Ill Spent Money on Bad Advertising Slogans

In his Ad Age column this week, Al Ries wonders why Tyson foods spent $40 million on an ad campaign with the tagline, "It's what your family deserves." He claims it, and most other ad taglines, simply do not speak the language that people speak. It's analogous to quotes you see in articles that are clearly lifted directly from press releases. Real humans are not the source for those quotes. A public relations press release writer is responsible for stuffing those in-human pontifications in said quoted human's mouth. Most ad slogans are meaningless and connote nothing about the brand. Of course, if you spend a lot of money like Coke and Nike, you can say whatever you want because those brands just buy their way into your brand psyche.