Craig Anderton’s 5 Marketing Slogans That Must Die

Every now and again, as a writer and a big mouth in general, I come across something that says to me, “I could have written that” or “I wish I had written that”, as opposed to “I could have written that better”.

I came across Craig Anderton’s ”Five Marketing Slogans That Must Die”, buried way back in the November issue of Electronic Musician and as I read it, I found myself nodding my head in agreement, along with an occasional chortle.

Considering that a subscription to their print edition works out to $1.84 per issue, I believe I received my not quite 2 bucks worth from this piece alone. The fact that the publication always offers up some quality advice to anybody who works with music or recording in general is what got me to the subscription in the first place.

You can trip on over to http://emusician.com and read several of the interesting articles from the November issue, as well as peruse some stuff from the back issues, although, since the fine folks over at Electronic Musician want to give you some reasons for subscribing (or even picking up a copy at the news stand), quite a few of the goodies are simply unavailable online.

I checked and checked to see if there was even a vestige of Mr. Anderton’s latest piece, which he pens under the heading of “Craig’s List” and unfortunately could find none. So I will provide you with a bit of a distillation of what Mr. Anderton writes. As an advertising guy, it definitely struck an accord. As a writer, it has me looking out for potential “ills” within my own writing, aside from the fact that I write painfully long intros to my pieces before I actually get to the “meat”.

Mr. Anderton’s first slogan he wishes would die is “Limited only by your imagination”. He seems to think that with a fervent imagination such as his, any product that claims the aforementioned simply isn’t true. Given my imagination often involving Angelina Jolie, Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream and Hovercrafts, I would tend to agree with Craig on this one. It would seem that everything is limited far below both his and my imaginations.

Mr. Anderton  lists Slogan #2 that must die as “Turns your dreams into reality”. If for no other examples other than my prior one involving Angelina Jolie, ice cram and hovercrafts, it might seem that if there truly were something that could turn my dreams into reality, it would be both dangerous and prohibitively expensive.

#3 is simply “Future-proof”. Once again I am in complete agreement with mr Anderton, as points out that his experience with things touting this claim will have “the technology change, the company will stop supporting it, or there will be an extinction level event and  no one will care. I believe Beta Max was future proof wasn’t?

#4 is “The most unique”. Here again Craig and I agree when he asks “How can something be most unique? Right, it’s either unique or it isn’t. I chortled loudly, because I am a product of far too many workshops designed around the USP or unique Selling Proposition. You know how this works in advertising? It’s when you create a product that looks and works just like another product and then lie about it and point out insignificant things that allegedly make it unique. No, ours has blue lettering on the box, a unique feature of the product.

Mr. Anderton’s fifth and last marketing slogan that must die is one I hadn’t thought of much. It’s “Destined to be a classic” He wants to know how somebody can predict the future of the product or service and if they can, why they didn’t buy Apple stock when it was at $30. Personally, I haven’t heard this one quite enough for it to make my top list. I might have made #5 “Friendly knowledgable staff” or “As easy as…” or even “A better way to …”  I do praise Mr. Anderton at managing to stop at 5. I’m actually thinking of writing a book around this.

So, what would be in your top 5? Is top 5 too few? Do you need a top 10 or top 20?

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