Tagline

A tagline is a fixed phrase — usually five to eight words — that sits alongside the name of a product, brand, film, book, or campaign and compresses its core proposition into a single reading. Films use them on posters ('In space no one can hear you scream'). Brands use them next to logos ('The ultimate driving machine'). Books use them on covers, under the title.

The tagline differs from the slogan chiefly in permanence and placement. A slogan travels with a campaign and can change every quarter; a tagline is bolted to the identity and is expected to sit under the name for as long as the identity lasts. It is also visually placed rather than shouted — the tagline is a line of type, not a chant.

Good taglines do one job well: they tell the reader what kind of thing this is before the reader knows anything else. 'In space no one can hear you scream' does not name Alien, but it tells you the film is a horror film set in space, and it does so in the register of the film itself. That last point is the craft — a tagline should be written in the voice of the thing it labels.

Common mistakes: writing a tagline that describes the category rather than the specific work ('A film about love'), overloading with adjectives, and, worst, writing a tagline that could be lifted off and pasted onto a competitor without anyone noticing. If the tagline survives that swap, it isn't a tagline; it's filler.