Ideally a positioning taps into our underlying human motivations. The desire to be a good parent. The need to demonstrate status. The urge to have a good time. This is harder than it seems. Let's say you're Johnnie Walker whisky. Do you stand for casual hedonism? Well, you make rare, expensive liquor. So do you stand for luxury? Well, bar tenders serve you at dives. It took two years and extensive market research to identify the positioning of history, optimism, and personal progress captured by the slogan "Keep on Walking."

There is a commonly accepted idea in marketing that a brand must identify and stick with a compelling "brand positioning" over time. But the changing values and attitudes of customers -- plus the inherent difficulty of finding the right few words on the first (or twenty-first) try -- means most slogans do not stand the test of time.

In the 1980s, British Rail tried to convince potential passengers that they were making significant improvements to their service with the slogan, "We are getting there." Passenger experience suggested otherwise, and the much-ridiculed slogan proved short-lived. Ford's "Quality is Job 1" met a similar demise around the same time. There is nothing wrong with slogans acknowledging weakness and being aspirational, but they do have to pass the test of experience. Avis' current slogan, "We try harder," was originally coined in 1962, as "We're No. 2. We Try Harder." Positive customer experience ratified the claim and helped Avis achieve significant sales growth.



FROM GOOD TO GREAT (AND BACK)



More common perhaps is the slogan that does not say anything coherent about the brand. While in South Africa recently I saw the slogan, "Nature will thank you" on the back of a Corobrik truck. Was it a reference to the company's sustainability program? How its bricks were made? I still have no idea. Multiple meaningless slogans in a short time frame is a sure sign that the brand in question has lost its way. Rather than seeking to identify a positioning that makes the brand meaningfully different, these brands seek to use slogans as an echo chamber, hoping to find one that resonates with their target audience.



Ultimately, a slogan is only useful as long as it still conveys something meaningful about the brand. When circumstances change a brand may need to rethink how it expresses what it stands for. FedEx found great success with the slogan "When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight." It directly addressed the company's dependability. But times change and overnight delivery become less compelling in the age of the Internet, so now we have "The World on Time" to indicate global reach.



Sometimes slogans just need fine-tuning in order to reflect the cultural psyche of the target audience. Over time L'Oreal has shifted its slogan from "Because I'm worth it" to "Because you're worth it." Today it reads, "Because we are worth it." The company worked the personal pronoun to track the zeitgeist, moving from self-regard to flattery, to collective pride.