Internațional slogans - A study

International Slogans –a study

Cillit Bang

'Bang - and the dirt is gone!' Cillit Bang's aggressive ad campaign may lack finesse, but it now has its own cult following...

On the Continent, this unremarkable cleaning product is known simply as Cillit. The 'Bang' is a triumph of British ingenuity. In JWT's no-nonsense slogan, it suggests instant effect - something hammered home in the product's commercials, in which a dirty coin turns shiny before your very eyes (a caption admits that the party trick actually takes 15 seconds.)

We can blame the TV advertising, not the slogan, for Cillit Bang's fame: with its shouting front-man ('Hi! Barry Scott here!') and retro look, it appeals to young viewers because 'it's so bad that it's good'. Legend has it that the first commercials were made by JWT's Budapest office and repurposed for the UK market - but it quickly became a successful strategy for the internet generation.

Not only are there numerous disco 'remixes' of the ad online, the fictional 'Barry Scott' has his own weblog. But a little of this stuff goes a long way. Maker Reckitt Benckiser has now switched agencies. Bang - and the account was gone!

Sony: Like. No. Other.

Sony's currrent advertisement for the Bravia television is a beautiful thing: a torrent of colourful balls bouncing down a precipitous San Francisco street.

It ends with Sony's current slogan 'like. no. other'. The curious punctuation is intended to evoke a certain kind of emphatic speech. It's a gimmick you see everywhere these days, but its source seems to be the nameless Comic-Book Guy in The Simpsons, whose much-imitated catchphrase is 'Worst. Episode. Ever'. In the day of the generic Chinese TV set stacked high in Asda, Sony needs to lift itself clear of the mass of consumer electronics companies. But this slogan has so little verbal content that it's unmemorable. There's another objection. It is used in America as well as here, and a search of US trademark records reveals about 50 similar formulations: 'The shoe company like no other'; 'Like no other credit union on earth!'; 'Like no other bagel in the world'; and, a particular winner, 'Delivers like no other theophylline'. This is unfortunate. When you're trying to be unique, you don't need a slogan that is Like. Many. Others.

Philips: Sense and simplicity

You have to admire Philips, one of the world's great technology companies. And you have to admire the Dutch, not least for their facility with English. But it's not their first language. Take 'Sense and Simplicity'. The component parts worked for Philips in Eindhoven and for ad agency DDB London, which jointly developed it and launched it as an ambitious 'brand promise' in 2004. Simplicity is an admirable goal in consumer technology, but the slogan doesn't gel. Halfway through, it does a grammatical hand-brake turn. 'Sense' is a quality in the observer, not the observed: I have sense, not my toaster. My toaster, though, has 'simplicity'; I certainly don't. Its sound is wrong too. Whether or not it alludes to Jane Austen (and why would it?), the slogan needs an internal rhyme: that's why 'Sense and Sensibility' works and 'Sense and Sensitivity' would work, perhaps for Durex. But 'sense and simplicity' stumbles around our vowel system.

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