On Anatid Gifts

Call me strange, but I'm of the persuasion that if someone were to give me a duck, I would take the duck.

On Choosing a Slogan for Your Product

Choosing a slogan for your product is so important it is often best to leave it to experts. However, paying an advertising firm to pitch your product with some creative and catchy bit of word play can be very expensive, particularly if it is your first product.

So, what can you do?

Firstly, investigate and research other jingles and slogans from products similar to yours in design or function. (Of course, it is best if your product is not too similar to already prominent products. Patent and copyright holders tend to frown on copycat products. Their lawyers, however, tend to grin behind their lawsuit.)

In your research you should notice a common theme occurring throughout the plethora of slogan types for your product. For example, if your product is something usable in the kitchen, the slogan will likely incorporate flash phrases like "slices and dices" or "low on fat, big on taste" or "less likely than the leading brand to sever the distal portions of your phalanges."

Comparably, if your product is a new kind of medicine, your research will turn up slogans like "works quickly," "makes your life happy," or something equally likely to be forgotten mere moments later (and for the following hour and a half) when the announcer tells you everything that could possibly go wrong after taking the medicine, conversely making the potential product purchaser confused whether the commercial is made by the product makers or by their competitors. The point is: don't market prescription drugs in commercials.

Next, should you continue to determine to come up with your own slogan, it is necessary to come up with something fun, catchy, and possibly humorous. Be careful, though, that your interesting slogan is not misleading. Take for example the possible rough draft of the slogan for a well-known poultry producer (who shall remain nameless unless some kind of product placement reimbursement is possible): "The Inedible, Credible Egg." Try to imagine the effectiveness of their ads with a slogan like that. Sure, it gives the consumer a product they can believe in; but will they buy an egg they can't eat? Unless, of course, the product is a type of egg-shaped digital dictionary made out of asbestos-coated lead dipped in bubonic plague.

Finally, when choosing a product slogan, it is vitally important that you let someone else read and react to it before presenting it to the general public. They can present a different perspective that can shape your slogan into something more effective and interesting. Furthermore, it can help eliminate poor planning and editing: something this informative piece would be if I took the time to look back at what I wrote and let someone read it before I posted it.

These pointers are just to help you get started in your slogan creation for your product. Assuming you have a product that someone needs or wants, a great slogan can make even those skeptical buyers look twice at your product. And, above all, avoid grinning lawyers.

On My Avoidance of Sports

I once heard a sports enthusiast say:

"There are two kinds of people that matter in this world: Athletes and Athletic Supporters."

I think that's one of the reasons I never really became a fan of any sports...along with my natural aversion to anything involving forceful physical contact whereby I might get hurt.