To break even and maintain competitive advantage in the ever changing business environment of the 21st century, companies around the world are employing a broad range of advertising and marketing strategies specifically aimed at appealing to the consumers’ most intrinsic and latent motives regarding their purchasing or spending behaviour.
Company taglines, also known as slogans, are one such technique that has found wide usage within the marketing industry. This essay purposes to evaluate the outcomes companies hope to achieve by employing taglines and if the strategy is working in the broader marketing domain.
Jackson Hewitt, a tax preparation company operating in a number of countries, has a tagline “you get more in return”, while Pemco Insurance has a popular tagline asserting that “safe drivers get it.” Through the use of such slogans, companies, more than anything else, aim to convey information on the product or service on offer as well as to occupy prime consumers’ memory space.
The memory space is inarguably influenced by the appeal made by the tagline to their latent motives, especially when it comes to purchasing or buying behaviour. In this perspective, a tagline or slogan reinforce consumers’ brand awareness, brand identity, brand evaluations, and brand loyalty by serving as a memory aid (Rosengren & Dahlen, 2006).
Companies have also mastered the art and science of using taglines to build brand equity. This is usually achieved through the employment of the taglines to facilitate the establishment and upholding of a strong brand identity inarguably aimed at offering a framework for continuity throughout the advertising and marketing campaigns (Quester & Hawkins, 2011).
More importantly, the slogans have been used by companies intending to influence consumer behaviour to link the brand to a product category, hence generating more brand awareness among consumers.
Moving on, it is true that companies have employed taglines with the hope of influencing the customers’ product beliefs and brand evaluations. Indeed, marketing practitioners are of the opinion that slogans are effective in shaping evaluations by acting as primers to specific brand associations, hence triggering direct appeals to the consumers’ latent motives.
Such a cause-effect relationship is advantageous to marketers since it does not only facilitate the consumers to relate more with the product or service being advertised, but it also encourages increased purchasing behaviour, hence enhance sales and competitive advantage (Quester & Hawkins, 2011).
It is indeed clear that taglines or slogans shape brand awareness by shifting the likeability of a product or service from the advertising scheme itself to the consumers’ latent motives. This factor to a large extent influence how consumers perceive a specific brand being advertised in the market, both in its own intrinsic right and in relation to its competitors (Quester & Hawkins, 2011).
As such, it can be argued that taglines or slogans trigger consumers’ latent motives to be able to decipher information about a specific brand in the market and be able to compare it with other products under the same category so as to make a rational purchasing decision.
Taglines or slogans, in my view, have worked effectively to appeal to the consumers’ latent motives aimed at influencing their purchasing and spending behaviour. As already mentioned in this paper, taglines serve as a memory aid and hence will definitely trigger brand awareness, brand loyalty and brand evaluations among consumers.
This is good for business since consumers are not only more likely to identify with the product being advertised, but their beliefs about the product will be positively influenced by the tagline, implying more sales, brand identity, and loyalty.
List of References
Quester, P.P.S., & Hawkins, D (2011). Consumer Behaviour: Implications for Marketing Strategy, 6th Ed. North Ryde NSW: McGraw-Hill
Rosengren, S., & Dahlen, M (2006). Brand-Slogan Matching in a Cluttered Environment. Journal of Marketing communications, Vol. 12, Issue 4, pp 263-279