavy too. In six months I will be itching to rework it again.

The biggest step forward at this stage is getting a custom theme built for my blog, so the WordPress pages have the same look as the main site.

Stage 8

You’re looking at it! I finally started looking at sites I really liked and thinking about how I could use those ideas on my own site. I’m not a designer, so I played it safe and kept things ultra-simple, ranged left, with lots of white space.

The 4x200px column layout is still here, but I’ve moved the navigation up top to make more room for content – such as the ‘Read more’/‘Where to go next’ column on the right, which aims to keep visitors on the site a little longer.

We’re back to icons again, but the design was just too dry without them. The ‘marker pen’ style just adds a touch of warmth and softness that acres of Helvetica can’t quite deliver.

The home page is much more tightly constructed, with the tagline, lead paragraphs and icon working together on the theme ‘words people love’. Time will tell whether this works better than previous iterations.

The blog theme is updated too, with more thought put into how lists of posts will look and a better home page. Also, the blog is more tightly integrated into the main site, with links from service pages to relevant articles. The aim is to build an impression of authority – I don’t really expect potential clients to wade through dozens of blog posts.

And that’s the end of the story – for now, at least. Your comments are welcome, but whatever you do, please don’t say you like an earlier version better than this one. It took me ages…

This post presents my responses to Martin’s post (and will make more sense if you read his post first).

What’s in a name?

What really got everyone’s goat about Copify was their hijacking of the term ‘copywriting’, for instance in their tagline ‘changing the way people think about copywriting’. If they’d set up as ‘content generation services’, or whatever, far fewer copywriters would have been bothered. Equating 2p-a-word content creation with the careful, considered approach of an experienced marketing, publishing or digital professional is ludicrous, and Copify were duly called out on it.

What's in a name? That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet

For my money, ‘copywriter’ still denotes the high end of the market – right up to highly experienced creatives who can charge hundreds for a single advert or slogan. There are many different types of writer under the umbrella of ‘copywriting’, but the sense of a consultancy/service rather than a by-the-yard word factory is pretty well understood – with the possible exception of ‘SEO copywriting’, which does have some connotations of cranking out the copy I think. (But that’s not to say that all SEO copywriters are content-crankers, Andrew!)

Come for the writing, stay for the thinking

It’s this consultancy/service aspect that distinguishes a ‘proper’ copywriter from a content creator. Or to put it another way, clients pay for the thinking, not just the writing. Working with a copywriter who takes the time to engage with you, your values and your character as a business is what makes the difference between getting content and being content. And it’s dispiriting to trade under a name that implies you simply churn out the words without paying much mind to the purpose of the exercise.

J’accuse!

However, when I look at my own website, or those of other copywriters, it always strikes me that we do tend to sell ourselves short in this regard. There’s a general emphasis on ‘words’, ‘writing’, ‘content’ and so on, although the incidence of pen imagery seems to be on the decline. This rather prosaic positioning is sometimes leavened with some promise to drive sales or build brands.

We tend to push the craft of copywriting rather than its business benefits. And when we do try to force our way into the boardroom, it isn’t always convincing – perhaps because we don’t quite believe we should be in there ourselves (but that’s another story).

Let me reiterate, I include myself in this criticism. My own tagline, ‘We’ll choose your words carefully’, is typical. Why should a client care about that? What does it do for them?

Where’s the value?

If I were advising a client who was a copywriter, I’d probably exhort them to emphasise the value being added rather than the service being delivered. As with tool manufacturers who are in the business of selling holes rather than drills, it’s the ultimate benefits that sell a service, not the nuts and bolts of its delivery. Positioning as a seller of words weakens the offer and invites like-for-like comparison with low-cost providers.

Could we therefore rebrand as ‘content consultants’ or similar, just as designers might describe themselves as, say, ‘creative directors’ or ‘senior creatives’? My feeling is we could, but there might not be such a benefit to it.

First, ironically, we’d lose out on people searching the web for ‘copywriter’. Online, you can’t get away from the need to use the language your client uses, and people start from a perception that they need content, so they search for the word most closely associated with their need. (Many firms developing their websites don’t even get that far, so we should be grateful.)

Secondly, we’d lose the very important emphasis on language as the tool for marketing communication, and the positioning of ourselves as the people who can take the client all the way from concept or value proposition through to words on a page. In my experience, being the person who ‘gets’ a company and can express its values in writing is a pretty good position to be in. I wouldn’t want a title that made me sound like an expensive luxury.

So, in summary, while it’s probably worth talking about the high-end stuff we can do, I think we need to keep our feet on the ground.

What the future holds

I personally think that the market will sort itself out. ‘Content’ and ‘copy’, for want of better words, will diverge more and more as clients become more literate, and there will actually be less need to differentiate, not more.

Those who just want content will get it. Those who want something better, and try to get it from a Copify, will change their approach. Those who think they just need something written will soon realise, from working with a professional, that they’re not just delegating an admin-level task that they could just as easily handle in-house. And those who appreciate the value of a true copywriter won’t be going anywhere.

‘A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…’

If, like me, you fondly remember being taken to the cinema to see George Lucas’ magnum opus in the late 1970s, you probably can’t read those words without a little shiver of anticipation. Appearing silently in cyan text on a black ground at the beginning of the film, they conjured up far more magic than the doughty, bisyllabic title ‘Star Wars’ ever could.

Such is the power of the tagline. Even if your company name is an emotional blank (‘IBM’), you can always bolt some words on to it to make it sing (‘I think, therefore IBM’). Provided your audience makes a lasting link between the phrase and your brand, you’ve added a new verbal and emotional ‘hook’ to your value proposition.

This article looks at a few types of company tagline, weighing up the pros and cons of each, and discusses the special case of B2B company taglines.

What is a company tagline?

A company tagline is simply a brief phrase that is closely allied with a company name or brand.

It can appear in a range of media, typically including websites, stationery, printed marketing collateral, TV advertisements and so on. Often, the tagline appears in close proximity with the company name and/or logo; in some cases it is ‘locked up’ with the logo so that graphic and phrase form a single visual unit.

Is there a difference between a slogan and a tagline? Well, in my mind, a slogan is associated with a particular product, service or marketing campaign, whereas a tagline is associated with a company or a brand. Some marketers express this distinction as ‘product tagline’ vs ‘company tagline’. So you can have several slogans or product taglines, but only one company tagline. And your slogans are likely to change more often than your company tagline, which is a key part of building equity in a brand long-term.

Every company tagline is different – or should be. (Yes, I’m looking at you, Lloyds TSB – see below.) However, there are recognisable types. Let’s look at a few of them.

Factual taglines

These taglines simply state a fact about the company.

• ‘Gaming since 1981’ (Computer & Video Games)

Whether these taglines work depends on whether the fact invoked constitutes a customer benefit. Many facts of which companies are justifiably proud don’t actually translate into benefits. For example, will I give more weight to CVG’s views on Heavy Rain because they were around to review Manic Miner? Well, I might, but someone born in 1995 probably wouldn’t – in fact, in the fast-moving games arena, being around for decades won’t necessarily establish credibility. As in other areas, longevity is a boast rather than a benefit.

Egocentric taglines

These taglines aim to encapsulate what you do or who you are as a company.

• ‘Touching lives, improving life’ (Procter & Gamble)
• ‘We try harder’ (Avis)
• ‘We’re Exxon’ (erm, Exxon)
• ‘Good with food’ (Co-Operative)
• ‘Beyond petroleum’ (BP)
• ‘We’ll choose your words carefully’ (ABC Copywriting)

In some cases, egocentric taglines can allude to a customer benefit – they offer, at some level, a promise of value. (One could argue that the P&G and Avis slogans do this.) But at other times, they’re simply corporate chest-beating (Exxon’s above being an egocentric boast par excellence). And because the best copywriting focuses on the customer, not the company, that’s probably best avoided. You want your tagline to leave at least some space for your audience to inhabit. That’s why ABC’s tagline includes the word ‘your’. Saying ‘We choose words carefully’ would be far less engaging, inviting the response ‘so what?’

Benefit taglines

These taglines communicate a benefit that you offer to your customers.

• ‘Every little helps’ (Tesco)
• ‘Reach out and touch someone’ (AT&T)
• ‘Feel better, look better’ (Boots)
• ‘Discover a world of flavour’ (Unearthed)

To write a benefit tagline, you need to isolate the single most important benefit that people get when they choose your products or services. As I’ve suggested before, your selling point doesn’t have to be unique. But it does need to be compelling.

In some cases, such as Tesco above, the benefit is very loosely defined, or only alluded to tangentially. But it’s still there. The Tesco tagline positions the chain as a ‘best price’ value proposition (‘every little saving helps’) while also faintly evoking its broad service portfolio (‘every little extra service helps’).

Often, benefit taglines are written in the imperative (as with AT&T, Boots and Unearthed above) – a direct command to the reader. The unspoken postscript is ‘…by choosing our product’. AT&T aren’t suggesting that you reach out and touch someone in the queue at the chemist’s.

Abstract taglines

These taglines, increasingly popular in the post-Lovemarks marketing world, express almost nothing concrete about the company. Instead, they abstract tangible customer benefits or brand values into an emotional state or abstruse metaphor.

• ‘For the journey’ (Timberland and, bizarrely, Lloyds TSB)
• ‘See what you can do’ (O2)
• ‘I’m lovin’ it’ (McDonald’s)
• ‘Just do it’ (Nike)
• ‘Make. Believe’ (Sony)
• ‘It’s you!’ (Yahoo!)

The most obvious problem with this kind of tagline is that conjures no benefit, and therefore creates very little ‘glue’ between the phrase and your brand. So while these taglines might be striking in the context of a particular campaign, they might not give readers a lasting, memorable reason to buy from you specifically. ‘For the journey’ might prompt me to get some kit together for my outdoor holiday, but it doesn’t give me any particular reason to choose Timberland – unless I recall the phrase and the association with that particular brand when I shop.

As these examples show, abstract taglines are the preserve of companies whose brands already have strong ‘recognition’ and ‘penetration’, in marketer-speak, and they’re looking to give them an intriguing new twist to keep them fresh in people’s minds. Multinationals have enough above-the-line spend to throw so much branding mud at the wall that some is bound to stick – but that kind of marketing muscle is beyond the reach of most middling or emerging brands.

Abstract taglines magnify the mystique and aura of ‘touching’ a major brand. If you’re a sole trader or SME, they may not be so effective: you probably won’t be able to deliver an experience that lives up to the glitz, or promote the message in mass-market ‘push’ channels like TV or outdoor advertising. A plumber who sticks a phrase like ‘For the journey’ on his promotional pens probably won’t gain any new customers as a result.

Question taglines

These company taglines pose a question to the reader. The question may be rhetorical, or there may be an implication that the company asking the question can somehow help with the answer.

• ‘Where do you want to go today?’ (Microsoft)
• ‘What’s in your wallet?’ (Capital One)
• ‘Doesn’t your dog deserve Alpo?’ (Alpo, a US dog food)

Question taglines tread the fine line between intrigue and irritation. Generally, questioning your audience is risky because you’re asking them to think when they probably can’t be bothered. It doesn’t help if, as with Microsoft, the question you’re asking them is open, abstract and not directly related to your product. The Alpo/Capital One method is much better – ask a leading, rhetorical question that, when the natural answer is provided, implies or leads to a purchase.

B2B taglines

You’ve probably noticed that most of the examples I’ve given so far are B2C (business-to-consumer) taglines, rather than B2B (business-to-business). That’s because creating and using a B2B tagline is a very different – and far more difficult – proposition.

B2B taglines are fundamentally unlike their B2C counterparts because the mindset of the target customer is so different. Whereas B2C brands usually seek to establish ‘soft’ emotional connotations for their products, B2B marketing is much more focused on concrete benefits. B2C brands are often trying to attract disposable, personal or leisure income to an optional purchase; B2B is about securing budgetary commitment for a carefully considered commercial project.

While some B2B brands do have emotional overtones, they’re much weaker, rarely feature in buying discussions and never constitute an overriding reason to buy. While I might spend extra cash to get a Mac rather than a Dell at home because I love the Apple brand and experience, I’m probably going to have a harder time convincing the financial director that we need them for the whole office on those grounds.

Stripping away the emotional elements of the buying decision effectively levels the playing field between B2B brands, commoditising their products to some degree. For many high-end B2B providers (i.e those likely to market themselves using a tagline), the justification for their higher prices revolves around premium quality, better service or superior RoI. Ultimately, most B2B benefits boil down to ‘make money’, ‘save money’ or ‘save time’; they’re not about the customer feeling, believing or loving anything unique.

The perennial problem in B2B marketing is that everyone else is saying the same kind of thing and invoking the same kind of benefits, obliging the B2B firm to go into detail (e.g. with testimonials or case studies) to make their case. But that type of detail is the exact opposite of a tagline, which is essentially a broad-brush, unsubstantiated statement of a brand value.

Because they can’t encapsulate differentiation, many B2B taglines end up sounding generic, bland or non-specific:

• ‘Syncronising the world of commerce’ (UPS)
• ‘Invent’ (Hewlett-Packard)

Others end up relying on copywriting clichés that do accurately describe the benefits on offer but have lost their communicative power through overuse.

• ‘High performance. Delivered’ (Accenture)
• ‘Simplify, Automate, Secure’ (Computer Associates)

The hazard here is the same as with abstract B2C taglines – you end up making a generic case for using someone like you, rather than promoting yourself uniquely. The benefits are real, and the words are the right ones to describe them, but there’s just no differentiation to be had at such a macro level.

Many B2B taglines could be swapped with those of direct competitors, or even firms in other industries, with precious little effect. But you can still stand out if competitors have dissimilar taglines, or no tagline at all. Just don’t fall into the trap of using something crashingly unoriginal – see this post on the many firms who use ‘Our people make the difference’.

When I’m asked to come up with a B2B tagline, I often suggest that it should be informative rather than touchy-feely. If the brand is completely anonymous (e.g. ‘GHD Technology’) then the tagline can give the audience an insight into what’s being offered (e.g. ‘On-site PC service and repairs’).

It’s dull, but effective. The initial touchpoint for B2B brands is very often online – and when people are surfing, you need to hook them by confirming that they’ve reached the right place. If your brand doesn’t do it, the tagline should; visitors might not bother to hang around and discover exactly what kind of ‘proactive solutions’ you ‘deliver’, or in what area you’re hoping to ‘exceed expectations’.

By precisely positioning a B2B firm, the right descriptive tagline can turn an also-ran into a specialist player – perhaps even a unique one. Many service providers want to look big by claiming a ‘one stop shop’ or ‘full-service’ offering – in many cases, they’d be better off admitting their limits and turning them into selling points (see Let’s be honest).

One final thought – if you really love your tagline, why not turn it into a song? It worked for KPMG in 2001, when their corporate anthem ‘A Vision of Global Strategy’ became an explosive internet meme, albeit not really for the right reasons. Firms would kill for that kind of viral exposure today. Listen to the song here, or sign up to its Facebook appreciation group here.

Further reading

• List of slogans at Tagline Guru – long list of high-profile US B2C slogans
• Top 10 brand tagline trends for 2009 – fascinating details of the most-used words in brands’ taglines (also fairly US-focused)
• The Tagline Trap (PDF) – article on the perils of B2B firms attempting to imitate B2C taglines (written by the wonderfully named Gib Trub)
• Taglines: The Cheesy Way to Express What Your Business Does – article suggesting that B2B firms should not have taglines, with a link to…
• What’s your company slogan? – UK Business Labs forum where many B2B and B2C SMEs have posted their own slogans
• A nice beat, but can you dance to it? – Fast Company’s survey of corporate songs, including background to KPMG’s anthem
• This post is listed at Aauml Web Directory

Life’s but a shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more.

Here, the core of the metaphor is the equation ‘life=theatre’, with the secondary meaning ‘people=actors’. In these lines, Shakespeare is explicitly saying that our lives are as brief and futile as a play – a meaningless shadow rather than anything real. Implicitly, he’s also saying that we have little control over our destinies, like actors whose lines are written down for them. Once the parallel is drawn, a metaphor opens up a range of ways to think about something in a new way.

Metaphors in NLP

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) takes language seriously, acknowledging that it shapes the way we think. NLP practitioners pay close attention to the words people choose. By really listening to what people say, we can learn about the way they see themselves or the world.

To an NLP practitioner, metaphors are interesting because of their limits. They illuminate some truths while obscuring others; in NLP terminology, there are things they ‘allow’ and things they ‘disallow’.

For example, we might say that a trusted friend is ‘a rock’. Obviously, there are lots of unintended literal meanings: our friend probably isn’t thousands of years old, rough to the touch or permanently rooted to the spot. When we liken them to a rock, we’re saying that they’re solid and reliable.

However, they are human, so their moods and opinions change. Since rocks don’t change, our metaphor obscures this aspect of their personality, locking them into an idea of stolidity that may be limiting (for us, or for them). This highlights the importance of ‘stepping out’ of metaphors when they are no longer useful.

Liquid engineering

Over 35? This might take you back a bit (click to watch the advert)

A good example of a strong metaphor in copywriting is the slogan used for Castrol GTX in the 1980s: ‘liquid engineering’. In just two words, it transformed an everyday, almost commodity product into something essential and sophisticated.

Copywriting metaphors like this derive their power from two sources: imagery and emotion. In general, people find it easy to grasp concrete images, and harder to understand abstract concepts. Moreover, they respond more strongly when their hearts are appealed to, rather than just their minds. ‘Liquid engineering’ equates Castrol’s oil (an inanimate object) with attentive, skilful human engineers, suggesting that it provides a similar level of care, while appealing to the customer’s desire to care for their engine and safeguard their investment.

Leaky umbrella

Castrol’s metaphor was apposite, elegant and memorable – a brilliant piece of copywriting. But it’s very easy to get drawn into using a metaphor for its own sake, or pressing one into service that isn’t quite suited to the job at hand. The following is the text of a magazine advert currently being used by a leading UK insurer:

Would you buy an umbrella, if it didn’t keep you dry?
Neither would we. So why should you pay for an insurance policy that won’t keep you properly covered? Unlike 8 out of 10 standard home insurance policies we include cover for your belongings if they are accidentally damaged or lost – as standard.

The text is accompanied by a picture of an umbrella, highlighting one of the key benefits of metaphors in marketing – they give you a handy hook to hang your imagery on when none is otherwise available. (Services are often hard to depict – it’s even worse in B2B marketing.)

Although ‘insurance=umbrella’ seems promising as a metaphor (if unoriginal), here it actually muddies the meaning rather than clarifying it. Have you ever had, or bought, an umbrella that didn’t keep you dry? How would you know that an umbrella wouldn’t keep you dry, before you bought it?

The umbrella is an everyday item, but the situation described is artificial and not one that readers will immediately recognise from their lives. As a result, the metaphor won’t have the sensual, concrete force that drives emotional impact.

Stop clevering off

Instead of providing a useful stepping-stone between something familiar and a new concept, the headline metaphor in this example is adding a cognitive barrier between reader and benefit – and therefore putting obstacles in the way of a sale. The headline is literally a riddle, and if you ask your reader to solve riddles you run the risk of them simply walking away.

Since the core benefit is easy enough to understand for anyone who’s ever bought home insurance (which is almost everybody), a better headline might be:

With [Insurer], cover for damage and loss come as standard.

Or, for a bit more spice:

What’s extra for others is standard for us: damage and loss cover included with every home insurance policy.

Of course, you wouldn’t be able to include a nice picture of an umbrella, but you would have a headline that would actually generate interest.

It’s well known that headlines with benefits outpull those without. So if you’ve got a benefit that’s easy to communicate, it should always lead your copy. If you want to connect with readers, resist the tendency for what my granny used to call ‘clevering off’.

Making metaphors work

Here are a few pointers for making metaphors work in copywriting.

• Use sparingly. Only use metaphors when they’re needed: to clarify points that would otherwise be difficult to explain or understand, to communicate a benefit or to add emotional or persuasive impact. Don’t use them for their own sake. 
• Choose carefully. The right comparison can illuminate a key point like a ray of sunlight breaking through the clouds. But the wrong one can quickly lead you into deep water. Be sure your metaphor is appropriate.
• Dig deeper. Sometimes, metaphors have layers of meaning that you might not want. Consider what your metaphor really says about the product, service or company you’re promoting.
• Less is more. Metaphors are like tissues. At the moment you need them, they’re indispensable. But if you try to get too much use out of them, as I’m doing here, you’ll end up in a mess. In other words, most metaphors support just one or two strong points; after that, they should be dropped.
• Don’t mix it up. ‘Let’s run that idea up the flagpole and see if it holds water.’ ‘We weren’t on the same page because they were dancing to a different beat.’ Adding metaphors together doesn’t concentrate meaning; it dilutes it. Give your metaphors room to breathe, so your reader can absorb each one fully before you hit them with the next. If they’re too close, or if they overlap, the result is ludicrous. 

The first and foremost benefit of a product or service is meeting a need. Don’t underestimate the power of stating this to a reader. It’s particularly important online, where people are impatiently searching and seeking to confirm that they’ve found the right thing. If your product solves a problem, make sure people know it.

Then we come to ‘hard’, concrete benefits. These usually boil down to one of three things: save time, save money or (for businesses) make money. They have tangible effects that can be measured – they’re bigger, faster or cheaper. A kettle that boils water faster than competing products offers this type of quantifiable benefit.

However, people are also interested in ‘softer’ emotional benefits such as convenience, fun, style, fashion or the sense of having made a sound buying choice. For example, when you buy jeans or trainers, you’re looking for more than the optimum cost-benefit ratio – you want to buy into a brand that feels cool and appropriate for your age and style.

Fred Perry offers customers benefits including product quality, cultural resonance and fashionability

‘Quality’ might appear in both lists, since its definition is so fluid. For example, it might apply to something as concrete as ‘build quality’ in engineering – the durability, tolerance and precision of the components used to make something. But in more subjective areas of judgement, such as graphic design, one person’s concept of ‘quality’ may be very far from another’s, and affected by a range of personal or cultural factors.

We might say, broadly, that ‘hard’ benefits are more important in business-to-business (B2B) marketing, while ‘soft’ benefits appeal to the consumer (B2C). But even if you’re marketing to a business, the buying decision will always be taken by a human. And that human has emotions. So if you know who they are (either as a specific individual, or in terms of their likely profile) you can appeal to those emotions. The need to feel that the right decision has been made is particularly strong in B2B buyers – hence the saying ‘no-one got fired for buying IBM’.

You may have heard of the marketing formula AIDA, which stands for ‘attention, interest, desire, action’. These are the four stages through which a piece of marketing should (supposedly) guide its audience en route to a sale. If we look at it again, we can see that benefits are behind every one. Simple, strong benefits in a headline or slogan attract attention, while interest is generated by adding more detail. Desire is aroused when benefits are made real in the reader’s mind, and action is elicited by giving a persuasive push to the promise of a benefit.

Whatever thought structure you use, the end result needs to be copywriting that speaks directly to your customers’ needs, desires and hopes by offering something of benefit to them. If it doesn’t, it won’t bring much benefit to you.

Learn to drive

That’s right – just those three words. It seems almost too simple to be true, but if we unpack it we can see that this little sentence accomplishes four very important functions:

• It clearly defines the product (driving tuition).
• It communicates a key benefit of the product (you’ll learn to drive).
• It sets out a strong call to action, commanding the reader to act (learn to drive!)
• Through its basic, generic phrasing, it confirms BSM’s market positioning – the market leader, default option or natural choice.

Notice how this slogan respects its readers. Nobly declining to spin or sugarcoat its message, it gives customers some credit as thinkers and choosers, setting out the stall and letting them decide. Its simple, solid language makes counterparts like ‘For the road ahead’ (AA’s corporate tagline) sound pretentious and patronising. (Most effective slogans are simple, but not all simple slogans are effective.)

That magisterial BSM slogan in full

But is it really copywriting? After all, it’s ‘just’ a simple, everyday phrase. There’s nothing really there – no technique, no clever choice of words, no sophisticated appeal to the emotions, no carefully judged tone of voice. Was it even deliberately created? Did, perhaps, the designer just insert it as a placeholder until the real slogan was created?

It doesn’t matter. Great ideas are where you find them. ‘Yesterday’ came to Paul McCartney in a dream. And if this phrase did come from a copywriter, it was an exceptionally intelligent, brave and independent one. Someone who wasn’t afraid to put forward the right solution – not the one that made them look clever, sophisticated or hardworking. For their part, BSM deserve praise for setting aside corporate pride and brand insecurity so they could communicate with customers in the most direct way possible.

Achieving this kind of simplicity isn’t simple – nor is it easy, quick or straightforward. Pablo Picasso said, ‘It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.’ Often, our first ideas are convoluted and confused as we try too hard to make something special, original or arresting. Then, over time and through many revisions, we discard what isn’t needed to arrive at the essential. When the answer comes, it can seem ridiculously simple. But that’s how we know it’s right.

Obama and Bush both know how to exploit our instinct to balance things out

This instinct is a double-edged sword for marketers. On the downside, it can lead to losing business if your customer decides they want a change. During my stints at a contract publisher and a design agency, we often found that long-standing, apparently satisfied clients would suddenly switch to another supplier ‘for no reason’. Of course, there was a reason: they fancied something new and different, and there was nothing we could do about it.

For B2B service providers, this is a very real hazard. First you identify what works (or what the client likes). Then you repeat it, refining your approach and maybe delivering economies of scale. But then, after a while, you come to be seen as staid, uncreative or inflexible. You’re their best friend, but they’re looking for a bit of romance. So you’re left weeping softly while they ride off into the sunset with a dashing new supplier.

But the same thing works for you if you’re drumming up business. The marketing copywriter can provoke, cultivate and exploit the customer’s restlessness simply by positioning a product or service as an alternative to something: the customer’s current choice, the default option or the market leader.

In NLP this is called ‘contrast reframing’: asking the question ‘what if things were different?’ or ‘how could they be different?’Your product (you say) is great; theirs (you imply) is dull, outmoded or inferior. Simply by offering an alternative to what has become familiar, you can generate interest in the reader’s mind.

For example:

Ordinary kitchen roll is great for little spills. But Soakitup is completely different. It effortlessly mops away just about anything, from juice and wine through to sticky stuff like oils, sauces and even ink – without leaving a stain!

The alternative you offer needn’t even be better, just different. Many people will still respond sympathetically, as George W. Bush knew when he suggested that US students should ‘hear both sides’of the science v intelligent design debate. The urge for balance can be stronger than reason.