Talk:Tagline/Archives/2013

Tag line vs slogan

The article Advertising slogan says (with a source cited) that "tag line" is a synonym for slogan. This article, Tagline, claims they are different, but the explanation of what a tagline is is identical to a slogan. Looks like a fork to me. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 16:44, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Taglines/straplines seem to lend themselves mainly to books and movies whereas ad slogans tend not to be inextricably tied in with brand or product name (at least not as easily), by their nature. Part of the problem with the article/s may be the types of examples chosen. 'Tag' and 'strap' could denote the closer association that taglines and straplines have to their movies/books. Take the Gilette example: "the best a man can get" is memorable by using alliteration but doesn't necessarily tie it to the word Gilette. To make it a tagline it might be written in some way, such as Gilette- the best Jack can get ( using a pun on Jack and Jill story. Sometimes they have to resort to acronym for a company name to get a 'true' tagline which is often awkward to arrive at, like LG-"Life's Good" , SONY- "So NY" ,which they used one time, perhaps in a specific campaign. Coke- "Things Go Better with Coke", see that's not really a tagline as the slogan is largely separable for use on its own, without Coke being put before it. Almost Famous,the movie, uses the tagline "Experience it, Enjoy it, Just don't fall for it" which seems to tie in well(although this tagline may not have appeared on all editions). Xbox 360 ,for a tagline, would have to resort to something rather complicated like - "why play out of the full circle?" JohnsonL623 (talk) 10:56, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

For Apollo 13 (film), it would be easy to presume "Houston, we've got a problem" ,as tagline, but if you go to read Reference 35 in that article, it explains that "Failure is not an option" is actually the tagline (albeit only revealed in the dialogue of the film, not on the posters, where one would usually expect the tagline to appear). It's stated emphatically there, by one of the script writers.(see Ref.35 of Apollo 13 (film). JohnsonL623 (talk) 11:54, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

I can understand why people would say, hang on,how so? Apollo 13 , it was mission failure?wasn't it? They 'Lost the Moon' didn't they? etc. but, "Failure is not an option" (ie: getting the crew back to Earth ) becomes the tagline to the entire movie, as the script writer Bill Broyles states. JohnsonL623 (talk) 11:54, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm baffled by what you're saying about Apollo 13. So a movie had more than one tagline/slogan? So? The source http://www.spaceacts.com/notanoption.htm doesn't say that a tagline is different than slogan; it doesn't even mention that question. What is the relevance?

The OED, Websters and American Heritage dictionaries, they say that slogans and taglines are synonyms. A century ago a tagline was the same as the punchline of a joke, or the last line of a poem, but over time the terms evolved to be identical. See the OED. That the one term is more popular with one subject and less popular with another subject doesn't change the fact that they're synonyms. Indeed, one of the reasons we have synonyms is that two groups will use two different words for the same thing. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 16:08, 4 December 2011 (UTC)