Know-How Exchange : Taglines/Names

14 Sierra, your question is not clear whether you are looking for a corporate tag-line, i.e. one for the company, to be used across the whole range of products, or one for a specific ride.

Having spent over ten years leading the marketing for a multi-national arcade group and then for an indoor theme park developer, I must admit to being a bit biased against the "Family Fun For Everyone" type of value proposition which is so bland as to be irrelevant to teenagers and young adults, incommunicable to sub-teens, and targeted only at parents of small children in my view.

You need to get far more targeted at the niche audiences that you cater for. You know who they are, and they certainly are not some homogeneous group classifiable as "Families", you need to segment far more specifically at ride promotion level.

So for the sake of this exercise, I'm assuming corporate, since you gave no details about a specific ride/experience or target segment, and I';m assuming your target here is amusement park ride operators and equipment buyers, not riders.

In which case the ride experience itself is almost irrelevant, as owner/operators are more concerned about throughput per hour, operating and maintenance costs, whether they can charge an add-on premium, or whether the ride is considered part of the gate-ticket price.

So the corporate tag-line might need to focus on issues like:

Faster moving lines. Better bottom line.

or:

Your accountant will be screaming with excitement too.

If you are looking for more of a consumer/rider-orientated tag-line, we need to know more about what you're offering, e.g.:

Q: Are your rides like the Showscan or Iwerks models using moving base seats, or the minivan-sized cabin models like the Thomson or Hughes Venturer where the whole cabin moves?

If motion base inside a fixed room with a big screen, I think the value proposition is somewhat different than the cabin type.

The feeling of claustrophobia in a cabin-type simulator greatly heightens the apprehension, excitement, and potential for nausea!

The higher comfort levels of a motion-base theatre seat in a fixed room are more family-friendly and enhanced by the potential to use a bigger, whole field-of-vision screen.

If you make the cabin-style attractions, I would use a tag-line along the lines of :

Taking the whole family to the edge. And bringing them back again.

or:

Keep telling yourself it's only a ride!

While with the more theatre-style presentations I would go with something along the lines of a sticker I saw in a hotted-up old car:

Sit down. Buckle Up. Hold On. Scream.

Or maybe:

Plush seats. Sweaty Palms.

Gee, answering this question makes me realise how much I enjoyed the leisure/entertainment business!

Hope this helps.

ChrisB

We went through a potential chance of name and tagline at an old company I worked for, I talked to some of the guys that were there at the same time, beause we worked with an agency that had a method for working these out.

We can't remember exactly, but names and taglines start off functional (i.e. "Because we are Better") and then turn (if branding and recoignition allow) to more abstract names (i.e. "Because").
There are exceptions to the rule, mobile operator Orange, used that name on launch, but backed it up with a huge branding campaign, so got away with it.

Stage 1: Competitor Analysis
Write down your competitors tagline and determine where they are on a Functional to Abstract scale, if most of them are either functional or abstract, that allows you to position yourself either them same or differentiate.

Stage 2: Tagline development
Once you know where your tagline (or name) should be, work on some examples.

Stage 3: Screening
Screen them for common use / trademarks etc

Stage 4: Testing
Test some of the names with focus groups, see how they fit, and feedback, common problems etc.
Really start to look at the strength and weakness of each tagline in detail.

Stage 5: Creatives
You should now have some taglines associated with your name/market/offering that get positive feedback and well liked, live with one or two of the faves, play with them creatively, explore how they work with your business, are they effective in what they want to do ?

I hope this helps a little.

Good Luck