CAN YOU SLOGO?

Can you Slogo?
By Barb Hansen
September 2007


Do you know what a slogo is? A new dance? A new type of electronic device? A local gourmet delicacy? Nope. None of the above.

Slogo is the nickname that advertising gurus use for a slogan that becomes part of a company’s logo. Creating the perfect company slogan ain’t easy. There are good ones. There are bad ones. And perfection doesn’t exist on our planet. Even the best ones usually hold up only a few years. McDonalds advertises so much it changes its slogan every three years or so just to stay culturally fresh.

Talking about creating company slogans is inside-baseball or, more appropriately, inside-boating, but it’s on my mind, on my mind, on my mind. It is sort of the linguistic version of the potato chip slogan – Bet you can’t eat just one.

But … ta da … Southwest Florida Yachts will be 25 years old in 2009 and Vic and I thought it would be nice if we had a real company slogan just like the big companies. We’ll put it on ads and brochures, websites and letterhead, just like the big companies.

With a company slogan our yacht chartering, yacht school and yacht sales enterprise tucked away on a pretty little Florida tidal creek will be right up there with Rice Krispies’ Snap, Crackle and Pop, United Airlines’ Fly the Friendly Skies, and Nike’s Just Do It.

But, like I said, creating the ideal company slogan is not easy. Kentucky Fried Chicken has a great slogan, Finger-lickin’ good. But, alas, American slang doesn’t always translate into other languages very well. In Chinese finger-lickin’ good became “Eat your fingers off.” And The Pepsi Generation slogan somehow became, in China, “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave.”

The experts say a slogan is like mental shorthand for what the company sells or what it does or what they want you to do or feel. Thus you get slogans like Xerox’ The Document Company, McDonald’s I’m Loving It, Macintosh’s Think Different, and one of Vic’s favorites, Home Depot – You can do it. We can help.

At our company somebody can learn to operate a yacht, charter a yacht, then buy a yacht, and some even put their yacht back into charter service to offset the expense. So we needed a slogan that generally rewarded all three operations.

After much brainstorming and deliberating over long lists late at night in the, ahem, executive offices, we have selected our first company slogan.

The new slogan, underscored with stylistic blue “waves” is – Experience the Boating Life! It is positioned just below the Southwest Florida Yachts logo. We like it because it encourages individuals to investigate the boating way of life. And, after all, this is what we’re selling. It’s not just a product or a service; it’s a lifestyle

Vic and I are as excited today about what we do at Southwest Florida Yachts as we were when we started almost 25 years ago. We continue to be thrilled helping people get into boating and seeing them adopt boating as a life-long adventure, with the proper skills and experience under their keels.

All that said, may I leave you with this medical advice? If you ever have to create a company slogan, take two aspirins and don’t call me in the morning.

And do me a favor. Don’t translate our slogan into another language.