How To Develop Your Logo Strapline

10/04/2020

Does it Connect?

In this Growth Engine episode, I need to get you thinking about your strapline, your logo strapline or your brand strapline.

We’re all proud of the brands that we own, the brands that we represent and promote.

However, how often do we think about whether our strapline is connecting with our ideal customer?

This is a business sort of consideration, more than just marketing.

Naturally, it goes into marketing, but I want you to think about it.

Well Known Examples To Get You Started

Here’s a couple of examples of what I’m talking about.

If you talk about Nike, “Just do it,” and whether that’s sport or whatever.
McDonald’s, they have both an audible and a visible brand, which is, “I’m loving it,” and it’s a reference to their product.

Back to Nike If you’re an athlete, you want to go out there, then awesome “Just do it.” Whether you’re running, swimming, playing field sports, solo sports, competition, doesn’t really matter.

And Mcdonalds “I’m loving it.” Whether you’re loving McDonald’s food or not, whether it’s bad for you, all that is irrelevant, but they’re trying to connect their audience with the product.

So if you want to eat, the convenience of McDonald’s is there.

If you want to go and do sports, that the convenience of buying Nike products, such as, “I’m just going to go out and do it.

I’m going to go and join the gym
I’m going to go back to swimming
I’m going to go horse riding
I’m going to go into some type of boot camp

Just do it.” It’s a great, great way of thinking about it.

The Mike Midgley Executive Example

For years, here at Mike Midgley Executive, our strapline was, “Objectives achieved,”

We changed that in 2018.

That was more around me doing growth models, board turnarounds.

If you think about it, people used to come to me and say,

“Mike, I want to grow my business. Mike, I want to do a business turnaround. We’re in the mire,”

What was the end goal?

It wasn’t the turnaround. It wasn’t the growth. It was the fact that the people would at least cross the finishing line of the goal that they’ve set.

If you look at the blog, Continuous Loop to Success, there is never a finish line.

It’s just like a track that goes round and round and round.

But ultimately, what I’m trying to get to here is, if you set a goal to turn around and not go bust, you set a goal to grow to 20% in the next 12 months or 18 months, that’s what it was and it was objectives achieved.

As our business sort of diversified more, we’ve got the agency, we’ve got the venture side, we’ve got the executive side, “Objectives Achieved,” became too narrow for us.

Re-Inventing The Strapline

Now we go with “Growth Engine.” A much more relevant strapline to our wider based services.

Our approach is, If you want to grow, whether that’s in the executive boardroom, you’re raising capital, you need to take out the existing motor that’s driving your vehicle and supercharge it with a new one.

That’s not the people, the CEO or anything like that, or the entrepreneur.

However, you need to upgrade the strategy that you’re doing. You need to upgrade the power unit in your business if you’re serious about growth.

The success of Growth Engine and we’ve created a whole range of products around that.

Growth Engine Agency
Growth Engine Executive
Growth Engine Ventures

So it doesn’t matter what you want to do, there’s a specific Growth Engine that’s going to help you achieve those same objectives.

So we’ve actually gone from the end results into the power unit that’s going to drive you because if you want to raise capital, you’re going to need a different growth engine than if you just want to do marketing services.

I want you to give some thought to straplines, whatever your brand is, and then, what’s the strap underneath?

The Car Company Examples

A great one is, although I’m not sure if they still use this, Toyota, they used to use

“Today, Tomorrow, Toyota.”

So it doesn’t matter where you are in your life, you’re here today, in the future, you always got a Toyota on hand, reliable, trusted, things like that.

So the car companies are a great way … If you need inspiration head over and look at some of the other car adverts, look on their websites.

I think Honda have, “Power of Dreams,”

SEAT “Motion, that drives Emotion.”

Emotive sort of statements. The car companies do it really, really, really well to get you to buy that car.

Have a think about it and challenge your own positioning.

I’d love your comments below.

Let me know if you do have a strapline in your logo.

What is that strapline, and how did you come up with it?

Review Your Strapline

What I want you to think about are one or two things.

Is it the end result that you deliver or is it product or solution based that you do?

Like, “The family law firm that cares.” That might be a little bit cheesy as I’m just shooting from the hip, but that’s something that you might use.

I’d like you to get a think about it. Now if you cannot specify whether it’s products and audience related or the end result that you deliver, then it’s probably fluff.

Like I said to you about us earlier, the,

“Objectives Achieved,” we help people turn around or scale to a certain level of growth using executive and management consultant services. So that was relative, that was the end result.
“Just do it,” end result.
“I’m loving it,” more around the product. It’s not really an end result, it’s an association.
“Today, tomorrow, Toyota.” It’s situational.

So if you can’t put it into a camp, then you’ve probably not got it detailed and dialled down enough.

So go back to the drawing board. Look at what your challenges and pain points are for your audience and look at what they’re trying to achieve.

Or look at what your product does, how it develops and delivers a result, and it’s relative to solving that immediate problem.

It’s either solving it right upfront or it’s achieving it at the back end, I suppose is what I’m getting to.

So maybe go and have a look at that.

Leave me a comment below where you’re at. Drop your logos and your straplines into the comments below, and you can use the link below and upload an image, or take a screenshot and upload it, or just type it in there.

Whatever you want to do.

I’d love to have a look at it, but I’m more than happy to critique it for you, whether you’ve got it in the right colours, the right strapline, and then we can open debate about that.

So thanks for continuing your Growth Engine journey.

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