Takeaway from Winn Grips unrivaled tagline fail

If you’re not up on your golf gear, know that a grip is the rubber shaft covering where the golfer’s hands meet the club and grip it. It’s the steering wheel.

Now, there are about 5-6 types of taglines. One is called “Unrivaled” and stakes that exact claim. For a good example, think BMW’s “the ultimate driving machine”, or one I gave Speakman showerheads “Absolutely the Best”.

Winn Grips’ tagline is “the best grips in golf”. An unrivaled position for sure, but this is unrivaled lazy marketing. My guess is that this beauty came from the CXO side of the company and took about three minutes to “create”. If it came from an agency or their internal marketing department, thanks for the black eye.

It is lazy because while it is what you want to say, it is also what every company wants to say. Most don’t because they know that that statement carries no value beyond face value. No reason why. No emotional connection. No “just do it”. Worse of all is that today their #1 rival could make exactly the same claim (they probably do) and take the ground out from underneath them. I hope someone from Golf Pride or Lamkin is reading.

Golf is fun. Grips are important and Winn is a market leader, but their marketing is weak, and a weak grip produces lousy shots every time.

Brands should evolve, not erode

I’m not the world’s most experienced brand strategist in the world, but in my years doing this and as a Creative Director, a pattern of events unfold that are undeniable.

It mirrors very much the pattern of the initial brand or campaign presentation itself. Picture in your mind two capital letter Ms. Connect them both and then imagine that the peaks of them get smaller and smaller as you go to the right. That’s the level of excitement that happens when an agency or anyone presents a new idea or brand. Big rush of enthusiasm but it wanes as critics and doubts are raised.

Critics and doubts are normal and part of the process, but when it comes to the brand, they are not welcome. Brands needs to not only keep at that high level of energy and engagement that they enjoy right out of the gate, but to raise it to new levels. How to do it is not an internal job. You need someone on it 24/7, 365, year after year.

The Shakira Effect – use it!

In my role as a Creative Director in both B2B and B2C situations, I’ve often pulled out the Shakira Effect (and other pop music references) to help direct, uh, creatively, my designers and others. To explain, I will refer you to her big American hit with Beyonce “Beautiful Liar”. I suggest the video, and in it, at 1:03, a lyric is sung and later repeated in the chorus. It is exactly: “ha ha ha”.

It isn’t real laughter. It has no intellectual meaning, but it is the secret to great design and to getting people to remember and like you. Bingo. That is what everyone selling anything wants. More or less. This Shakira Effect touches the emotional heart of how to connect to people. It is a layer that adds to the intellectual by expressing in guttural terms the raw emotion behind the words. I implore designers to find the marcomm equivalent and use it.

More golf taglines

To be fair to Callaway, I did recently see a re-edited version of their commercial (I’m sure they have more than one) where Ernie Els delivers the money line that “winners play Callaway.” That’s a little more realistic brand promise spokesperson – Ernie won fairly recently. But it’s not Callaway that needs to rethink their tagline, another golf giant rolled out a stinker tagline recently.

More on that in my next post.

Taglines are for those who made it

Yesterday at the interactive shop I’m at now, the client sent back an edit with a suggested replacement line. This was for one of the many videos we were creating for a very important internal presentation their President was hosting.

Reading the suggest line left us all scratching our heads for a bit. The original line was pretty good and we were a little miffed at having to rewrite it. After we accepted the reality, it struck me to do what I always tell others to do: when you’re lost, look to the tagline for guidance.

Bingo. The line wrote itself and without a doubt, this one worked better than the original we all loved because the new one drove the whole video back to the brand where it belonged.

About the author

While there is a very likely chance that this will be seen by a limited number, I still feel the need to briefly do a self-description here.

First off, this is only the professional description of who I am. My perceptions are this:

I am a guy who thinks always about the big picture. I think that in the world i’ve been traveling in, people want to call that a strategic thinker. I’ll take that.

Second, I know I am extra-ordinarily creative only because of the talented co-workers whom I respect who have hinted at that. Their opinion is my opinion. And when I deliver a brand strategy, I don’t miss. Ever. If people don’t run with it, I can only cry about it.

I am a big league player who is now playing for the Durham Bulls. I need to get back to Hollywood or to step up my game with a large national group or the like.

And I will.

bad taglines the shame of big companies

Why is it some of the biggest companies have some of the worst taglines?

Take Calloway Golf. Their tagline? “Winners Play Calloway”. I don’t know where this came from: agency or internal, but that’s the best you can do? I have a rule called “the first five minute rule”. It goes like this: anything that you think of in the first five minutes is automatically dismissed. Not forever, but for a good long time. This seems like it took the first two minutes.

I do like that it takes an unrivaled position, but it is not a defensible position. Winners play Pro V1s. Phil Mickelson plays Calloway and while he is highly liked, he’s not winning all the time.

If Calloway would say that it is a motivational tagline, then sure, I get that. It’s not changing my perception of the ball, but okay, I want to win when I play too.

Next time, after the first five minutes are over, think about a position akin to what Ping has: “Play Your Best”. You don’t have to be a winner to do that.

The worst move of the whole TV campaign is having Arnold Palmer say “I win with Calloway.” Having him say that line in the present tense is absurd. What do you win Arney? It would have worked if he just said the tagline.

Hey Calloway, call me next time, please.

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