Few Consumers Can Recall Company Slogans.

Despite millions of dollars spent annually creating and advertising corporate tag lines – those catchy lines of subtext often found beneath company logos – most Americans are unable to match even the most prominent tags with their corporate owners.

From a list of tag lines from 22 of the nation’s most heavy duty brands – including General Electric, Kmart, AT&T and other companies that spend more than $100 million annually on advertising – only six registered higher than a 10 percent recognition rate, with another six scoring 1 percent or less. Only Wal-Mart’s “Always low prices. Always.” was recognized by at least half (64%) of the survey’s 1,021 respondents. The slogans for Circuit City and Staples, on the other hand, were not identified by a single participant.

“These findings are a wake-up call to corporate America,” said Kelly O’Keefe, chairman and CEO of Emergence Inc., the Richmond, Va., brand consulting firm that commissioned the first Emergence Slogan Survey. “Too many brand managers are preoccupied with trying to define their brands on the head of a pin, attempting to distil their identities within the confines of a well-chosen word or phrase. In reality, brands are not built through nuance, and as this study shows, consumers pay little notice to this corporate fixation on advertising undertone.”

Most participants of the survey confessed to placing little value on corporate slogans, with nearly two in three (64%) indicating that they did not consider tag lines to be important. An even higher percentage took issue with the credibility of these slogans. Only 16 percent of respondents said the tags were “extremely” or “very” believable.

“If there is consumer skepticism about company tag lines, it was certainly borne out by this survey,” O’Keefe said. “We believe that the best tag lines are those that reflect or reinforce the consumer’s own experience with that brand. That is why Wal-Mart performed so well. Its slogan truly captures the Wal-Mart experience.”

Volkswagen also had a reasonably strong showing. The automaker’s venerable “Drivers wanted” slogan was identified by four in 10 survey participants, while Mazda’s “Zoom. Zoom.” tag was named by 19 percent and Toyota’s “Get the feeling” by 9 percent. Other car companies did not fare as well. Chrysler’s “Drive and love” and Ford’s “No boundaries” each were recognized by 4 percent of respondents, and Honda’s “The power of dreams” by less than 1 percent.

Lowe’s, the home improvement retailer, clearly got some help from its self-identifying tag, “Improving home improvement.” However, while 29 percent correctly linked Lowe’s with the slogan, an even higher percentage (35%) associated the tag line with another retailer.

Scoring the lowest were two retailers whose relatively new tag lines went unrecognized by everyone in the survey: Circuit City’s “We’re with you” and Staples’ “That was easy.” Only two respondents correctly could name Kmart’s “The stuff of life,” while three of those surveyed could identify Kohl’s “That’s more like it.”*

Technology and telecom companies also found tough going. Only 6 percent of respondents could identify either Apple’s “Think different,” Hewlett Packard’s “invent” or AT&T’s “Talk is good.” General Electric’s “Imagination at work” was recognized by 3 percent while Microsoft’s “Your potential. Our passion.” was named by less than 1 percent (six participants).

According to O’Keefe, some of the companies’ tag lines had particularly low recognition rates because they recently abandoned more familiar slogans (e.g. General Electric’s former “We bring good things to life.” and Staples’ “Yeah, we got that.” )

“The survey’s findings underscore the value of maintaining fidelity to a tag line,” O’Keefe said. “Too many corporate marketers suffer from brand fickleness, changing tag lines, logos and ad campaigns as often as they update the company directory. This obsession with newer and cooler tag lines is merely symptomatic of a larger issue. What companies need to understand is that brands are created over time from the inside out.”

(* Kohl’s stopped using this tag line in May 2003)

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Methodology
The telephone survey was conducted by Opinion Research Corporation from
July 10-13, 2003. Two randomly selected groups of 500-plus consumers from throughout the country were read a list of corporate tag lines and asked to identify the affiliated company. The polling has a margin of error of +/- 3%.