Slogans in Advertising!

When well used and off repeated; a slogan can become a part of the fabric of a brand.But , how do You build a strong connection between slogan and brand?It's not simply a matter of tagging a slogan onto an ad,because an ad with a slogan isn't necessarily more effective than an ad without one.A slogan that is merely an end line or sign off to an ad; is unlikely to make a contribution to the success of the brand.The creative must integrate the brand and the slogan in such a way that the slogan can strengthen branding,or have some positive effect.

Lets think about Bangladeshi Advertising arena . As we all know, Bangladeshi ad industry is mostly dominated by Mobile operator companies.so first have a quick recap of those particular ads.

....kache thakun..Stay Closer ; current market leader GP has got this slogan and probably most of their creative materials , be it TVCs, be it Printing Campaigns; have an attachment to this motto or slogan.Think , say for example, duniya kapano 30 minute , babu beche thakle tar boyosh hoto(featuring 71)..,or recently the ad opekkha(A village woman waiting for her husband to come) every where we find the emotional attachment of kache thaka , Staying closer to the core of heart, closer to the beloved ones, closer to the beautiful nature. the more these beautiful ads have been aired or published the more GP has increased its customer, increased its brand loyalty.needless to mention beside the country wide powerful network, these slogan led creative campaigns have contributed a lot to GP's growth even though its the most expensive mobile network now. see, one single slogan how powerfully relates the theme of their campaigns to the ultimate effectiveness! A round of applause for the agency and directors behind the success.

on the other hand, with the slogan jekhanei ache din bodoler cheshta , shekhanei ache Banglalink ; Blink started their marketing campaign. and truly the inception was vibrant and one of the best kicking off in BD ad industry.but lately, Blink market share has gone down significantly.One of the main reasons behind this fall is recent promotional campaigns which could not live up to the mark of their slogan ; 'change'. All the TVCs of Blink 'Desh' have shown us nothing but excessive application of jingles , dancing prowess and make-up-rapped models.those couldn't relate anyway to their basic tagline or theme 'change' ;at least, from my perspective.

I am a new comer of this blog, and while going through a lot of recent write-ups here, i found out a good one based on Aktel's re-branding towards Robi. http://bangladeshcorporate.blogspot.com/2010/03/aktel-becomes-robi-how-rebranding-gets_9421.htmlAt the very beginning it was not clearly understandable why such an unorthodox re-branding pathway Aktel or Robi Axiata has chosen. consequently I thought may be they are targeting mostly the rural market of BD.their brand name Robi itself , some flamboyant color of the logo and the pattern of their promotion compelled me to think so.But what about their slogan??Apon shoktite ujjol..the slogan itself is sort of hermetic to understand and when they try to reveal the meaning of this slogan through TVCs , it becomes harder even for the city dwelling educated market let alone the villagers. recently the new Ad chayar moto network ache shobkhane was good indeed.but when it comes to the perfect blending of Slogan with the creative, the question remains..

finally ..the Airtell Saga... fuhh... seriously! who came up with this cliched slogan : bhalobashar tane , kache ane..may be they targeted mostly the youth generation, but as far as they are going on now (think about incessant text messages from the operator itself too) with a cliched slogan, it is obvious that sooner they might lose a huge amount of loyal users , what Warid built with its flexible VASs.

so we can say, its a must to integrate the slogan of a Brand with the theme of a creative to retain a brand successfully . As I said earlier, slogan should be reflected through the creative in such a way that it strengthens the brand's perceived image by the consumer, not just create a new unmatched image.it might turn into a beautiful artwork , but in terms of brand positioning its just a mistake.