Classic lines: like a good novel, your slogan needs substance if you expect it to stand the test of time and move your product out the door

Entrepreneur, July, 1998 by Jerry Fisher

Slogans are typically self-indulgent afterthoughts that have little substance. This is a shame, because like the P.S. on a letter, they virtually always get read. When I was growing up, the hot slogans were G.E.'s "Progress is our most important product" and Zenith's "The quality goes in before the name goes on." Both are cleverly crafted, but like nine-tenths of the slogans written today, they're all out of steam and don't pass my acid test for a great slogan: Can it stand by itself in selling your product?

If you're thinking the Crown Books slogan doesn't have much bite anymore either, you're right. It lost at least 75 percent of its teeth during the decade or so that nearly every other bookstore chain in America followed in its discounting footsteps. But when Crown first came on the scene, it had the discount-starved book-buying public virtually all to itself. So the message, with its smartly crafted wording, was, to me, advertising dynamite and deserving of some sort of brass plaque in the Copywriter's Hall of Fame. In my opinion, no company has ever had a harder-working slogan.

Given my affection for the Crown Books slogan, I'd like to honor it by tweaking it for a piece of advertising sent in by Stanley Demski, co-owner of the Traveling Framer Inc. in Collingswood, New Jersey. He does what the name implies: takes a bunch of framing choices to homes and offices to let people choose the materials in the environment where the painting, photo, degree, commendation or other wall hanging will end up. It's a smart business concept - and a wonderful name because it states exactly what its USP (Unique Selling Proposition) is: a traveling framer. You can't get much better than that.

Demski sent me his two-fold self-mailer and asked how I could improve it. That's when the Crown Books motto came to mind - as a headline for his flier and, if he wishes, as a slogan as well. So to borrow a bit of slogan sizzle, and with proper credit given, I suggest Demski introduce his business this way: "If You Have to Leave Home to Pick Out Framing, you haven't heard about The Traveling Framer." I think it captures the same your-ignorance-is-costing-you appeal as the Crown Books slogan, but this time it works as a strong lead-in to the rest of Demski's self-mailer.

The inside of his piece (not shown) is a good lesson in compartmentalizing and characterizing your company for customers. It starts out with a why-we're-different section; then it describes, in a bulleted format, exactly what the company's skills are. This is followed by a list that gives typical pricing for a number of framing and matting combinations. Finally, there's a partial list of clients along with their testimonials. It's a hard-working sales piece, and now it has a much better opener.

Q: I've read books and articles on advertising, but no advice ever helps me create the marketing pieces I want. My efforts to emulate what experts recommend are usually unsuccessful. What do you suggest?

A: This is a good question because written expertise and advice - on any subject - always appears so glibly and effortlessly developed that there is the assumption the advice itself is easy to implement. The truth is, developing a strong advertising idea and then fleshing it out is most often a painstaking process. If you don't develop a unique concept or set of words the first day you put yourself up to it, you assume a good idea will never come to you. Cliches, of course, are easy to spit out. But advertising originality can be hard to come by.

So let me offer a technique for jump-starting your creativity in a way you're unlikely to find in any of the many tomes on advertising. It has nothing to do with pencil-to-paper brainstorming; rather, it's one that's worked for me time and again, especially when I'm experiencing writer's block. I go out to my garage, and I start exercising - yep, jumping up and down while pondering my advertising task. My preference is skipping rope; for you, it may be running on the treadmill, doing jumping jacks, lifting weights or jogging around the block. Removing myself from the environment in which I'm struggling - my office - and engaging in a strenuous physical activity typically loosens the cobwebs and gets my brain to crackle and pop in ways it won't do otherwise.

This cause and effect has been so consistent that I know I can almost always count on getting at least one fresh idea per exercise session. I don't know much about brain chemistry, but I wouldn't be surprised if my right brain - supposedly the inventive, intuitive side - gets stimulated by those "creative juices" we talk about and, through all that jumping around, is able to pop out a unique idea or two. Maybe it will work for you, too.

Q: My husband and I have a natural healing products catalog and wonder what kind of marketing strategies could improve our business.

A: In my May "Ad Workshop" column, I wrote about how smart it is to regularly cultivate your current customers instead of beating the bushes for new ones. And catalog marketers like you have such strong and (hopefully) well-maintained databases of names, buying habits and so on, that it's a pipeline you should be using regularly to keep in touch with your customers.