The perfect tagline is a hard thing to nail. It has to be concise, honest, memorable, and reinforce the essence of your brand. If you've ever seen the iconic advertising movie Crazy People, which sends up the advertising industry, you'll know that taglines that please everyone, from the C-suite to the customer, are hard to land on. Lines like 'Volvos – They're boxy but they're good' don't just appear out of thin air.

Here are three iconic brands whose taglines have endured, stood out, and helped move factoryloads of product.

RONSEAL - 'It does exactly what it says on the tin'

Ronseal had a viral ad before going viral was a thing. Launched in 1994, this TV ad featured a man with a tin of Ronseal's quick-drying woodstain, doing very little more than reading the product description. But it was the uber-practical closing line that became a global tagline for plain speaking and honesty, passing beyond advertising to everyday vernacular.

'Ronseal - it does exactly what it says on the tin' was an advertising concept - the goal being to demystify the product for the user with pure simplicity. But it also told the user that they didn't need to be a paint expert, they just needed to understand what they wanted to do to their home. Need to stain wood? Want it to dry quickly? This was the product for them. It doesn't refer to the product directly, rather it points back at it and says 'read the label again, that's all you need to know', meaning it could be applied to a whole range of products that had similarly simple labelling.

DOLLAR SHAVE CLUB - 'Shave Time, Shave Money'

Dollar Shave Club is a brand who pioneered the direct-to-consumer model for physical goods. The concept was simple: have super-cheap razor blades delivered to your door on a regular basis. Launched in 2011, it sold to Unilever five years later for around a billion dollars in cash.

The beauty of this tagline is how it works so well with the brand name to describe everything the brand does, and how you benefit, in just seven words total, and it throws in a little on-brand wordplay to tie it all up in a bow. The duality of the word shave – being both part of the brand, and a functional description of how the product cuts down cost and time – is absolute perfection.

McDonald's - "I'm Lovin It'

This tagline is so well known, so ubiquitous, that even a mention of the four-note jingle that precedes it plants the tagline in the audience's head. McDonald's has been leaning on this tagline for 21 years now. It's a tagline that speaks to the experience, doesn't get caught up in any complexity of product description or value statements, it just suggests the joy that comes with consuming the product. The sound it's paired with – equally short and uplifting in tone – has allowed McDonald's play with it across cultures and formats.

The tagline and its lore are so deep, so interwoven with pop culture and so light-hearted and positive, it's possible to imagine that McDonald's may never abandon it (and McDonald's has been through A LOT of taglines before this one). Of the three we've listed, it's the shortest, the breeziest, and again one that has permeated into modern vernacular.

THE TAKEAWAY:

• Keep it short, brevity is critical to making a memorable tagline.

Focus on the user and the sensation your product creates for them. The tagline should reflect the confidence, joy, satisfaction or relief the product makes the user feel.

GO DEEPER:

• Read about the strategy of 'I'm Lovin' It'