In the latest episode of Never Mind The Bar Charts, Stephen and I discussed the controversial and successful Liberal Democrat slogan for these European elections: Bollocks to Brexit.

A sign of its expected controversy was that only the ‘special’ edition of the party’s European manifesto has this on the front page. An alternative, blander front page is on the normal version. Yet since its launch, the controversy has greatly abated in the face of its success.

In one respect, this is not remarkable: successful slogans are punchy, clear and use normal language. This has them all.

It also reflects much of the broader advice for companies and their brands as to what makes for a successful brand. Richard Reed, founder of Innocent Drinks, recently put it succinctly:

People are challenged in the amount of attention they have. They only care about a few things. You only have a split second to get consumer attention. If you’re a brand who is lucky enough to capture that split second of attention, you better make sure you’re clear and consistent and that you land the message clearly… It’s about simplification, and then it’s about exaggeration. That’s what great brands do. You boil it down to a few simple, single words that represent what it is you stand for. And then you use all the tools to dramatize and exaggerate.

In politics that converts, to lift a phrase from Mark Twain, to requiring, “A minimum of sound to a maximum of sense” in your slogan.

Bollocks to Brexit, with its brevity and its clarity, manages just that.