Claim and tagline

A claim is written on paper, not in a design file. A copywriter and a strategist produce thirty to a hundred versions, throw most away and keep five to test in context: on a business card, in an email footer, under the logo on a van, read aloud in a radio spot. Design comes after. It follows positioning, because until you know who you are for and how you differ, there is no line to build.

A claim is the one sentence somebody else says on your behalf. An events agency we worked with had a line about partnership and reliability, and their salesman never said it out loud in meetings because it sounded like a brochure. Rewritten into something he could say without wincing, he stopped inventing his own wording and their proposals finally sounded like one company.

How it runs: a half day workshop with the leadership to name what the company actually does and for whom, then a week of writing, then a choice from a shortlist. You supply access to the sales people, not only to marketing, and a decision. A claim is not approved by voting, because the average option wins every vote. Allow two to four weeks including a trademark check.

When it makes no sense: buying a claim instead of clarifying the offer. A sentence will not rescue a vague service, it only wraps it better. One more trap: an English tagline looks international in a deck, but on the Slovak market half of your customers will read it and move on without understanding it.

Every line we write gets read out loud. We read it over the phone to someone who does not know the company and ask what they picture. Any hesitation means the line is weak. Try it today: say your claim to a colleague from another department and ask them to repeat it an hour later.