10 Of The Best Advertising Taglines Of All Time
The best advertising taglines distil a brand's essence into just a few words.
Along with the company’s logo and its corporate colours, they help to make the brand distinctive and memorable.
And these two qualities are essential to successful advertising; good luck building an enduring brand if you don’t stand out from the crowd and you’re easily forgotten.
Taglines are the work of copywriters, and below are some of the best of all time:
1. De Beers: ‘A Diamond is Forever’
The Great Depression was, unsurprisingly, a disaster for the US economy.
At the height of the Depression in 1933, nearly 25% of the nation's workforce were unemployed.
With most people just trying to survive, the market for luxury items collapsed.
As things began to pick up post WW2, the South African mining company De Beers needed a campaign to reinvigorate the desire for their diamonds.
And a young copywriter by the name of Mary Frances Gerety delivered that and more.
She began her career at N. W. Ayer & Son advertising agency in 1943 and came up with the line ‘A Diamond is Forever’ in 1948.
The tagline is still in use today, and Advertising Age magazine named ‘A Diamond is Forever’ the slogan of the 20th century.
Gerety continued working at the agency until 1970 and is credited for inventing the modern concept of an engagement ring.
Before the campaign’s debut proposing to a woman with a diamond ring was not common practice.
2. MasterCard: ‘There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s MasterCard’
In the mid-1990s, the credit card company MasterCard was losing market share to its rival Visa.
It turned to the advertising agency McCann to reverse its fortunes.
They did not disappoint.
First aired in 1997, ‘Priceless’, as it became known, is one of the world's most recognised taglines.
It has spawned countless memes and witty rip-offs.
As they say, ‘imitation is the sincerest form of flattery’.
3. BMW: ‘The Ultimate Driving Machine’
BMW was founded in 1916 as a manufacturer of aircraft engines but is most well known as a car maker.
In the early 1970s, it needed a way to differentiate itself from its luxury rivals like Mercedes and Jaguar.
‘The Ultimate Driving Machine’ tagline did just that.
It was created in 1975 by Martin Puris, then the chief executive of the agency Ammirati & Puris and is one of the oldest running slogans in the automotive industry.
In the late 2000s, it was replaced by the ironically lifeless ‘Joy’ campaign.
This was so universally disliked that it was swiftly dropped, and BMW returned to their senses by reinstating ‘The Ultimate Driving Machine’ line.
4. Nike: ‘Just Do It’.
Nike is one of the world’s most recognised brands, and it can thank the iconic and versatile ‘Just Do It’ slogan for much of it.
According to the ad agency Wieden and Kennedy, which came up with the line, it was inspired by the final words of the notorious Utah killer Gary Gilmore in the 1970s.
Facing a firing squad, he said, “Let's do it".
The co-founder of Wieden and Kennedy, Dan Wieden, was inspired to adapt the phrase to ‘Just Do It’.
The above 1988 TV ad introduced the tagline to the world, featuring an 80-year-old man jogging across the Golden Gate bridge.
If he can run 17 miles every day, you can surely strap on a pair of Nikes and do the same.
5. Patek Phillipe: ‘You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation’
Patek Philippe is a Swiss luxury watch manufacturer founded in 1839 and is considered to be one of the most prestigious watch brands in the world.
This creature of expensive timepieces is credited with inventing features such as the perpetual calendar, the chronograph and the minute repeater.
Introduced in 1996, the original ads for ‘You never really own a Patek Philippe. You simply look after it for the next generation’ were created by the London advertising agency Leagas Delaney.
What’s so clever about the line is that it positions the watch as a family heirloom and not just a device for telling the time.
It also helps justify the luxury watch’s price point, which is many times that of a Casio, which functionally does exactly the same.
6. L’Oreal: ‘Because you’re worth it’
L’Oréal is the world's largest cosmetics company, with annual revenues of more than $30 billion.
Its famous tagline was coined in 1971 by Ilon Specht, a 23-year-old female copywriter at the New York ad agency McCann.
It tapped into the women's rights movement of the time and acted as a symbol of female empowerment.
Up until then, women didn’t have a voice in advertising as most ads were written by men.
The line was originally written as ‘Because I’m worth it’ but changed to its current form sometime in the 80s.
It’s still in use to this day.
Genius.
7. Avis: ‘We Try Harder’
In the early 1960s, Hertz was America's number one car rental company.
Avis was number two.
Somehow, the company had to make a virtue of this.
The legendary ‘We Try Harder’ line was introduced in 1962 by the ad agency Doyle Dane Bernbach.
Their clever wording did the unthinkable: it turned Avis' runner-up position into a marketing advantage.
8. Red Bull: ‘It Gives You Wings’.
The Austrian entrepreneur Dietrich Mateschitz founded Red Bull in the mid-1980s, inspired by a health beverage from Thailand.
Mateschitz also created the company's unique marketing concept, which birthed the world-famous slogan ‘Red Bull gives you wings’.
The metaphor being that the energy drink gives you so much energy that you could fly after drinking a can.
Perhaps not surprising given one 250ml can contains 80 mg of caffeine.
9. Skittles: ‘Taste the Rainbow’
Skittles, the hard-shelled fruit-flavoured confectionery, was first made in the United Kingdom in 1974.
Five years later, they were introduced to the North American market.
In 1994, a copywriter at the New York advertising agency D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles came up with the line ‘Taste the Rainbow’.
It’s one of the longest-running advertising campaigns in history and is responsible for some deliciously off-the-wall and highly memorable advertising.
10. Ronseal: ‘It Does Exactly What It Says on the Tin’
In the 1990s, Ronseal’s wood varnish was fighting for market share against many more established brands.
In response, Ronseal’s marketing director requested that the London advertising agency HHCL create a campaign to demystify their product.
The line they came up with, ‘Does exactly what it says on the tin’, was launched in 1994 and swiftly entered the British vernacular.
And you can’t get a much better marker for how well a brand has penetrated people’s consciousness than its tagline becoming part of the language!
If you’re interested in learning how to write taglines like these, then you will enjoy our copywriting course made in collaboration with Cannes Lions and featuring some of the best copywriting professionals.
