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How to Test a Slogan Before You Commit

July 8, 20262 min readprocess

Asking people whether they like your tagline tells you almost nothing. Six tests that produce a usable answer, none of which need a research budget.

The standard way to test a slogan is to show it to people and ask what they think. This reliably produces polite, confident, useless feedback. People are answering a question about their taste when the thing you need to know is whether the line survives out in the world.

Better tests measure behaviour rather than opinion.

The recall test

Show the line once. Talk about something unrelated for two minutes. Ask them to say it back. This is the closest thing to a single decisive test — a line nobody can reproduce after two minutes will not survive a billboard glimpsed at 40mph.

Do not warn them there will be a test. The warning is what you are trying to remove.

The competitor swap

Put a rival's name on it. If it still works, the line is about the category rather than about you, and you have written an advertisement for your entire industry.

The cold read

Show the line, with no context, to someone who does not know what you do, and ask them to guess the business. You are not looking for a correct answer — you are looking for a plausible one. If the guesses are wildly scattered, the line is not carrying enough signal to stand on a sign.

The phone test

Say it out loud to someone who is not looking at you. Any line that needs its typography, its line break or its punctuation to make sense will fall apart, and you will hear it happen.

The hostile read

Read the line as an unhappy customer would — someone who has just had a bad experience and is writing a review. Every promise becomes ammunition. "Always on time" is a gift to someone you kept waiting.

You are not looking for lines with nothing to attack. You are looking for promises you are confident you can keep.

The first is a promise with a defined edge you can operationally guarantee. The third is a claim a competitor can dispute and a customer can disprove with one slow delivery.

The week test

Write the finalists down, put them away, and look again in seven days. Novelty fades faster than almost anyone expects, and the line that seemed brilliant on Tuesday often reads as merely fine by the following Monday. The one that still holds up is usually the right one.

A workable sequence

1. Generate widely — twenty-plus options, most of them bad.
2. Competitor swap: cut anything a rival could use.
3. Phone test: cut anything that stumbles out loud.
4. Cold read with three strangers: keep the ones producing plausible guesses.
5. Hostile read: cut promises you cannot operationally keep.
6. Recall test on the last three.
7. Wait a week. Pick.

The whole sequence costs an afternoon and a week of patience. That is a small price for something that ends up on every sign, invoice and van you own for the next several years.