50 Fun Facts About Company Slogans

Dan Wieden said Nike's 'Just Do It' (1988) was inspired by the last words of which death-row inmate?

Gary Gilmore said 'Let's do it' to the Utah firing squad that shot him in 1977, the first execution in the United States in almost ten years. Wieden changed one word.

The 1940s advertising line 'A Diamond Is Forever' was written for which company?

De Beers: with diamond sales sliding, it hired the agency N. W. Ayer in 1938 to tie the stone to romance. Ad Age later ranked copywriter Frances Gerety's line the best slogan of the century.

Clara Peller demanded 'Where's the beef?' in a 1984 commercial for which fast-food chain?

Wendy's: weeks later Walter Mondale turned the line on his rival Gary Hart in the 1984 Democratic primaries, to say Hart's 'new ideas' had no substance behind them.

Which future blockbuster director made the first 'Got Milk?' commercial in 1993?

Michael Bay shot 'Aaron Burr' two years before his first feature film: a history buff with a mouthful of peanut butter and no milk cannot get out the winning answer to a $10,000 radio quiz.

Apple's 1997 campaign with the 'Crazy Ones' ad is widely read as a rejoinder to which rival's one-word slogan?

IBM's 'Think' goes back to Thomas J. Watson, who had the single word hung on office walls from 1911. Apple's ad, read by Richard Dreyfuss, raised a glass to 'the crazy ones' instead.

McDonald's 'I'm Lovin' It', launched in 2003, was created by an agency in which country?

Heye & Partner of Unterhaching wrote it as 'Ich liebe es'; it was McDonald's first global campaign, and Justin Timberlake sang the jingle.

Which car-rental company adopted the motto 'We Try Harder' in the early 1960s to make a virtue of being number two?

Avis trailed Hertz, so the agency Doyle Dane Bernbach sold second place as the reason its staff had to work harder for you. The line ran for half a century, until 2012.

The "Think Small" campaign, which Advertising Age ranked the best of the 20th century, sold which car?

The Volkswagen Beetle: Doyle Dane Bernbach shrank the car to a speck on a page of white space and owned up to its size, while American rivals sold length, power and luxury.

Which brand's hair-colour ads ended with a woman saying 'Because I'm worth it'?

L'Oréal: copywriter Ilon Specht's ad for Preference opened by calling it the most expensive hair colour in the world. Her last line turned the higher price into a matter of self-respect.

Which chocolate bar has told people to 'have a break' in its advertising since the late 1950s?

Kit Kat began when a worker at Rowntree's York factory asked the suggestion box for a chocolate bar a man could take to work. The 'break' line came from the agency J. Walter Thompson in 1957.

Which candy's advertising promised that it 'melts in your mouth, not in your hand'?

M&M's are named for Forrest Mars and his partner Bruce Murrie, the son of a Hershey executive. During World War II the heat-proof sweets were sold only to the US military.

Which chain blurred its own slogan on its packaging in August 2020 because the pandemic had made it bad hygiene advice?

KFC: with health advice saying not to touch your face, 'It's Finger Lickin' Good' no longer fitted. The chain pixelated the words on its buckets and posters, and promised the line would be back when the time was right.

'The Ultimate Driving Machine' was coined in 1974 to sell which carmaker to American drivers?

BMW invited a tiny new agency to Munich to pitch against two big established firms. Its copywriter Martin Puris wrote the line, and the newcomers won the account.

Audi's slogan 'Vorsprung durch Technik' translates as what?

'Progress through technology': in 1982 the British adman John Hegarty spotted the old line on a faded poster at Audi's Ingolstadt factory, and ran it in German, untranslated, in Audi's British ads.

Which company settled a $13 million lawsuit in 2014 over its claim to 'give you wings'?

Red Bull: the suit argued that a can gave no more of a lift than a cup of coffee. Without admitting fault, the company offered American buyers $10 in cash or $15 worth of its drinks.

Which cereal's slogan 'The Breakfast of Champions' began on a billboard at a Minneapolis minor-league ballpark?

Wheaties got the sign as part of a deal to sponsor radio broadcasts of Minneapolis Millers baseball games. In 1934 Lou Gehrig became the first athlete to appear on the box.

Maxwell House long claimed its 'Good to the Last Drop' slogan came from a remark by which US president?

Theodore Roosevelt did drink a cup at Andrew Jackson's Hermitage in 1907, but the Nashville paper quoted him only as liking such stuff 'when I hunt bears'. The slogan first ran years afterwards.

Which company's five-note jingle, first heard in 1994, plays beside the promise that its chips are 'inside' a computer?

Intel hired Walter Werzowa, an Austrian who had scored a European pop hit with the band Edelweiss. He built the five tones in a garage in Los Angeles, mostly from xylophone and marimba sounds.

The Nokia ringtone is a snippet of 'Gran Vals', a 1902 guitar piece by which composer?

Francisco Tárrega, a Spanish guitarist. Nokia first used a phrase from his waltz as background music in a 1992 television advert, and two years later made it a ringtone on its 2110 phone.

Which candy's 'Taste the Rainbow' theme was created by the New York agency D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles?

Skittles ran the line unchanged for a decade. In 2004 a new agency kept the rainbow and swapped the verb, so one advert told buyers to 'believe the rainbow' instead.

Which sandwich chain, founded in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1965, adopted the slogan 'Eat Fresh'?

Subway began when 17-year-old Fred DeLuca borrowed $1,000 from a family friend, Peter Buck, to help pay for college. Their first shop was called Pete's Super Submarines.

Verizon's 'Can you hear me now?' actor became a spokesman for which rival in 2016?

Sprint had Paul Marcarelli open by owning up to his old Verizon line. His new pitch was that every network had become good, and that Sprint's came within 1 percent of Verizon's reliability at half the price.

The jingle 'Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there' was set to music in 1971 by which future pop star?

Barry Manilow was handed the words and paid a flat $500 for the melody, with no royalties for its decades on air. He wrote the tune of 'I am stuck on Band-Aid' as well.

Which insurer's ads coined the line 'so easy, a caveman could do it'?

GEICO: its other mascot, the gecko, began as a joke about people getting the company's name wrong. In his first advert, in 1999, he begs callers to stop phoning him by mistake.

Which cereal's three-word slogan, describing the noise it makes in milk, later gave its three cartoon mascots their names?

Rice Krispies had the words first, in a radio advert about the noise in the bowl. The illustrator Vernon Grant heard it and drew three gnomes to match, and Snap reached the box alone in 1933.

Which remedy's 1970s jingle ran 'Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is'?

Alka-Seltzer's tune was written by Tom Dawes, whose band The Cyrkle had opened for the Beatles on their 1966 American tour. He went on to write jingles for American Airlines and L'eggs tights.

Which beer's ads had drinkers argue 'Tastes great' against 'Less filling'?

Miller Lite: earlier low-calorie beers had never caught on. Its agency noticed that blue-collar men were the ones buying, so it hired retired athletes to argue over the beer.

Which voice actor delivered Tony the Tiger's 'They're Gr-r-reat!' for more than fifty years?

Thurl Ravenscroft also sang 'You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch' in the 1966 cartoon, but the credits left his name off. Many viewers assumed the narrator, Boris Karloff, had sung it.

The Energizer Bunny began as a send-up of the drumming toy rabbits in which rival battery brand's adverts?

Duracell's toy rabbits ran down one by one until only its own kept drumming. A 1992 settlement split the world: Energizer's bunny got the United States and Canada, and Duracell's got everywhere else.

Maybelline, of 'Maybe she's born with it', began as coal dust mixed with what?

Vaseline: by the family's account, Tom Lyle Williams watched his sister Mabel darken her lashes with the mix and copied it. He sold it by mail order as Lash-Brow-Ine, then renamed it Maybelline in her honour.

Gillette introduced 'The Best a Man Can Get' during which event in 1989?

The Super Bowl of 1989 carried the first advert. Thirty years on, Gillette turned the line on itself in a film about bullying and harassment, which ended on 'The Best Men Can Be' instead.

Which carmaker's adverts, from 2000, had a boy whisper 'Zoom-Zoom' as its cars sped past?

Mazda first ran 'Zoom-Zoom' only as a theme beneath a different official tagline. The whisper caught on so well that it took over as the slogan, and spread from North America around the world.

In 2007 Walmart dropped its long-running 'Always Low Prices' line for which new slogan?

'Save money, live better' ended a 19-year run for the old line. The new adverts sold what shoppers could do with the money they saved, and analysts heard an echo of the rival chain Target in the change.

Which beer's adverts, first shown in December 1999, had friends yelling 'Whassup?' down the phone at one another?

Budweiser's agency found the greeting in 'True', a short film by the director Charles Stone III about himself and his Philadelphia friends on the phone. He remade it for the beer with nearly the same cast.

'Impossible Is Nothing', launched in 2004, is a campaign by which sportswear brand?

Adidas launched it in New York with Muhammad Ali and his daughter Laila, a boxing champion herself. One advert used digital effects to put her in the ring against her father as a young man.

In television adverts, the actor Karl Malden warned 'Don't leave home without them' about what?

Amex travelers cheques: Malden, an Oscar winner then playing a detective in The Streets of San Francisco, fronted the adverts for 21 years. Johnny Carson spoofed them on The Tonight Show.

Which snack's 1960s adverts made the bet 'Betcha can't eat just one'?

Lay's gave the line to Bert Lahr, the Cowardly Lion of The Wizard of Oz, in 1963, two years after its merger with Fritos. He delivered it in advert after advert, each time in a different costume.

The 1971 advert with a hilltop crowd singing 'I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke' used which slogan?

'It's the Real Thing' runs through the song's chorus. The adman Bill Backer had the idea when fog stranded his flight at Shannon in Ireland, and he watched angry passengers make friends over bottles of Coke.

Which soup company's 1930s radio jingle gave it the long-running slogan 'Mmm Mmm Good'?

Campbell's label is older than its jingle: an executive chose the red and white in 1898 after admiring the Cornell football team's new uniforms.

Which fast-food chain's adverts from 1997 to 2000 starred a talking chihuahua with a man's voice?

Taco Bell's swaggering male mascot was played by a female dog called Gidget, with the comedian Carlos Alazraqui dubbing the voice. She went on to play the mother of Bruiser in Legally Blonde 2.

According to its author Maurice Drake, the 1967 slogan 'Beanz Meanz Heinz' was written where?

Over two pints in a pub: after weeks without a usable idea, Maurice Drake took his notepad to The Victoria, near his agency. Creative Review later ranked his three words the best advertising slogan of all.

Which motto did Alphabet, Google's parent, write into its 2015 code of conduct instead of 'Don't be evil'?

'Do the right thing' went into Alphabet's code, which spelled it out as following the law, acting honourably and treating each other with respect. Google's own staff code kept 'Don't be evil'.

In 2014 Facebook replaced its 'break things' internal motto with what?

'Move fast with stable infrastructure' was, Zuckerberg admitted on stage, not as catchy. The firm had grown so large that fixing the bugs cost more time than the haste saved.

Which US Army recruiting slogan of the 1980s and 1990s was officially revived in March 2023?

Be All You Can Be ran for two decades from 1981. The Army brought it back after falling a quarter short of its 2022 recruiting target, with 45,000 recruits against a goal of 60,000.

Which US military recruiting slogan, adopted in 2001, was replaced after only five years?

Army of One was pitched at young people's individualism, after research showed that they saw military life as dehumanising. Critics said it clashed with an army's need for teamwork.

Which British wood-stain maker is known for 'Does exactly what it says on the tin'?

Ronseal's 1994 advert failed in research, where viewers found its plain talk dull. The firm's marketing director ran it unchanged anyway, and the phrase passed into everyday British speech.

Which company's 1994 global image campaign asked 'Where do you want to go today?'

Wieden+Kennedy ran the $100 million campaign, with Tony Kaye directing ads shot in Hong Kong, Prague and New York.

Which British supermarket built its advertising around the slogan 'Every little helps'?

Tesco was stuck behind Sainsbury's when it adopted the line. In 1995 it launched its Clubcard loyalty scheme and overtook its rival to become Britain's market leader.

Which crime novelist, then an advertising copywriter, is often credited with the 1920s slogan 'Guinness is Good for You'?

Dorothy L. Sayers wrote copy for Guinness at the Benson's agency, including the verse for its toucan. She put the job to use in 1933, setting her mystery Murder Must Advertise in an advertising agency.

Which fast-food chain's 1974 jingle sang 'Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce' and promised 'Have it your way'?

Burger King's singing counter staff promised that special orders would not upset them. The target was McDonald's: the chain sold its willingness to customise a burger against its rival's famous rigidity.