Okay – here’s a little slogan quiz. Below is a list of brands, companies and organisations, see if you can guess the slogans? 

Heinz

Nike

Ronseal

Hippy Movement

Tesco

Kit Kat

Audi

Apple

Independent

KFC

Interflora

Ministry of Information HMGov (1939)

Coca-Cola

Marmite

L’Oreal

Kellogg’s Rice Krispies

John LewisFrench Revolution

Heineken

Millwall

 Ok so now it’s time to scroll down to reveal the answers!

Beanz Meanz Heinz

Just do it.

Does exactly what it says on the tin

Make Love not War

Every little helps

Have a break… Have a KitKat

Vorsprung Durch Technik

Think different

It is, are you?

It’s Finger Lickin’ Good

Say it with Flowers

Keep Calm and Carry On

It’s the real thing

You either love it or hate it

Because I’m worth it

Snap! Crackle! Pop!

Never knowingly undersold

Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite

Refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach

No-one like us, we don’t care

This little test is the stuff of pub debates or dinner party fun, everyone likes to think they know the answers to advertising slogans. In the same way, they have fondness for remembering  old TV theme tunes or Hollywood film stars. The fact slogan memories are so strong demonstrates how successful advertising has been, along with TV and film, at entering our collective cultural psyche. Often the slogans are aimed at children, which then generates future memories full of the warm glow of nostalgia. What child does not remember the Rice Crispies slogan? I remember of course, despite my healthy interrogations of the slogan’s integrity. The feeble fizz of puffed-rice in milk certainly did not resemble the promised ‘merry chorus’ of – Snap! Crackle! Pop! Yet, one succumbs to the slogan’s inveigling claims anyway. Proof of a successful slogan.

Tesco’s ‘every little helps’ campaign is hugely successful. Creative Review’s commentator Nick Ashbury, makes an excellent rationale for the creative proposition: he describes how clever the strategy was at tapping into folk wisdom. Nick takes issue, however,  with the word ‘little’, but concludes that although one might not like the campaign, one can ‘admire’ it.

This brings to mind the latest anomaly on the advertising scene – the generally reviled ‘Go Compare’. Destined for long standings on future top-slogan lists – and no doubt also our grudging ‘admiration’ but based only on merits of memorability,  rather than its art.  Indeed, N. Monkey in my ‘Brain Boffins’ post, seems to  suggest ads like ‘Go Compare’ were put through the ‘neural lab’ in order to seek the highest possible readings of obnoxiousness. Still, the logic of creativity says this kind of solution is valid: effectiveness can supersede good taste. More recently ‘Compare the Market’ has successfully exploited a silly mnemonic to help people remember the product. In fact, the campaign might seem to have failed judging by the resulting confusion. But this ad is a great success and very memorable, clearly something that might not make sense or even has to be explained repeatedly can also qualify as having high creative value.

Slogans are a brilliant part of the creative process – they show how important it is to understand your product and audience perfectly is in order to create something meaningful and that resonate over time. Each of the slogans in Creative Review’s list has an engaging story to tell about how they ‘solved the problem’. My slogan, ‘step on it’ had a similar story, and was hard won – in the same way Creative Reveiw’s contributor Gordon Comstock describes the process: “cracking a line is like cracking a safe – there are a thousand combinations – but only one opens the door”.