CorpComms Magazine

From next month, there will no longer be any 'more reasons to shop at Morrisons' - at least not in the supermarket group's advertising and branding. After 30 years, the company has decided to replace the well-known strapline to focus its positioning as 'the food specialist for everyone' and highlight its brand proposition with the tagline 'fresh for you every day'.

'The evolution of our brand identity is a very clear sign of our commitment to a fresher Morrisons,' explains chief executive Marc Bolland. 'We are making the most of our key strengths of freshness, service and value to give us strong appeal to shoppers everywhere.'

Well, not quite everywhere. Bloggers and contributors to branding websites have been scathing about the change. 'What a stupid cliché, one that every retailer claims, including the local chippy,' blasts one. 'It's not memorable, timeless or well-crafted,' moans another. 'Not catchy in the slightest,' complains a third.

Stirring comments, one might think, to describe the few words that go underneath the corporate logo and grocery adverts. But straplines matter.

Remember when Midland was 'the listening bank', Abbey National was 'turning banking on its head' and the Trustee Savings Bank was 'the bank that likes to say yes'? Now HSBC is 'the world's local bank', Barclays says 'now there's a thought' and NatWest believes it has found 'another way'. Retailers, consumer companies and telecom groups are similarly obsessed with straplines. Indeed, it is hard to name a major British supermarket group that doesn't have one. So when and why did these short phrases become so important?

The right message

'There are definitely cycles where taglines are in vogue,' says John Grant, co-founder of advertising agency St Lukes and now an independent branding consultant. 'They're not new - there have been books written about them going back to the 1960s - but there is a spate of corporate slogans at the moment, partly connected, I think, to climate change and sustainability issues. In the US, a lot of companies are using slogans with an 'eco' prefix.'

So what makes a good corporate strapline, and what are the pitfalls? 'It has to say something about who you are,' says Shane O'Riordain, corporate communications director at banking group HBOS. 'We've used 'get a little extra help from the Halifax' for a long time now. It's a very important slogan for us. We always focus the ads on the products, rather than use the slogan as wallpaper, and we always emphasise the X in the name, which is made up of people in the TV adverts.

'We want to be seen as a friendly and open bank and our market research tells us Halifax is seen as friendlier than any other UK financial institution. People have very good recall of the slogan and of the X. There are pros and cons of using taglines, however - there can be terrible headlines in the papers if things should go wrong and people decide to use the slogan against you. You have to weigh up the benefits against the pitfalls.'

Lasting impact

Many straplines don't last half as long as the one Morrisons took 30 years to jettison. Changes of management, brand relaunches and more gradual repositioning moves can all involve new straplines being introduced. Lloyds TSB, for example, whose past slogans include 'the thoroughbred bank', recently launched the tagline 'for the journey' as part of what Mary Walsh, director of corporate relations, calls a 'brand refresh'.

'It's aiming to articulate what we try to do for our customers,' she says, explaining that people's banking needs change as they develop, mature and age and that financial institutions need to be able to cater for the whole life cycle. 'Life changes all the time, hence the notion of a journey,' she points out. 'It was happy serendipity that soon after we launched the new tagline we announced we were becoming a partner of the London Olympics in 2012. It was a perfect fit and we are going to be with the journey right up to the Olympic Games. It's not just a slogan; it has to have resonance and integrity. That's very important if it is not to suffer any lessening of meaning.'

Straplines are also used as part of transformation campaigns aiming to create a more customerfocused culture and by companies adapting to massive structural change. Peter Morgan, director of communications at BT Group, says the latter is very much at the heart of BT's 'bringing it all together' strapline. 'It's very important,' he comments. 'Our company is currently at the centre of a huge convergence going on in communications. We're now selling broadband networks, IT services and communications that people are going to be getting on their iPods, laptop computers, TVs and PDAs - so 'bringing it all together' is a real statement of what BT is doing. It is quite a powerful image and an essential part of what we do and where the company is moving to. This is a company that used to just sell telephone lines. It is now doing so much more.' Catherine May, corporate communications director at Centrica, owner of the British Gas brand, agrees straplines can be used powerfully to get messages to consumers.

'We've just launched a new tagline for our Direct Energy business in North America,' she explains. 'It is 'simple, friendly, direct,' which I think is rather beautiful and perfectly formed. We don't have one for British Gas Energy in the UK at the moment. British Gas Services does use 'working together to get homes working' but that's more of a rallying cry we use internally.

'When taglines are right they're great. We've been toying with some ideas internally for British Gas so watch this space. In the energy market if you get these things right they can make a difference because brand is important when you are selling a commodity.'

Modest proposals

Despite such enthusiasm among adherents of straplines, Grant is unconvinced. 'It depends on the business sector but, generally speaking, slogans that claim something for you don't tend to add value in the UK,' he says. 'British folks usually don't like it when people boast about things. You're not supposed to make claims for yourself; people are supposed to deduce them. It's difficult territory. 'Words like trust, dignity and respect come to mind. We are supposed to have these things rather than making claims for ourselves with clever wordplay. It can be seen as a bit crass. People always say that when banks do it, it's a bit like they're all wearing baseball caps.'

Grant concedes that some slogans have been hugely successful. He cites John Lewis' long-time tagline 'never knowingly undersold' as 'a slogan that says something and connects with people'. He also likes 'Plan A. Because there is no plan B', Marks & Spencer's tagline for its £200 mn business-wide eco-plan to 'green' its business.

Twisted words

'Where companies are saying something substantial and not just making a general statement, I think it can work,' Grant notes. 'It's also different with supermarkets. Retailers are not grand corporations - they have shops people can walk into. Slogans sit okay with grocers; it's corporate slogans that worry me more. There's a simple test: is it saying something? If the chairman was actually saying it, would it mean anything or is it just empty wordplay?

'If it is credible and it is communicating something, I think it can work - but most corporate slogans do not do this because corporations are seen to be pompous. American companies are allowed to make claims and be overt but it is a particular problem in the UK where it always ends up becoming fodder for comedians who twist everything a company says because it is obvious hubris. They are setting themselves up for a fall.' Morrisons take note, perhaps.

But plenty of companies have survived initial maulings over new brands and slogans. With new chief executive Bolland trying to revive it, the supermarket group didn't need to give its critics yet more reasons to attack it - and it doesn't have to look very far to find a grocery slogan that's arguably the best-known strapline in Britain. Every little helps, sometimes.

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