Slogan examples: 50 famous slogans and why they work

A slogan is the short, memorable line a campaign or a product is sold with, written to be repeated. The famous ones work for a handful of reasons: they make a promise, issue a challenge, ask a question, play with sound or meaning, admit something honest, or give the customer an identity to claim. Below are 50 famous campaign slogans grouped by the technique doing the work, each with the brand, the year and why it worked.

For campaigns on Ad Age's Advertising Century list of the top 100, published in 1999, the year follows that list, which dates each line to the campaign that made it famous; other years come from the brands' own histories and the advertising press. A line meant to sign off a business for years is a tagline, a different brief. This page is about lines written to sell.

Slogans that make a promise

The simplest slogan says what you get. The good ones say it about a moment or a feeling rather than a feature.

1. “A diamond is forever” — De Beers, 1948. Turns a purchase into something permanent, and implies a diamond is never to be sold.
2. “The pause that refreshes” — Coca-Cola, 1929. Sells a moment in the day, not a drink.
3. “Good to the last drop” — Maxwell House, 1959. A quality promise that reaches even the bottom of the cup.
4. “Takes a licking and keeps on ticking” — Timex, 1950s. Durability, in a rhyme that is hard to forget, and the proof was on screen: from the mid-1950s until 1977, the newscaster John Cameron Swayze presented commercials in which a watch went through a torture test, from a jackhammer to a cliff dive strapped to a diver, and was still running at the end.
5. “Leave the driving to us” — Greyhound, 1957. Names the chore the customer escapes. The full line was “It's such a comfort to take the bus and leave the driving to us.”
6. “When you care enough to send the very best” — Hallmark, 1930s. Ties the card to the sender's feelings, so a cheaper card feels like caring less.
7. “The ultimate driving machine” — BMW, 1975. A superlative confident enough that BMW has kept it in the US for decades.

Slogans that challenge or invite

An imperative puts the customer in the sentence. These lines tell people to do something, and the brand comes along for the ride.

8. “Just do it.” — Nike, 1988. Three words of permission that fit any sport and any person.
9. “Be all that you can be” — U.S. Army, 1981. Recruits with an ambition rather than a job description.
10. “Think different” — Apple, 1997. An instruction that doubles as a description of the customer it wants.
11. “Impossible is nothing” — Adidas, 2004. Reverses a phrase everyone knows, which is what makes it stick.
12. “Have it your way” — Burger King, 1973. Invites the customer to break the menu's rules.
13. “Only you can prevent forest fires” — Smokey Bear, 1947. Hands the reader the responsibility, in the second person. In 2001 it became “Only you can prevent wildfires.”

Slogans that ask a question

A question is hard to read without answering it, even silently. The answer is where the brand wants you to end up.

14. “Got milk?” — California Milk Processor Board, 1993. Two words that make you picture an empty glass and a cookie.
15. “Where's the beef?” — Wendy's, 1984. Mocks the competition's small patties and became a catchphrase for anything with no substance.
16. “Does she… or doesn't she?” — Clairol, 1957. The question sells the result: nobody can tell her hair is colored.
17. “What becomes a legend most?” — Blackglama, 1960s. Flatters the reader by placing the product among legends.
18. “Do you know me?” — American Express, 1975. Asked by well-known people whose faces viewers didn't recognize, so the card did the introducing.

Rhyme, rhythm and repetition

Sound is how a line gets into your head before you've decided to remember it. These lean on rhythm, repetition and the echo of repeated letters, the same tools listed among rhetorical devices.

19. “Snap! Crackle! Pop!” — Rice Krispies, 1940s. The sound you hear in the bowl, made into the brand. Kellogg's dates the words to a 1929 print ad; Ad Age dates the campaign that made them famous to the 1940s.
20. “Fast, fast, fast relief” — Anacin, 1952. The repetition is the promise of speed.
21. “Tastes great, less filling” — Miller Lite, 1974. Two benefits in four beats, set against each other so they read like an argument.
22. “Intel Inside” — Intel, 1991. Two words that start with the same sound turned a part nobody sees into a brand.
23. “You either love it or hate it” — Marmite, 1996. A balanced line that makes the product's divisiveness the point.
24. “A different kind of company. A different kind of car.” — Saturn, 1989. Parallel structure makes the second half land.

Wordplay and double meanings

A phrase that means two things at once rewards the reader for noticing, and a reader who has worked something out remembers it.

25. “When it rains it pours” — Morton Salt, 1912. An old saying made literal: this salt keeps pouring in damp weather.
26. “Have a break, have a Kit Kat” — Kit Kat, 1958. “Break” is both the rest and the snap of the bar.
27. “The Uncola” — 7 Up, 1970s. Defines the drink by the giants it isn't.
28. “Think small.” — Volkswagen, 1959. Flipped the belief that a bigger car was a better car.
29. “Please don't squeeze the Charmin” — Charmin, 1964. Forbidding it makes you want to, and tells you the paper is soft.
30. “Let Hertz put you in the driver's seat” — Hertz, 1961. Literal for a rental car, figurative for being in control.
31. “You don't have to be Jewish to love Levy's…” — Levy's rye bread, 1949. Turns a niche product's identity into an invitation to everyone.

Understatement and honesty

Every brand claims to be the best, so a brand that admits something stands out, and the admission makes the rest of the claim easier to believe.

32. “We try harder” — Avis, 1963. Admits second place and makes it the reason to choose them.
33. “Probably the best lager in the world” — Carlsberg, 1973. One modest word makes a boast charming. In 2011 the brand's global advertising replaced it with “That calls for a Carlsberg.”
34. “Does exactly what it says on the tin” — Ronseal, 1994. A plain promise about wood stain that became a British idiom for anything straightforward.
35. “Perception. Reality.” — Rolling Stone, 1985. Two words that set what advertisers assumed about its readers against who they actually were, a juxtaposition in two words.

Slogans built on proof

A specific number or a checkable result reads as a fact, even when it sits in an ad.

36. “99 44/100% pure” — Ivory soap, 1882. A precise figure feels like a measurement rather than a claim.
37. “Melts in your mouth, not in your hands” — M&M's, 1954. An advantage you can test on the spot.
38. “Look, Ma! No cavities!” — Crest, 1958. The result, announced in a child's voice like news from the dentist.

Slogans that sell an identity

These lines are less about the product than about the person who buys it. They give the customer something to belong to.

39. “Because I'm worth it” — L'Oréal, 1971. Written by copywriter Ilon Specht at McCann, in the customer's own voice. L'Oréal Paris now also uses “you're” and “we're” versions of the line.
40. “The Pepsi generation” — Pepsi, 1964. Sells membership of an age group, not a soda.
41. “Breakfast of champions” — Wheaties, 1930s. Puts the eater at the table with athletes.
42. “This Bud's for you” — Budweiser, 1970s. Makes a mass-market beer sound personal.
43. “It's the real thing” — Coca-Cola, 1970. Authenticity as the product.
44. “There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's Mastercard.” — Mastercard, 1997. The ads list prices, then name the thing that has none; the card owns everything else.
45. “What happens here, stays here” — Las Vegas, 2003. Sells permission, not hotels. The agency R&R Partners created it in 2003 for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.
46. “The instrument of the immortals” — Steinway & Sons, 1919. Lets every buyer imagine sitting where the great pianists sat.

Slogans that tell a story

A few words can carry a character and a situation, and readers fill in the rest themselves.

47. “Always a bridesmaid, but never a bride” — Listerine, 1923. A whole story, and a fear the product promised to fix.
48. “They laughed when I sat down at the piano, but when I started to play!” — U.S. School of Music, 1925. A headline that starts a story you want to finish.
49. “It takes a tough man to make tender chicken” — Perdue, 1971. The founder, who appeared in the ads himself, became the guarantee.
50. “Ring around the collar” — Wisk, 1968. Named a problem so vividly that people started looking for it on their shirts.

Slogan vs tagline vs motto

The three words are often used interchangeably, but marketers usually mean different things by them.

The Olympic motto, “Citius, Altius, Fortius” (faster, higher, stronger), was first expressed by the priest Henri Didon in 1891 and adopted by Pierre de Coubertin in 1894; the IOC added “Communiter” (together) in July 2021. Companies have mottos too. Google's informal motto “Don't be evil” appeared publicly in its 2004 IPO prospectus; in 2018 the company moved it from the start of its code of conduct to the last line. A motto describes behavior. A slogan asks you to buy something, and a tagline reminds you who is asking.

How to write a slogan

1. Decide the one thing

   Write down the single thing you want a customer to remember: a benefit (it lasts), a difference (we're second, so we try harder) or a belief (you deserve it). If you have three things, you have three slogans, and none of them is likely to stick.

2. Collect your customers' words

   Read reviews, support emails and notes from sales calls. Customers describe a product in plainer words than its makers do, and the best lines often borrow them.

3. Write thirty lines in an hour

   Go through the techniques above and write at least three lines for each: a promise, a challenge, a question, a rhyme, a double meaning, an understatement, a number, an identity, a tiny story. Quantity first. Judging comes later.

4. Cut each one to its shortest

   Many famous slogans are two to six words. Remove words until taking out one more would break the line. If it needs a comma to make sense, try it as two short sentences, the way Saturn and Volkswagen did.

5. Run the tests

   Say it aloud: does it trip? Cover the logo: could a competitor sign it? Is it true, and will it still be true in five years? Does it mean something unfortunate in the other languages your customers speak? Put the finalists somewhere you'll see them every day for a week; the one you still like on Friday is often the one to keep.

6. Check that it's free to use

   Search the web and your country's trademark register for the exact phrase (in the US, the USPTO's trademark search). If the line will carry a business, ask a trademark attorney before you print it.

   For a quick first check, you can ask the Strokes Assistant to search the web for the exact phrase and tell you who already uses it. A proper trademark search is still yours to run.

Slogan ideas for small-business campaigns

Twelve slogans for invented businesses, each written for one campaign rather than to sign off the business for years, and labeled with its main technique. Use them to see how a technique from the famous lines sounds at a small scale, not as lines to copy.

Notice how many of these are promises with a time or a place in them: by dinner, by Friday, in Lisbon by June. A concrete detail makes a line harder for a competitor to borrow, and it ties the slogan to its campaign: when the spring tune-ups end, so does “Back on the road by Friday.” Slogans and headlines are close cousins; the guide to writing headlines covers the same compression from the other side, and persuasive techniques explains why the promise, the question and the identity line work. A slogan also has to sound like the rest of the brand, which is a question of tone of voice.