That’s the question designer Clif Dickens wanted to answer when he started Honest Slogans. He came up with the idea — to pair logos with tongue-in-cheek taglines — after he’d been asked this question one too many times:
“I was at a restaurant and I’d ordered a Coke,” Clif,
27, told BuzzFeed. “Without skipping a beat, the waitress asked, “Is
Pepsi okay?”. I’d heard it so many times by that point, but I still
thought it was funny — and I decided to do something with it.”
So in 2011, the advertising grad took to Tumblr, creating and posting a new slogan every now and then for fun. They went mostly under-the-radar until this one:
Clif Dickens / honestslogans.com
“I put the Hot Pockets slogan on Reddit and it got half a million views in one day,” he said. The influx of blog traffic meant Clif was now shooting to create several new slogans each week.
Clif Dickens / honestslogans.com
A lot of early slogans were about food and drink, he said, but an increasingly split audience — a mix of younger Tumblr kids and older folks — led him to tap into media companies and apps too.
Still, he’s sometimes surprised as to which slogans elicit the strongest response from readers.
Clif Dickens / honestslogans.com
“I did one on Subway, and it was really
divisive. Some people loved it, some people hated it,” said Clif. “But I
think both camps can agree on the bread.”
The hardest part of coming up with new slogans on a weekly basis? Trying to walk the line between being clever and taking a cheap shot.
“The challenge is not to just say something like, ‘This company sucks’ — because that’s not funny.” he said. “I try to come up with things that people can immediately recognize and relate to, and hopefully, laugh about.”
Clif Dickens / honestslogans.com
Clif Dickens / honestslogans.com
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