Off the Cuff: What's In a Name? Part 3 of 4: Second Names and Tag Lines

SALES & MARKETING

Off the Cuff: What's In a Name? Part 3 of 4: Second Names and Tag Lines

April 12, 2010
By Mark L. Venit, MBA

In Parts 1 and 2 of this four-part series, we’ve collectively explored several angles on naming or renaming your company. Now, we’ll look at creating additional company names and augmenting your company name or names with tag lines to help strengthen your company’s or companies’ position(s) in your prospects' and customers' minds.

Additional Company Names
In cases where changing an existing name is highly problematic, a second and/or third name often are smart, practical options. This option is particularly useful when you’re looking to strengthen your position in one or more specialty or niche markets.

For example, let's say your business, "Northern Lights Custom Apparel," wants to further its penetration into volunteer fire companies that are in search of fundraising campaigns — an area where your firm has had some success and has developed its own such programs. A second company name that might attract more interest could be "Hook & Ladder Apparel" or "Firehouse Fundraising."

For marketing to fishing clubs, your second name might be something like "Fish On Shirts," "Deep Sea Designs," or "Freshwater Fashions." For marketing to chess clubs, it may be "Checkmate Sportswear." For amateur astronomy clubs, you might consider "Sportswear for Starry Starry Nights."

Handling phone calls to the new second company can be done with a dedicated phone line (an additional line) or simply answering your phone with both names (e.g., “Good morning! Great American ShirtWorks and Freshwater Fashions. This is Mary Lou, how may I help you?”). The second company name is easily implemented as well with a separate Web site address. As you develop additional special markets and product lines, you may need to add additional names or resources to properly separate the divisions.

Tag Lines
In addition to second names — or in lieu of going that route — you can often use a tag line to better define who you are and what you do. A tag line is a word, catchword, phrase or short sentence that helps get your message across regarding who you are, what you do, who you serve, where your company offers advantages or other particulars. Properly promoted, displayed and reinforced over time, a tag line becomes part of or associated with the identity of a product, company, person, group, event or place.

With famous people, certain such phrases become a signature element in their personas. When a major league team wins a championship, you’re bound to hear the phrase “I’m going to Disney World!”

Let’s play "20 Questions." See if you can correctly identify the catch phrase associated with each of the following:

a. DiGiorno Pizza
b. Nickname of hockey legend Wayne Gretzky
c. Comedian Henny Youngman
d. Comedian Rodney Dangerfield
e. M&Ms
f. Crowd cheer of New Orleans Saints fans
g. TV commentator Bill O’Reilly
h. President Obama’s campaign slogan
i. Morton Salt
j. Fox News
k. Burger King
l. McDonald’s
m. Bounty paper towels
n. December 7, 1941
o. Milk
p. Pork
q. Moses
r. GEICO
s. Fed Ex
t. Wheaties

(Scroll down to the bottom of this page to see the correct answers!)

Answering a-t correctly is almost impossible because of your age or personal interests. For example, if you’re younger than age 40, you probably have never heard of Henny Youngman, a famous mid-20th-century comedian, nor can you associate the famous phrase about Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor spoken by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the spark that triggered America’s entry into Word War II. If you’ve never followed ice hockey, you've also probably never heard of Wayne Gretzky, one of the sport's all-time greats.

Anyway, how’d you do? Congratulations to all the winners, because even if you only answered one correctly, you understand tag lines and positioning statements, as well as the associative relationship of a company, product, person, event or other entity with a certain phrase.

Obviously some tag lines are better than others. Some are a lot easier to remember than others. Some are known only to people who use the product or service, but each phrase came to be associated with something else — whether it be by happenstance, through long-term advertising investments, personal involvement, memory or whatever. Shorter is usually better, though longer phrases can be successfully effected with gazillions of ad dollars behind them, as in the case of a year-and-a-half McDonald’s national ad campaign in which millions of people learned that a Big Mac consists of “Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.” It was first run in 1976, but remains in peoples' minds decades later.

The correct answer for question "l" (about McDonald’s) may be “I’m lovin’ it,” but if you answered “McDonald's is your kind of place” (run from 1967-1971) or “You deserve a break today” (run from 1971-1975 and revived twice — 1980-1983 and 1989-1990), score it as a correct answer. This illustrates the point that campaigns and tag lines change over time to what suits the company’s evolving objectives for itself and vis-à-vis its competition. (If you’d like to see a few dozen other McDonald’s slogans, click here).

In Part 4, we’ll look further into tag lines and I’ll share a few you can use, or help stimulate ideas to help you develop one for your company. We’ll also look at “descriptors,” an easy means of further defining your company name and positioning.

Mark L. Venit, MBA, is president of Apparel Graphics Institute Ltd., Ocean Pines, Md., which provides management and marketing consulting and proprietary research to apparel graphics companies throughout the Americas and Europe. He also is the chairman of ShopWorks Software LLC, a provider of industry-specific business software. Venit teaches pricing, strategic marketing, salesmanship and other business management topics at the Imprinted Sportswear Shows. You can contact him at markvenit@cs.com.

Answers:
a) It’s not delivery. It’s DiGiorno!
b) The great one
c) Take my wife . . . please!
d) I don’t get no respect
e) Melts in Your Mouth, Not In Your Hand
f) Who Dat?!
g) Caution. You’re about to enter the No Spin Zone
h) Change you can be believe in
i) When it rains, it pours
j) We report. You decide
k) Have It Your Way
l) I’m lovin’ it
m) The quicker picker-upper
n) A day that will live in infamy
o) Got milk?
p) The other white meat
q) Let my people go!
r) So easy a caveman can do it
s) When it absolutely, positively, has to be there overnight.
t) Breakfast of Champions

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