Have you ever tried to come up with a good tagline for a new company? In the times of Web 2.0, taglines seem to matter a lot. They are the essence of the elevator pitch. But because they can only be a maximum of 3-4 words long, they tend to be rather meaning less and just contain content-free Web 2.0 buzzwords. In fact, this has become such a fashion that there is a Web 2.0 bullshit generator.
Up until recently, we had the tagline “Making Video Clickable” for Vquence, because we believed that our slicecasting technology helps hyperlink between videos and make video more web-like. However, this phrase is a poor representation of what Vquence does, what services we offer, and how we’re going to make life better. So, a new tagline was in order.
But what a challenge! You have no idea how difficult it is to come up with three words that capture what a company is about! Sure – I have been to management training courses and they say it is an artform to come up with a good mission statement for a company and that some companies spend tens of thousands of dollars just to get it right. But a tagline!? Well, let me tell you, a tagline is harder than a mission statement – probably because of the word count restriction.
We discussed for weeks, we even used the bullshit generator and it became rather ridiculous – in short, we did some serious brainstorming (whenever we were not coding). Finally, our newest team member came up with what we have for now accepted as our new tagline. It has all the key ingredients: it is techy, personal, raises curiosity, but is still meaningful (we hope). So, let me present our shiny new tagline: “Vquence – Slicecasting your internet”.
And if that’s totally meaningless to you, then you need to go to www.vquence.com and try out our slicecasts to make it real. Hmmm, I like it. 🙂
“Vquence – Slicecasting your internet” makes about us much sense as “making the internet clickable” or”clickability”/ developing taglines in-house is a dangerous practice, fraught with so many internal views and without the benefit of outside-in thinking. something i was trying to persuade chris you would benefit from with a coherent brand strategy.
Stephen, as a Web2.0 company that is continuously improving, our tagline may indeed change again. What is now our brand strategy may not be the same in a few months. Spending a lot of time and energy on coming up with a good tagline (and more time and energy will be required for a coherent branding stategy) in a time of continuous change has the effect that the company gets stalled and cannot move on to become what it really should become. The Web moves quickly.