Brand slogan: why it is needed and how to create it

Slogan, motto and catchphrase: where the boundary lies

Confusion between these terms costs companies dearly — not because the words are similar, but because each has its own task, its own audience and its own shelf life. A slogan — an advertising formula tied to a brand or product, its job is to sell and make an impression in memory. A motto — a statement of principles, often internal: it is heard by employees at planning meetings, not by customers in an ad. A catchphrase — a call to action, living exactly as long as the situation remains relevant: a political campaign, a one-time event, a flash mob.

In practice, the boundary is tested by one question: will the phrase survive a change of product, leadership, and advertising agency? If yes — it is a slogan or motto. If the phrase loses meaning without a specific event — it is a slogan, and demanding longevity from it is meaningless.

Case study L'Oréal: why this phrase has been working for 55 years

In 1971 year, this formulation sounded almost boldly: a woman openly admitted her right to spend on herself, without justifying it to her husband or neighbors. The slogan did not describe the shampoo’s composition, nor did it mention the coloring technology — it spoke about the right to choose. It was precisely the lack of binding to a specific product that made the phrase invulnerable to changes in product lines: L'Oréal shampoos have changed dozens of times over half a century, but the mother slogan of the brand has not.

Here, there is a division into two levels. The product slogan lives under a specific product line and changes with each product rebranding — L'Oréal has hundreds of them, they are nameless to the general audience. The strategic slogan is embedded at the brand-platform level and is protected from commercial noise: marketers of the next generation do not touch it because it works for the company's overall identity, not for the sales of a specific tube of cream.

A typical mistake is an attempt to combine both levels into one phrase: both value and product advantage at once. The result is a construction that does not work either as an image or as a selling point, because the audience can retain only one idea from a brief contact with an advertisement, not two.

Why 3-7 words, and not 2 and not 10

The boundaries are not arbitrary. Research shows contradictory results: slogans of medium length (3-7 words) are easier to pronounce and remember in spoken language, although longer slogans are often better retained in memory than short ones.

With two words, the phrase often turns into a name or tagline without semantic load — compare 'Just Do It' (three words, a complete thought) with the hypothetical 'Do it now' without brand context: the second phrase says nothing specific about Nike. With ten words and more, the opposite happens: the construction becomes a description rather than a slogan, and the brain does not retain it fully after one listen in a radio spot or a fleeting glance at a banner. The 3-7 word range is the volume that can be pronounced in one breath and simultaneously sufficient for a complete thought.

How to test a slogan before launch

Most of the materials on this topic recommend 'testing on a focus group' and stop without naming a single figure. In practice, decisions are made based on four measurable thresholds, and without them, choosing between options becomes a matter of taste within the team.

• Idea comprehension. Respondents are shown a slogan without brand context and asked to describe in their own words what it conveys. If less than 60% articulate the idea correctly — the slogan is too abstract or ambiguous, and it is excluded from the shortlist without regret.
• Uniqueness. People often ask whether the phrase resembles slogans of other players in the category. If more than 50% respond "it sounds like others" — it fails the uniqueness test, even if the formulation sounds beautiful.
• Brand alignment. They check whether the phrase is associated specifically with this company and not with the market as a whole. The working threshold is 70% and above. Below this figure, the slogan is universal and does not stick to a specific brand in the audience's mind.
• Emotional reaction. They record the first emotion — interest, trust, indifference, rejection. Indifference is more dangerous than weak negativity: a phrase that evokes any kind of reaction is easier to refine than one that no one noticed.

Testing should be done in parallel with 3-5 variants on the same audience, not just a single final variant. Only comparison within one sample shows which formulation is objectively stronger — not just preferred by the team at an internal presentation.

Typical mistakes when creating a slogan

The most common mistake is using overused words: "best", "#1", "quality tested by time". The problem is not with the words themselves, but that they turn the phrase into a universal formulation applicable to any player in the category. There is a simple test for this ailment: plug in the name of a direct competitor into the slogan. If the phrase sounds logical and without contradictions — it does not specifically belong to your brand, and it needs to be rewritten from scratch.

The second mistake is trendy vocabulary that seems fresh today and sounds absurd in a couple of years. 'Neuroassistant' risks repeating the fate of the word 'nano' from the 2010-s: the prefix was everywhere — in cosmetics, in construction materials, in fund names — and disappeared along with the wave of hype. A strategic slogan is designed for five to ten years ahead, so trendy vocabulary is eliminated during the brainstorming stage, before the first round of testing.

The third mistake is mixing the product and image types within a single phrase, as mentioned earlier in the section about L'Oréal. A product slogan names a specific product advantage: for M&M's, it is "melts in your mouth, not in your hands." An image slogan forms the brand's overall image: for Apple, it is "Think Different." Trying to fit both levels into one short construction almost always results in a phrase that fails to clearly communicate either the product or the brand identity.

A slogan should always sound equally good.

A finished phrase is rarely tested across different media — and this is an oversight that surfaces only after launch. A slogan lives on a signboard, in the signature of a corporate letter, in an oral presentation at a trade show, in a thirty-second radio spot without visuals. In all these contexts, it must work without losing meaning or sound, and the graphical presentation, where it exists, is a bonus, not a crutch.

The working test is simple: read the slogan aloud three times in a row with different tones — neutral, ironic, solemn. If the phrase stumbles on a cluster of consonants, contains difficult-to-pronounce sound combinations, or requires contextual explanation during oral delivery — it will fail the test in real communication, where nobody reads text slowly and carefully. It is also worth running the written version without visual formatting, just as a plain text line without font accents: a slogan will inevitably end up in environments where graphics simply do not exist — in email signatures, in press release text, in video subtitles.