Strapline / usp.... Help needed please.

[J.D. Landscaping]

Hi All,

We are a Grounds Maintenance company looking to add a strapline / USP to our marketing material and have so far come up with a few ideas which we think are along the right lines and a few which maybe aren't suitable / credible if we want to be taken seriously, the not so suitable in our opinion but worth showing are as follows :

We mow that little bit further so you dont have to.... ( to long ? )

You grow it we mow it ( catchy, but small time ? )


and the ones we want to try and improve on :


" Your enviroment - your standards - Our Passion "

" Your Landscapes - your Values - our commitment "

" Your Grounds - your....... - Our Pride "


And that's when we kinda run out of ideas, I'm sure they can be improved, but need an outside perspective to really nail it, so to speak.

All input will be hugely welcome folks.

[admagic]

Hi All,

We are a Grounds Maintenance company looking to add a strapline / USP to our marketing material and have so far come up with a few ideas which we think are along the right lines and a few which maybe aren't suitable / credible if we want to be taken seriously, the not so suitable in our opinion but worth showing are as follows :

We mow that little bit further so you dont have to.... ( to long ? )

You grow it we mow it ( catchy, but small time ? )


and the ones we want to try and improve on :


" Your enviroment - your standards - Our Passion "

" Your Landscapes - your Values - our commitment "

" Your Grounds - your....... - Our Pride "


And that's when we kinda run out of ideas, I'm sure they can be improved, but need an outside perspective to really nail it, so to speak.

All input will be hugely welcome folks.

they are all a bit corporate or spammy...

use emotion a bit? - Im a bit braindead at the mo so these are not good

Pruning and Trimming the grounds AND the bills....
For grounds that are postcard picture ready...
Immaculate at the price of just tidy...
When you have to be ready, but you dont know whenl...


you need a reliability statement too.
As reliable as lake district rain.

[Kev Jaques]

"A cut above the rest!"
"Zen Garden, Karma and other good stuff"
"The grass is greener on the other side"
"We live in the Grassy Knol"
"Mow place like home"

[J.D. Landscaping]

Thanks Ad, The reliability statement is very apt, and also very usable, are these used a lot in the service industry? as its not a term I have came accross before.

Cheers

[J.D. Landscaping]

"A cut above the rest!"
"Zen Garden, Karma and other good stuff"
"The grass is greener on the other side"
"We live in the Grassy Knol"
"Mow place like home"

All very good if not a bit man with mower and a car brigade.... We are aiming for the bigger contracts etc.

Thanks for the input though.

[GenealogyYorks]

J D C GROUNDWORKS - Just a Different Class.
U I L
S F A
T F S
F S
A E
R
E
N
T

Obviously needs a bit of design to integrate with your branding. It describes quality, ties in with your initials but does it change your company name? i'm not sure.

[admagic]

Thanks Ad, The reliability statement is very apt, and also very usable, are these used a lot in the service industry? as its not a term I have came accross before.

Cheers

Im not a great fan of strap lines generally , particularly if too corporate- because they do not build relationships

A reliability statement is not a specific thing, but reliability does need to be in benefits or copy -

You need to decide what you stand for first
-immaculate at price of tidy - is playing the more premium market
- picture postcard perfect, is aiming at stately homes..
-pruning the bills as well as the groudns - is aimed at more budget audiences
And the message needs to be right for the audience.

I suspect the key factors are quality price and reliability. ... as reliable as the cumbria rain would make people laugh, and also make a serious statement ... and get people reading, as part of a headline... although you have to be really careful with humour in copy.


You need a combination of messages in the stuff you send out..

[Kev Jaques]

They might help to fuel further ideas, up-scale them ;)
I would look at the benefits of the problem and solution angle, portraying the benefits might help.
"Put your feet up, have a cup of tea. Leave your ground maintenance to us"

Reliability is key though with that kind of work as admagic said and definitely something to push.

[directmarketingadvice]

Hi All,

We are a Grounds Maintenance company looking to add a strapline / USP to our marketing material and have so far come up with a few ideas which we think are along the right lines and a few which maybe aren't suitable / credible if we want to be taken seriously, the not so suitable in our opinion but worth showing are as follows :

We mow that little bit further so you dont have to.... ( to long ? )

You grow it we mow it ( catchy, but small time ? )

and the ones we want to try and improve on :

" Your enviroment - your standards - Our Passion "

" Your Landscapes - your Values - our commitment "

" Your Grounds - your....... - Our Pride "


None of those are USPs as anyone in your industry could say the same thing.

Steve

[J.D. Landscaping]

None of those are USPs as anyone in your industry could say the same thing.

Steve


More like a strapline i guess, it's not easy this marketing game....:)

[Willself]

Land! A hand!:rolleyes:

The answer!! is in the Soil!!:|

Bloom'in'lovely!:)

This time!! next year!!:eek:

The green green grass of home!!:p

[Chunkford]

Ace of Spades!

[J.D. Landscaping]

How about " maintaining your standards "

" If you fought the law(n),but the law(n) won...."

[VeitSchenk]

the point of the strap-line is that the message sticks in your prospects brains like peanut butter to the roof of your mouth, so when they need your services you're the first one they think of.

check out Margo Berman's books on this topic:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0742541371?ie=UTF8&tag=7bf19gh8-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=0742541371

and

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0742555518?ie=UTF8&tag=7bf19gh8-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=0742555518

(the second one is brand-new, I haven't read it yet).

I've done an interview with her, DM me if you want a copy of the interview (would take a few days to dig out, as I'm out of the office at the moment)

[paretowasright]

Surely this comes back to the positioning of the business and how you are differentiated from your competitors? (USP)
No point having some flashy strapline if your company and brand do not live and breathe the same thing. If you can come up with 3 words that differentiate your business they can be the foundation of your strapline and value statement.

[Be Known PR]

Groundbreaking Landscaping

[The Dreaded Lurgy]

Because real beauty doesn't come naturally

[Dawg]

A few thoughts from Drayton Bird on straplines:


...The moral is, don't boast and don't lie. So if you're selling a very ordinary Peugeot, don't talk about The Drive of Your Life. I guess if you're selling a Ferrari you might get away with it - unless people think that Lamborghini or Bentley are better.

I don't know why marketers are so obsessed with slogans, but they are. Multi-million pound advertising accounts move on the basis of little more than a few snappy words. So before you make any dodgy decisions I want to warn you here about some of the pitfalls.

The most important thing to remember is suggested by the quotation from the gent below.

"This, above all: to thine own self be true."- Advice from Polonius to his son Laertes in "Hamlet".

I'm now going to quote from yet another friend who, alas, died five years ago - and who unquestionably knew more about this subject than anyone else in the world. But before doing so let me state THE great sloganeering sin, and warn you against it.

Helpful idea No 33 is never put the slogan before the thinking.

If you want to have a slogan (and plenty of firms have done perfectly well without) let it derive from the truth - reality - rather than what you would like to be the truth.

You must ponder deeply what you really offer that makes you better; and if the answer is "nothing" it may have the happy result of making you improve what you offer till you do have something.

Too many slogans reflect what makes those who run them - the creative people and the client - feel good rather than what will sell.

Our friend at British Rail was a good example. He would have loved it to be the Age of the Train. He wanted to believe they were getting there.

Now, the friend I mentioned, Timothy R.V. Foster, created an excellent website called www.Adslogans.com, which is still running. His successors offer a valuable service that among other things checks if the line you're considering is being used by anyone else.

If you go there you will see there is an old, free site to which you are redirected. I earnestly commend it to you. I will save you from much folly.

In it you can see what a slogan is supposed to do - which far too few people know - starting with a definition from someone else.

Creative Advertising, Charles L. Whittier says a slogan:

"...should be a statement of such merit about a product or service that it is worthy of continuous repetition in advertising, is worthwhile for the public to remember, and is phrased in such a way that the public is likely to remember it."

To which we add:

The purpose of the strapline - slogan, claim, endline, signature, etc. is to leave the key brand message in the mind of the target. It is the sign-off that accompanies the logo. It says "If you get nothing else from this ad, get this..!"

Timothy pointed out that slogans are called different things in different countries, ending with a witty and relevant comment.


In the UK, they are...end lines, endlines or straplines.

In the USA, they are...tags, tag lines or taglines.

In Germany, they are...claims.

In Belgium, they are...baselines.

In France, they are...signatures.

In the Netherlands and Italy, they are...pay-offs or payoffs.

To the unimaginative, they are...rip-offs or ripoffs. The bland leading the bland.



He gives the 25 things a slogan should and should not do. They are all relevant, but some matter more than others, especially that they should:


http://www.bigwave.co.uk/member/arrow.gif Be original (For example, don't tell me you're going to give me "more" - everyone else does)


http://www.bigwave.co.uk/member/arrow.gif Differentiate the brand (For example, It's Independent. Are you?)


http://www.bigwave.co.uk/member/arrow.gif Include a key benefit (For example, Visa. It's everywhere you want to be)


There are a few things they shouldn't be - corporate waffle, pretentious, or meaningless - but I won't bore you with too many examples, as you see them every day.

However, I can't resist Deutsche Bank who suffer from "a passion to perform" - maybe they should go into the music business - and AXA who want me to "be life confident", the silly sods. And I can't ignore the inane American Airlines line, "We know why you fly".

This gets two reactions from me every time I fly with them, "I should bloody well hope so - and it certainly isn't the food or the service."

But don't run away with the idea that a good slogan can't be important. One of my clients ran some TV commercials over 40 years ago that ended with the words, "Fit the best". They have never run since, but people remember them.

And in every piece of creative we work on for them we go to very considerable lengths to prove that it is true - because nothing sells better than the truth.

[J.D. Landscaping]

Thanks for all the replies folks, I think the best thing is to let it stew and see what happens, as the above post from Dawg points out, no strapline is better than a dodgy one.

Talking of dodgy ones, how do these sound, yay or ney ?


" Landscaping Cumbria "

" Landscaping the Lake district "


That is what we do afterall.

[admagic]

If you must use a strap line, here is food for thought

A car wash....
"manchesters fastest handjob!"

(out of curiosity Rachel Elnaugh told me that one...)
Make it something so outrgeous they talk about it , and you get free pr - a bit of inuendo does no harm..

[admagic]

Thanks for all the replies folks, I think the best thing is to let it stew and see what happens, as the above post from Dawg points out, no strapline is better than a dodgy one.

Talking of dodgy ones, how do these sound, yay or ney ?


" Landscaping Cumbria "

" Landscaping the Lake district "


That is what we do afterall.

They are down right boring....

[J.D. Landscaping]

If you must use a strap line, here is food for thought

A car wash....
"manchesters fastest handjob!"

(out of curiosity Rachel Elnaugh told me that one...)
Make it something so outrgeous they talk about it , and you get free pr - a bit of inuendo does no harm..

Ha, i bet they got a few giggles, and bookings too.

[J.D. Landscaping]

Trimming bushes all over cumbria....;-)

trimming the bushes of cumbria....

hoeing and mowing, growing and sowing

forking borders, trimming bushes ;-(

should have been a comedian me....

[admagic]

Trimming bushes all over cumbria....;-)

trimming the bushes of cumbria....

hoeing and mowing, growing and sowing

forking borders, trimming bushes ;-(

should have been a comedian me....

Youve got it!!!

for the best foorking gardens in coombria...

[admagic]

Youve got it!!!

for the best foorking gardens in coombria...

Joking aside - I actually think the inuendo might work as it does for the carwash

either

forking cumbria!!
the best fork in cumbria
'ave the best fork in cumbria!!

for the best fork'in gardens in cumbria

[J.D. Landscaping]

Fork the rest, work with cumbria' best

lean, mean greens machine

Can we dig it ? Yes we can....

[J.D. Landscaping]

We dig it...

We dig you...

we fork you...enjoy