• Tagline-a-palooza

    Posted on February 21st, 2007 by and currently 2 commenting.

    Holy moly, it’s another corporate giant with another tagline change.

    It’s Bank of America this time, who will unveil the new tag during Academy Awards on Sunday night. (Someone will have to fill me in, because I’m not gonna tune in.)

    Why the change? For a load of great reasons, no doubt.

    #1. ‘But in the last year, the company, based in Charlotte, N.C., installed a new marketing chief and hired the Omnicom Group as its principal advertising agency.’

    Ah, making changes to put your stamp on the company. Not to mention making change for change sake. That’s always a great reason.

    #2. The current tag, ‘Higher Standards,’ had ‘become too ingrained in the company’s culture and needed to be refreshed.’

    Wait a minute, too ingrained in the company’s culture?!? How is that a bad thing? Oh yeah, I forgot it’s terrible when a tag is ‘a staple of product promotions, PowerPoint presentations and a rallying cry among employees.’ When it’s ingrained in your culture, don’t throw it out, build on it. Don’t spend millions to try and reinvent the wheel.

    Goodbye ‘Higher Standards.’ As you were only a four-year old, we will miss you.

    Many thanks to Mr. Steve for the heads down.

  • http://www.thedigitalperm.com Matt Haverkamp

    It might be time to bring that tagline back – my wife and I had a horrible time last night getting her check card reinstated – apparently warning users that their check card is compromised is not part of those “Higher Standards”.

  • Vince

    It sounds like someone over there needs to read “Made to Stick.” A “tagline”, which is really a core company message that sticks, is EXACTLY what you want in a company! It guides employee actions, and helps them make complex decisions based on a simple, unifying core message. WHY on god’s earth would they want to destroy that message?! Especially after they’ve self-admitted that employees have adopted this mantra. Ugh.