I say yes! A well-crafted advertising slogan, or tagline as it’s more commonly referred to these days, sums up a company’s or organization’s unique selling proposition in a way that’s personable, memorable, original, simple, and most important of all, believable.

Unique selling propositions:

• Contain a benefit
• Offer something the competition either cannot or does not offer
• Move the masses

Taglines incorporate elements of the unique selling proposition to leave the key brand message in the mind of the target audience. They’re universal (everybody likes them) and they stand the test of time. The really good ones create buzz…remember “Where’s the beef?” Taglines are the sign-off that accompanies the logo. They say, “If you get nothing else from this ad, get this!”

Here are some examples of great taglines:

• M&Ms melt in your mouth, not in your hand.
• Does she or doesn’t she? (Clairol)
• We try harder. (Avis)
• Just do it. (Nike)
• The quicker picker upper. (Bounty)
• Don’t leave home without it. (American Express)
• Got milk? (California Milk Processor Board)

These days, everywhere I go I see good ideas executed poorly. Today at the park playground (my dogs like to play there!) I saw a height chart attached to the jungle gym. A great idea, right? Little kids love to see how much they’re growing. But this particular one started at the 3-foot mark and went up to 5′6″.

Most of the kids that play here aren’t even 3 feet tall yet. And I’ve never seen a 5′6″ kid get anywhere near the place. They’re typically sitting at a picnic table smoking. Who designed this chart? Why did this person arbitrarily or consciously choose these particular heights? Does he or she have kids? It just doesn’t make sense to me.

That seems to be case with a lot of design projects. Websites that are difficult to navigate. Signage that goes up with no usability testing. Products that manufacturers say are easy to assemble, but only if you’ve got a Ph.D. in structural engineering.

It makes me wonder why we don’t build more planning, usability and testing time into our process? Maybe it would keep a lot of great ideas from turning into crappy ones.

In author Lon Safko’s book, The Social Media Bible, it says that Social Media is all about enabling conversation. It’s word-of-mouth that takes place online. You don’t have control over these conversations. Your customers do. That’s why it’s so powerful.

The biggest faux pas in Social Media - MySpace, Facebook, LlnkedIn, Twitter, etc. - is using it to sell something outright. There’s a reason it’s called “social” media. I’ve had people connect with me on LinkedIn (who I barely knew) that started hawking their products and services to me as soon as I accepted their connection. Guess what? They’re no longer in my contact list.

It’s perfectly okay to become a fan of a product or service. Or even tweet about something you really like. But if you represent a company and blatantly try and sell stuff, no one will want to connect with you.

I recently signed up to receive tweets from a knowledgeable copywriting consultant. I expected to get valuable information from this company. What I’ve been getting instead, is tweeted to death about anything and everything they can think of. I no longer view their company as an expert offering me valuable information. I think of them as a daily annoyance, and sometimes, even rude. Why? Because they tweet me at all hours of the day and night. And they waste my time. So, if you’re going to use Social Media, please use it correctly, and with care.

1. Clients that say, “I ran this by my wife/husband and they had a few changes…” — are they copy experts? Are you paying them to do the job? If not, leave them out of the equation, please.

2. Clients that make revisions by committee — getting everyone’s input, including the delivery guy, means you don’t know what you really want. If you’ve got to send the copy around the office to be politically correct, then assign a point person to put all changes and comments into ONE document. Otherwise, your writer gets really confused.

3. Clients that use time they’re unwilling to pay for — Calling your writer to bounce a ‘few ideas around’ at all hours of the day and night and on weekends, or expecting to meet more than once or twice without getting billed is disrespectful and it wastes your writer’s time. Trust me, they’ll start putting your calls into voicemail.

4. Clients that tell writers their budget is small but ‘We’ll make it up to you the next time around’ — This is the fourth biggest lie in the world. There is never a next time around. Pay your writer what the job is worth. Or if you have limited resources, be honest about it and let your writer decide whether or he/she wants to do the job for less than what they typically charge. Most times, we will.

5. Clients that don’t provide a creative brief but expect perfection right out of the gate — If you’re not willing to put the parameters of a job in writing, complete with a description of the target audience, the key message you want to get across, the reasons to believe, and what you want the net takeaway to be, you’re not ready to hand it off to your writer. If you’re not willing to provide this information, don’t be surprised if the writing is off target and off strategy.

In my travels as a copywriter, I’ve found there are basically two kinds of clients:

1. The first kind gives you no information to do the job, but expects you to not only “get it” immediately, but produce a work of strategic brilliance by the end of the day.

2. The second kind gives you so much information it’s like trying to find the proverbial golden needle in the haystack. You spend hours trying to sift through it all to figure out what the assignment is and the best selling strategy for it.

Both types of clients are difficult to work with. The first requires a CIA-style of interrogation to extract pertinent information. The second requires constant deflation of hot air to bring them back down to Earth, and the task at hand.

Of the two, I prefer the first since I can ask lots of questions, lots of different ways, to get the answers I need. The second one is tougher because it’s like herding cats. I personally like to handle the discovery process at my own speed. When someone vomits out a lot of information and says, “Well, what do you think you can do with this?” my first thought is to turn heel and run, so I don’t catch the sickness too.

I attended the HOW Creative Freelancer conference in San Diego last month. Since it was a “creative freelancer” conference, I “creatively” came up with the money to go and wondered if it would be worth it. Well, I’m happy to say that it was. Not because I met lots of wonderful folks (which I did). Not because it was 85 degrees in San Diego (versus 115 in Phoenix). And not because I wanted to work for three long days (listening non-stop is tiring). What truly made it all worthwhile were the two magical sentences I learned to say to clients whose budgets are as short as their deadlines.

Here they are…I urge you to commit them to memory because they’re so good:

“It sounds like you (Mr. Client) haven’t allocated enough resources to a project of this scope.”

AND…

“I would be irresponsible as a business person if I took this project on in that period of time. It wouldn’t do it justice.”

So very PC, yet so very powerful, don’t you think?

I used to not care about illegal drugs. If you were free, white and 21, you could do whatever you wanted in the privacy of your own abode. Didn’t matter to me.

Now I hate them. I’ve suffered at their death-dealing hands. Not my physical body, personally. But something personal, just the same…my kid. I’ve lain awake at night scared half to death my son was going to die from an overdose of coke, meth, oxycontin…whatever his drug du jour happened to be. I’ve felt the drenched sheets on his bed from night sweats. I’ve been taken out, down for the count, with worry, fear and guilt.

You might think I’m over-reacting. A worry-wart. I thought so, too. Until the soft edges of my fears were brought into sharp focus by another boy’s death. A 20-year-old kid who OD’d on heroin. He used to play ball with my son.

I sat at his funeral, tears streaming down my face, and remembered cheering on this little chubby boy when he was learning how to pitch. Remembered those junior high boys’ delight in spitting their sunflower seeds all over the dugout.

Some people say marijuana is no big deal. It’s just a plant. Maybe some can use it and be successful, but I haven’t seen any real evidence of this. My son will tell you it was a gateway drug for him.

I personally believe that people who use drugs self-medicate. They may say they use for pleasure, but really, they’re just trying to escape something…fear…anxiety…pain…guilt. Something they either aren’t prepared – or don’t want – to deal with.

I’ve come to the conclusion that drugs are powerful. More powerful than me. They lie. They destroy. And they kill.

I wish I could wipe them off the face of the Earth. But that probably won’t happen before they wipe more kids off my block.

I once took on a freelance writing gig for a PR firm. They wanted me to write a print ad for a housing community. When I asked where I should source the information from, they said, “Oh, just look at the community’s website.” Stupidly, I did. Big mistake. The website identified the community’s “unique selling proposition” as offering large, single-level, Mediterranean-style homes. So that’s what I wrote about – large, single-level, Mediterranean-style homes. Proudly, I turned in my highly creative copy to the PR firm. A few hours later they tossed it back into my court saying, “That’s not what the client wants to say.” Really? You could have fooled me!

That was lesson number one for me in demanding a creative brief from clients. Even if clients don’t want to fill it out themselves – and many don’t – I’ll ask the creative brief questions over the phone. Oftentimes, they have the information in their heads, but don’t share it or can’t articulate it with their creative team. And because no one’s a mind reader, critical information may be forgotten or ignored. A creative brief gives the copywriter a road map to follow for staying on strategy. And it gets everyone – clients included – on the same page for the direction the communication will take. Below is a sample of the questions found on a creative brief:

Current Situation
(Key Fact):
A one-to-two sentence description that defines the problem or opportunity. It should
describe the relevant events or conditions in the market place.

Consumer Problem:
This is what’s on the prospect’s mind – it is the obstacle that must be overcome in
order for us to achieve our advertising objective. It is what the consumer needs and
is something that advertising can influence.

Assignment
(Advertising Objective):
This is what we want to accomplish with our advertising – it’s how we want the
customers/prospects to respond and/or act. It must solve the consumer problem.

Marketing Objective:
This is your objective for advertising – It must be solved by the advertising objective.

Marketing Strategy

Product Positioning:
This is the general description of how the development is / should be positioned in
the minds of the customers. It’s a characterization of what makes your development
worth choosing.

Target Audience: This is how we define our prospects in terms of who they are:
• Demographics
• Affinity groups (associations)
• Relationship to development
1. New versus existing prospects
2. User/decision maker/buyer/influencer
• Segments

Competition:
This is a description of all that you’re up against

Direct competition – details competitors and competitor activities

Indirect competition – other choices (out of category)

Creative Strategy
This is the primary reason why the prospect will want to choose your development
over all others. It is the significant benefit that only your development provides is the
unique selling proposition

Main Idea(s) to Communicate:
(Features/Benefits/Reasons Why)
This is why the benefit is truly beneficial to the prospect – it is how the prospect can
envision the benefit to them. It is the solution to the Consumer Problem.

Call to Action: This is exactly what/how we want the prospect to respond.

Creative Considerations/BackgroundInformation:
Any/all other related information that should be considered in the creative process
that otherwise does not fit in the previous sections. Typically, it is a review of market
conditions/activity leading up to the Key Fact.

Net Impression:
The “Wow” statement, this is the consumer takeaway – the prevailing thought of
how the Consumer problem is overcome in the consumer’s mind.

Mandatory/Legal Requirements:
The complete list of everything that must be included with the communication

Deliverables/Schedule:

Quantity/ Budget:

1. Have a strategic plan and work it
2. Know your audience
3. Consider non-traditional media – garbage can wraps, floor stickers, building murals, etc.
4. If your competitors are zigging, you should zag
5. Make your message dramatize the benefit of what you’re selling
6. Make the product the hero – visually and verbally
7. Don’t shout at your readers – make them want to jump into your ad
8. Don’t make it look like advertising
9. Resist the usual
10. Entertain your audience

So Twitter is a neat idea, but I can’t seem to remember to tweet. I do much better posting updates on Facebook. Maybe it’s because I’m on it all the time talking to friends. On Twitter, I get notices that people or companies I don’t even know are following me. It’s a little weird. It feels a little bit like being stalked. At least on Facebook I can see who’s following me. I might like Twitter better if I could get it on my Blackberry. But there seems to be technical difficulties with T-Mobile. Maybe I should enjoy my good fortune.