Distilling Your Brand Essence: How to Create Your Tagline!

Is it possible to describe the most important aspects and essence of your business in five words or less?

You bet! And, it’s not only possible, we’re going to show you how to do exactly that in this blog as we talk about your Brand Essence (aka your Tagline).

Your Brand Essence is an intriguing and thought-provoking tagline that expresses your uniqueness, authenticity, and the intangible attributes that make your brand YOU. It differentiates your brand from others and taps into your audience on an emotional level.

I know what you’re thinking, this sounds a whole lot like the Brand Position Statement you recently blogged about.

But it’s a little different. Your Brand Position is a description of how you want your business to be perceived in the minds of your customer, is a bit longer, and tells more about what you do.

Your Brand Essence is a powerful tagline. A short, impactful zinger that conveys who YOU are!

Ideally, you have both.

For today, let’s focus on the guiding principles for developing a unique, meaningful, and concise Brand Essence.

The right Brand Essence gives you currency in the market, helps you make better decisions for your business, and allows you to attract the RIGHT customers and grow. It informs these clients and customers how you want them to perceive your company, and describes what’s in it for them.

Your Brand Essence Needs to be Thought-Provoking, Intriguing, and Meaningful.

If you look at some of the taglines of large brands, you’ll notice a lot of them don’t say anything about the actual products or what they do, they simply paint an overall feeling about the brand and how it can impact your life.

Let’s take a look at some of the big-name brands and what their Brand Essence taglines are. See if any of these ring any bells for you:

“Just do it.”

“Eat fresh.”

“Impossible is Nothing.”

“Think Different”

“The Breakfast of Champions”

“Because You’re Worth It.”

Chances are, if you didn’t recognize all of these, you recognized at least a couple! Here’s which companies they belong to:

“Just do it.” Nike

“Eat fresh.” Subway

“Impossible is Nothing.” Adidas

“Think Different” Apple

“The Breakfast of Champions” Wheaties

“Because You’re Worth It.” L’Oreal

These are all great examples of memorable, intriguing, and interesting Brand Essence statements that say a lot in just a couple of words.

You can leverage the power of what these big brands are saying for yourself, no matter the size of your business. Perhaps you’re thinking, “Well, these companies have big budgets and can pay people to sit around and craft this stuff up!” You don’t need a colossal budget to create a powerful Brand Essence. You just need to tap into a few key elements.

And remember, for some people, this is the easiest thing in the world to create, while for others it can be the hardest. There’s no magical formula necessarily, it’s about putting words to something indescribable.

Here are Six Things to Consider as You Get Started

What Makes Your Brand Unique?

Your Brand Essence needs to communicate how you’re unique and different from similar businesses. This can be explicit or implied. For example, let’s look at Disneyland who’s brand essence is “The Happiest Place on Earth” (implied), and M & M’s “It melts in your mouth, not in your hand” (explicit). You can show you’re different without having to spell it out.

Keep it Concise.

The key is to make your Brand essence short and concise. You want to focus on the experience the brand delivers. Going longer than this will lose impact and people’s interest.

Your Brand Essence Should Connect and Matter to Your Audience.

The essence of your brand must be meaningful to your audience. It’s about them and the benefits you offer, not you. L’Oreal is a great example of this with their tagline, “Because you’re worth it.” It connects to their mostly female customer base without even needing to say anything directly about the products.

Your Brand Essence should Always be Reliable.

If people are having a steady experience with your brand, they will connect with what you’re putting out into the world. Ever heard of “brand loyalty”? This is based on consistency and being a beacon of reliability. Big brands use consistency and reliability in their logos, fonts, and colours. The same should go for you throughout the entirety of your branding, and your brand essence.

The Essence of Your Brand Must Feel Natural and Genuine

Your audience shouldn’t have to question whether or not your Brand Essence is true; they should accept it as what they already believe (or are open to believing) about your brand. Don’t pretend to be something you’re not, because you think that’s what you “should” be doing to create a sustainable business. Find your voice and embrace it. The right audience will embrace it as well.

Don’t Limit Your Brand Essence to What You’re Offering Now

It’s important, from a business perspective, to ensure your Brand Essence is scalable. When thinking about your brand, you need to look ahead to the future. Things change and you can’t always account for everything that will happen or the directions you’ll go, but if you build flexibility for scaling into your brand, you’ll have one less thing to modify down the road.

Put it All Together

Remember, if you aren’t sure what your brand essence is or you don’t feel like you’re figuring it out right away, don’t worry! You will! You can get closer by starting to brainstorm and writing down every thought and idea you have.

Write a Crappy First Draft

Don’t worry about the rules of capitalization or punctuation, you’ll ultimately end up with the style that best fits your brand. If you get stuck, read what other people have said about you, look at your why statement, your brand personality, and your brand position and use these other elements as indicators of direction. Then step away and come back with fresh eyes.

You’ll Know it When You See It

As soon as a Brand Essence is right, you’ll know it. Just stay focused on what matters most to your ideal clients, what makes you different, and the words and phrases that pop up repeatedly in relation to your brand.

Come from a place of expressing the heart of what you do for your clients and remember that branding is about feeling and creating emotion.

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I will fully admit that this is very difficult to do for yourself. (even I hired someone to help me with my branding - including the tagline) So if you still need help - don't worry! We create your Brand Essence as part of our signature program, Brand Camp.

Check out our next session here!