Taglines in sheep’s clothing

If you’ve ever been tasked with creating a name for a company or product, you know it’s not that easy. It’s one thing to come up creative choices. It’s quite another thing to find a name candidate that can be registered with the trademark office.

It’s the same with taglines and slogans, perhaps even more so.

By creating a tagline, you’re looking for the words or a phrase that’s intended to differentiate your brand and define its relevance to your business or product over the long term. It’s not a fleeting ad campaign. It’s not a whim.

However, if you can establish that you’ve creating a tagline that doesn’t conflict with someone else’s, you stand a good chance of registration and protection over the long run. Consider a few of the most successful trademarks that hit the mark—The Ultimate Driving Machine for BMW, The Breakfast of Champions for Wheaties, A Diamond Is Forever for DeBeers, and When You Care Enough to Send the Very Best for Hallmark. Each demonstrates a clear connection to the source brand.

Slogans are a bit trickier. In many ways, slogans are the antithesis of taglines. They seem less specific to the source brand. They’re intended to be less permanent. They seem less protectable as a trademark.

So, for example, take I’m Lovin’ It for McDonalds, Expect More. Pay Less. for Target, or Just Do It for Nike.

However, there are significant exceptions for slogan registration, and the exceptions seem to be more of the rule at this point.

A slogan can be less specific to a brand if it’s still sufficiently creative and differentiating in nature, and it develops through marketing what’s called “secondary meaning” over time. So, although it seemed that McDonalds, Target, and Nike really created slogans, they all have registered trademarks at this point.  Even Excedrin’s The Extra Strength Pain Reliever slogan, which seems very descriptive in nature, has gained trademark protection by developing secondary meaning over time.

A rule of thumb (statutory presumption) is that five years is a reasonable time to establish secondary meaning. However, with the power of marketing these days, the time is often shorter. Consider IBM’s Smarter Planet advertising campaign. The slogan has become trademarked in a relatively short time (even though it does appear that it’s not the dominant theme any more).

So in developing what’s seems to be a slogan, but is intended to be a registered tagline, be prepared to invest in it over time.