Current Issue Summary
March 2023 (Vol. 63, Issue 1)
An Investigation Into Slogan Design on Creating Slogan–Brand Alignment: Message Clarity and Creativity Enhance While Jingles and Rhymes Weaken Alignment
Practical guidance on designing slogans that align with a brand’s identity comes from Mayukh Dass, (Texas Tech University), Chiranjeev Kohli (California State University Fullerton and I.D.ENTITY), and Manaswini Acharya (Texas Tech University). “Brand identity alignment is the configuration of all semiotic components—brand name, logo and slogan—used to support a company’s desired brand image,” the researchers write. Using semiotic theory and congruence theory as foundations for their work, the authors examined various slogan attributes, and how they affect the slogans’ alignment with brand identity. Ultimately, they find that the attributes of message clarity, creativity and benefit enhance alignment, whereas a jingle reduces it. The results come from a large-scale field study the authors conducted, interviewing people in Los Angeles about their knowledge of slogans. A validation study brought in senior advertising managers, who rated the impact of the different variables used on slogan-brand alignment.
Among the takeaways:
- “Clear, creative slogans that provide an association with a product’s benefits strengthen brand alignment and serve as a compelling signature for the brand.
- “Inclusion of the product’s benefits in a slogan moderates the effects of creativity and jingle on brand alignment.
- “If the slogan messages have clarity, however, the inclusion of benefit information has limited moderating effects.
- “The use of rhyming is not helpful for slogan–brand alignment.”