The Blake Project did a nice post yesterday on their Branding Strategy Insider blog, sharing insights about effective taglines that “communicate the brand’s ‘unique value proposition’ powerfully, succinctly, and memorably,” I’d encourage you to check it out, here.

I couldn’t help but notice there was only one fast food restaurant tagline on their list of “effective” taglines: KFC’s “Finger-licking-good” tagline; and on their list of “ineffective” ones, only one restaurant tagline appeared: Denny’s “A good place to sit and eat.” 

As you may recall, a couple of years back, I had quite a bit of fun with a variety of apparently “effective” fast food taglines, prompted by McDonald’s adoption and use of the “Who’s Your Patty?” tagline, already in use by a local hamburger joint in a suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

And, last year, I had about as much fun juxtaposing a few different retail jewelry store taglines, here.

What I’m left wondering is, how effective can a tagline be, if it includes the brand name or house mark as part of the tagline?

Isn’t that cheating on creativity?

For what it’s worth, none of the “effective” taglines identified by The Blake Project included the brand name as part of the tagline, and one “ineffective” one did.