Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

From the Brand Building: 10 word Elevator Pitch forum, a lively discussion has popped up regarding how to formulate a tagline that gets to the heart of the marketing matter in an effective way. 

Quite by happenstance, I received an industry e-newsletter announcing a tagline contest. 

I thought it would be an interesting exercise to write one from the consumers point of view by people who may want to build a home in the future and that currently don`t even know the ICF option exists. 

The link to the announcement is:

http://www.cement.org/homes/ch_newsletter2007-3&4.asp#IC FA

Any interested parties, please feel free.  I know from my perspective, this would be very insightful.  I believe all business owners can find an adaptation of this to help in how their business is perceived by their prospective markets as well. 

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To the SuN community:  If you are interested in this exercise, please jump in after the "exchange" of views on the next two pages.  I apologize to all for the direction this went, not my intention at all. If you feel the need to respond to any of the exchange, then send me a PM. 

ICFA

Where "Form and Function" create "ONE" Strong Foundation

I just sent this one in. Hey! That was fun!

You can substitute foundation with a lot of words: Building, Relationship, Philosophy, etc.

Wow! In addition to a $250 Debit card, the winner gets an invite to the Insulated Concrete Form Association`s Annual meeting in St. Louis! Those concrete trade shows can get pretty wild; I`ve heard stories.

That sounds like a party waiting to happen, my friend! And with a whole $250 to blow, there`s lots of concrete hijinks just waiting to happen. Imagine all the Sakrete you could run out and get to fill the hotel fountain with - imagine their horror the next morning! This is one event I really shouldn`t miss.

Thanks, but I`ll just concentrate on my clients who pay me $25,000 to do that. That way, I can buy as much concrete as I want and not have to go to St. Louis.

Concretely yours,

Jeff

BrandAlchemy, et. al.

Ok, Ok, Ok,

You can get your tongue out of your cheek.  : )

Clarity is essential, and I assumed a lot with my post.

I guess I kind of overlooked something with this. I was not posting this as an invitation to their contest.  When I said "Feel Free", I was talking about posting here to generate dynamic interaction in a real-world process of creating tag lines to a product and service most potential customers may not even know exists.  How do you reach out to a market that doesn`t know you exist, doesn`t know about your product/service, and doesn`t know they may have a need?  

I started this as a learning exercise and benefit to SuN members.

Having said all that, post entries to their contest if you like, however, their rules state they are accepting submissions only from their association members (which I believe to be a BIG mistake).    So I don`t know if BrandAlchemy`s payoff in sakrete is even available.  

BTW, if you do win the contest, let us know! 

As a consequence of that Brand-Building forum, I`ve been paying lots more attention to all kinds of nonsense advertising I get.

One thing I`ve noticed is that it`s not so easy to tell the difference between a "tagline" and a "headline."

I know from the other forum you had your doubts about a contest involving taglines, so I didn`t interpret the post the way BrandAlchemy did. This is just a fun topic to play with, and see about setting up a "directed tagline."

The problem of having consumers generate a tagline though, is will the result be a tagline for a company....or a headline for an ad? :-)

I think any `contest` - external or internal to a company - by non-marketers gets you just what you pay for it: nothing. Marketing professionals do what we do for a reason: it isn`t easy. Throwing your entire company identity out to a bunch of consumers isn`t any wiser than having a lawn mower engine repair guy work on your Porsche. We fill an important niche and our work is a lot more critical to a company`s success than it appears. Sure, it may look easy, but so does air traffic control - until something crashes.

I disagree.  While I don`t believe that the public will necessarily come up with the winner, I believe having their input on a contest like this will give an important insight into the market`s perception of PCA`s product offering. 

The reason this has such an appeal to me is that I am one of the top installers of this type of product in North Texas.  Over 85% of the homes we build use this technology.  I also know most of the other installers and while they know how to build houses, they don`t seem to do a very good job marketing their services/products.

Most of the buying public doesn`t know ICF is an option, don`t know to look for it and certainly don`t have the necessary data to make comparisons to other technologies.

While this is in my industry, I believe this exercise can be very informative for all business owners when it comes to understanding their market.

BrandAlchemy, as far as your professional services are concerned, I strongly believe that every business can benefit from companies such as yours.  I just think that getting public input to someone such as yourself will generate a stronger result.  I assume you don`t do what you do in a vacuum and that a business owner`s input is only one small part of the data you work with.  You tell me.

 

Sure, most of my time is spent on the internal issues of the business, not my own. That`s why consumers doing the branding doesn`t usually result in a great piece of work - they just shoot from the hip and make stuff up, without understanding deeply the constituents who are impacted by the brand.

Anyway, I don`t work for free, so it`s kind of a moot point on this particular issue. If and when these guys get tired of what they are getting and want professional help, that`s another story.

You hit the nail on the head: understanding the market. How is someone with zero experience and even less exposure to this concept supposed to have any clue as to how to brand it?

The public has no opinion of this technology precisely because the branding isn`t compelling to begin with, and that won`t get better with a contest of uninformed and uncommitted people just taking a shot at it.

You`re also correct in saying that the public doesn`t know about it, doesn`t care about it, don;t know where to look for it, and don`t have the necessary data, etc. Then, how is this same market supposed to brand it?

I guess I`m looking at this as a way to get inside the market`s collective mind.  Maybe I`m off-base here, but I don`t see the tag-line as the brand.  From the previous forum, it seems to be a way to tell the prospective market WIIFM?

Their "from the hip/make stuff up" is based on their perception of what the product is.  And it probably isn`t where the business wants to be, BUT, it can possibly be a starting point in the education of the market.  That may be a good starting point to work from?

BTW, in a real-world situation I would not be interested in every joe-bag-of-doughnuts.  It would be people who are entertaining the thought of building a custom home. 

Uh-oh...."don`t see the tagline as the brand?"

Isn`t that the whole point of the "brand.......building" thread? Isn`t that the discussion and its basis? The tagline is a major part of that brand-building. I`m going with Jeff here, and maybe reiterating one important point.

Note that you`ve (burningreen) said that the public doesn`t know that ICF is an option. How come? Is it that the knowledge can only be stored in certain genetic types of brains? :-) No...it`s a weak marketing campaign.

Part of that marketing is to have as its goal that MOST of the public is aware of the ICF as an option. If not most, then a bunch (technical term). It`s why marketing people do get paid high amounts of money.

As Ralf has said, also on that other thread, marketing is a complex interconnection of many processes and events. The tagline is one of the more visible, or at least a long-term result. The logo is very important. Content and all these other aspects of marketing, they all connect.

I`ll agree that consumer input to a tagline could be interesting for brainstorming, but that`s because I`m a consumer and have little interest in ICF or in Marketing as a profession. It`s just "fun" for me. However, I`m using as my basis that I was a professional musician. There were specific times set aside where "the audience" (consumers) could or might be invited up on stage for some input.

These usually were private parties, holiday parties, and other times where the real band considered the time as "throwaway" time, mostly for public diplomacy, to "let" the audience "feel" part of something. That something was meaningless, in terms of the overall music being produced and the stage show. It was "make-nice" time, if you know what I mean.

So I can see how BrandAlchemy would view this contest as "make-nice" time, meaningless in terms of professional results, and just a sort of game. I also can see how the ICF company might use the contest as part of a clever marketing campaign to increase visibility to the company. But I don`t think they should *seriously* consider whatever is the resulting, winning tagline. At least without already having in place a professional marketing agency.