MAM
Super Advertising Slogans & Super Costs
Advertising slogans or taglines pushing sales are great for getting a customer’s attention as they often tangle and hold them hostage for a second or two. Some taglines catch the user’s attention, but most are simply confusing, causing them to “escape the trap” and run away.
The combined yearly budgets of all the strangely composed slogans promoting various branding worldwide would easily add up to billions of dollars. Corporations make extraordinary efforts to capture these few words on a string and liberally fund the most lavish extravaganzas when it comes to pushing these cutesy and strange sentences.
Not too long ago, a major credit card company, collected some 100-plus executives from their national offices around the world to an exercise organized by a major ad agency with the sole purpose to find a new slogan. That project was called “universal words”.
The first order of the day was to dress some of the executives in fictitious characters, like, Superman, Spiderman, or Tarzan, and the others in various imaginary titles from a CEO to shipper or an engineer to garbage collector, and so on. Each participant had to make a mock costume from a large tear sheet from the flip chart.
Forty eight hours of role playing later, they came up with a distilled series of universally accepted words: “life” “without” “the card” and “really boring”, hence the tagline, “life without the card is boring”. This million-dollar cost was easily absorbed as a finder’s fee for these magical words, and many additional millions were spent to promote the new tagline for a little while. Some taglines that are still easy to recall have only worked because of tens of millions of dollars in yearly expenditures like “a tiger in the tank” or “his master’s voice” “the real thing” and “just do it”.
There are other stories, and it seems shorter the better. IBM’s “Think” and now HP’s “invent”, Samsonite’s “wordproof” or “Relax. It’s FedEx” The long ones are, “What can Brown do for you?” for UPS or Cannon’s “ “Know how. Here’s the future, let’s go to work.”
Here are some more examples. Match the following slogans with their respective companies.
The difficulties of recognizing the companies are obvious:
Slogans
1) “the life unscripted”
2) “software that can think”
3) “what’s on your mind?”
4) “better ideas driven by you”
5) “think big, move fast”
6) “what good thinking can do”
7) “moving ideas”
8) “TV for the chosen few”
Companies
1) TLC The Learning Channel
2) CA Computer Associates
3) Britannica
4) Ford
5) CONOCO
6) Dow
7) GTE
8) Bloomberg TV
Two Critical Factors
When names of corporations are obviously weak, like strange initials or unclear words, then they are no longer able to convey a clear marketing message, and a tagline becomes essential to identify the purpose of the advertising pitch. This short gist is supposed to be a small platform to park the ideology of the corporation.
Sometimes capturing the idea, as a large paragraph is just too long, equally, a few shorts words are just too limited to paint the entire story. For that reason a vast majority of taglines convey very confusing messages. Upon, a newly invented tagline line, often, the entire corporation amazingly gets intoxicated with the slogan while repeating and singing every morning like a mantra as an hypnotic internal branding exercise. While the poor customer at large has no idea of this deep secret, and what the real message is in such a riddle. “We bring what you desire” or “trust life, as it is valuable” Really?
Furthermore, the consumer is getting busier and busier by the second, and has no time to memorize or to be able to recognize a company upon coming across that strange riddle again. Slogans are like fireworks; they stay lit in the sky for a second or two and immediately die when the big budgets are cut.
When ideas crossover, very often, same products can serve many different markets than it is recommended, to present such ideas with supportive explanations for those specific markets. In that case, a common-sense approach translated into a plain sentence is better than a twisted creative riddle. A simple sentence tells the customer a simple marketing message.
Branding concepts and positioning is best achieved by strong and original names and not by fluid and ever-changing slogans. Colors, stripes, logos and slogans come and go, they flow with the budgets and the trade winds, but a solid name identity stays forever. Solid names slowly grow at the grass root level without major budgets, and eventually become a well-known brand. This is a simple common sense approach.
Recommendations:
Use slogans that are common, everyday sentences. Use them freely for different products and services, and describe their specific features and benefits. For example, for a line of alarm clocks; “ enjoy seven different ways to set up your wake-up calls” rather than “ rhythmic vibrations, better sexual life” Slogans are great when they can be easily developed internally and created like simple sentences within an organization. Later, they can be dropped freely without any loss or pain, in contrast to spending extraordinary monies in creating ridiculously twisted and ever-so-confusing slogans. Just keep it sweet and simple.
Digital
Content India 2026 opens with a copro pitch, a spice evangelist and a £10,000 prize for Indian storytelling
Dish TV and C21Media’s three-day summit puts seven ambitious projects before an international jury, and two walk away with serious development money
MUMBAI: India’s content industry gathered in Mumbai this March for Content India 2026, a three-day summit organised by Dish TV in partnership with C21Media, and it wasted no time making a statement. The event opened with a Copro Pitch that put seven scripted and unscripted television concepts before an international panel of judges, and by the end of it, two projects had walked away with £10,000 each in marketing prize money from C21Media to support development and international promotion.
The jury, comprising Frank Spotnitz, Fiona Campbell, Rashmi Bajpai, Bal Samra and Rachel Glaister, evaluated a shortlist that ranged from a dark Mumbai comedy-drama about mental health (Dirty Minds, created by Sundar Aaron) to a Delhi coming-of-age mystery (Djinn Patrol, by Neha Sharma and Kilian Irwin), a techno-thriller about a teenage gaming prodigy (Kanpur X Satori, by Suchita Bhatia), an investigative crime drama blending mythology and modern thriller (The Age of Kali, by Shivani Bhatija), a documentary on India’s spice heritage (The Masala Quest, hosted by Sarina Kamini), a documentary on competitive gaming (Respawn: India’s Esports Revolution, by George Mangala Thomas and Sangram Mawari), and a reality-horror competition merging gaming and immersive fear (Scary Goose, by Samar Iqbal).
The session was hosted by Mayank Shekhar.
The two winners were Djinn Patrol, backed by Miura Kite, formerly of Participant Media and known for Chinatown and Keep Sweet: Pray & Obey, with Jaya Entertainment, producers of Real Kashmir Football Club, also attached; and The Masala Quest, created and hosted by Sarina Kamini, an Indian-Australian cook, author and self-described “spice evangelist.”
The summit also unveiled the Content India Trends Report, whose findings made for bracing reading. Daoud Jackson, senior analyst at OMDIA, set the tone: “By 2030, online video in India will nearly double the revenue of traditional TV, becoming the main driver of growth.” He noted that in 2025, India produced a quarter of all YouTube videos globally, overtaking the United States, while Indians collectively spend 117 years daily on YouTube and 72 years on Instagram. Traditional subscription TV is declining as free TV and connected TV gain ground, forcing broadcasters to innovate. “AI-generated content is just 2 per cent of engagement,” Jackson added, “highlighting the dominance of high-quality human content. The key for Indian media companies is scaling while monetising effectively from day one.”
Hannah Walsh, principal analyst at Ampere Analysis, added hard numbers to the picture. India produced over 24,000 titles in January 2026 alone, with 19,000 available internationally. The country now accounts for 12 per cent of Asia-Pacific content spend, up from 8 per cent in 2021, outpacing both Japan and China. Key exporters include JioStar, Zee Entertainment, Sony India, Amazon and Netflix, delivering over 7,500 Indian-produced titles abroad each year. The top importing markets are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, the United States and the Philippines. Scripted content dominates globally at 88 per cent, with crime dramas and children’s and family titles performing particularly strongly.
Manoj Dobhal, chief executive and executive director of Dish TV India, framed the summit’s ambition squarely. “Stories don’t need translation. They need a platform, discovery, and reach, local or global,” he said. “India produces more movies than any country, our streaming platforms compete globally, and our tech and creators win international awards. Yet fragmentation slows growth. Producers, platforms, and tech move in different lanes. We need shared spaces, collaboration, and an ecosystem where ideas, technology, and people meet. That is why we built Content India.”
The data, the pitches and the prize money all pointed to the same conclusion: India is not waiting for the world to discover its stories. It is building the infrastructure to sell them.
