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The right tagline promotes your unique brand promise.
New Jersey's premier lobbying firm selects Avow Communications to launch its new identity and Website
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Peaks, pitfalls and a promise to raise the dead
Advanced Cardiology Practice
A good tagline should capture your company's spirit and telegraph your brand's promise. 
 
Selecting the right one is fraught with difficulty, as large and small companies alike have discovered.  Our lead item this month explores the peaks and pitfalls involved in the adoption of taglines.
 
We're also proud of our latest launch, for Public Strategies Impact, New Jersey's renowned government relations firm.  In addition to developing its Website, Avow Communications advised the firm on communications strategy and created its new identity system.  Check it all out below.
 
We appreciate the feedback that many of you have provided. If you'd like to submit suggestions for upcoming topics, click here and forward a note to me.
 
As always, we look forward to hearing from you.
 
Bill Carlos
President
A good tagline promotes your unique promise
 
The right tagline is a good way to link your business with a positive attribute, belief or promise.  It can telegraph a concise statement and summarize your business focus by explaining what you do, how you do it and how it benefits your customers.
 
But there are many pitfalls in arriving at the perfect tagline.
  • Don't use a tagline to state the obvious.  For example, "We put patients first," or its countless derivatives, is a given. In addition to stating the obvious, it does little to convey a company's unique brand value.  Yet it is used commonly, and by some pretty big companies.
  • Another mistake is to make a claim that is counter- intuitive.  For example, "The business of caring."  People don't believe that businesses care.  Why spend capital trying to change their thinking.
  • If you're marketing to non-English speaking customers, pre-test your messages carefully.  Pepsi learned this the hard way in the 1960s when its famous "Come alive with the Pepsi Generation" was interpreted in China to mean "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead." 
Good taglines associate a positive benefit or promise with your company.  Especially good ones express a brand's unique value and distinguish it from competitors.
  • Horizon's "Making healthcare work" uses only three words. It is assertive and it puts the company on the positive side of healthcare advocacy.
  • Advanced Cardiology Practice of Wayne uses "Be there for those you love," an emotional appeal to live a healthy lifestyle and seek regular cardiovascular checkups, particularly after the age of fifty.
  • And High Mountain Health reinforces its own name in promising a higher level of care and service, "Taking healthcare to the next level."

Taglines are a critical element in the communications arsenal.  Choose one carefully, test it and, once you have a good one, stick with it.

Public Strategies Impact unveils new Website
 
Founded by two icons of New Jersey lobbying, Harold Hodes and Roger Bodman, Public Strategies Impact has developed a solid reputation for developing strategies that are sound, principled, bipartisan and successful.

Since the 1980s, they have set a high  standard in New Jersey for Government Relations, Public Affairs, and Association Management. This month, they introduced a new brand identity system, communications position and Website, developed by Avow Communications.
 
We are proud to have been selected for this assignment and hope you'll check it out at www.NJpsi.com
Avow Communications is a brand-building communications agency with more than 20 years in healthcare communications.  If you have a question about branding, email us here and we'll answer your question in an upcoming newsletter.
 
Avow Communications is a member of the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce and the New Jersey Advertising Club.
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