Can You Slogo?
by
Barb Hansen
September 2007
Do
you know what a slogo is? A new dance? A new type
of electronic device? A local gourmet delicacy?
Nope. None of the above.
Slogo is the nickname that advertising gurus use for
a slogan that becomes part of a company’s logo.
Creating the perfect company slogan ain’t easy.
There are good ones. There are bad ones. And
perfection doesn’t exist on our planet.
Even the best ones usually hold up only a few years.
McDonalds advertises so much it changes its slogan
every three years or so just to stay culturally
fresh.
Drum roll please … ta da … Southwest Florida Yachts
will be 25 years old in 2009 and Vic and I thought
the time is right for us to have a real company
slogan just like the big companies. We’ll put it on
ads and brochures, websites and letterhead, just
like the big companies.
With a company slogan our yacht chartering, yacht
school and yacht sales enterprise tucked away on a
pretty little Florida tidal creek will be right up
there with Rice Krispies’ Snap, Crackle and Pop,
United Airlines’ Fly the Friendly Skies, and
Nike’s Just Do It.
But, like I said, creating the ideal company slogan
is not easy. Kentucky Fried Chicken has a great
slogan, Finger-lickin’ good. But, alas,
American slang doesn’t always translate into other
languages very well. In Chinese finger-lickin’ good
became “Eat your fingers off.” And The Pepsi
Generation slogan somehow became, in China, “Pepsi
brings your ancestors back from the grave.”
The experts say a slogan is like mental shorthand
for what the company sells or what it does or what
they want you to do or feel. Thus you get slogans
like Xerox’ The Document Company, McDonald’s
I’m Loving It, Macintosh’s Think Different,
and one of Vic’s favorites, Home Depot – You can
do it. We can help.
At
our company somebody can learn to operate a yacht,
charter a yacht, then buy a yacht, and some even put
their yacht back into charter service to offset the
expense. So we needed a slogan that generally
rewarded all three operations.
After much brainstorming and deliberating over long
lists late at night in the, ahem, executive offices,
we have selected our first company slogan.
The new slogan, underscored with stylistic blue
“waves” is – Experience the Boating Life! It
is positioned just below the Southwest Florida
Yachts logo. We like it because it encourages
individuals to investigate the boating way of life.
And, after all, this is what we’re selling. It’s
not just a product or a service; it’s a lifestyle
Vic and I are as excited today about what we do at
Southwest Florida Yachts as we were when we started
almost 25 years ago. We continue to be thrilled
helping people get into boating and seeing them
adopt boating as a life-long adventure, with the
proper skills and experience under their keels.
All that said, may I leave you with this medical
advice? If you ever have to create a company slogan,
take two aspirins and don’t call me in the morning.
And do me a favor. Don’t translate our slogan into
another language.
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