By Mehdi HassanWhat is a tagline, and how is it different from a slogan?
A tagline is a short, lasting line that sums up what a brand stands for, usually shown with the logo or at the top of the homepage. A slogan is typically tied to a campaign and changes more often. In practice the words overlap, but for a startup the distinction matters: you need a tagline that explains you, not a campaign line that assumes people already know who you are.
Taglines sit near the top of the messaging hierarchy in brand strategy for startups. They come after positioning and before the value proposition. That order is the whole method: a tagline that isn't built on a clear position is just a nice-sounding phrase.
How to write a tagline, step by step
To write a tagline, start from your positioning, generate many short options in different patterns, grade them for clarity and distinctiveness, and test the finalists in context. Copywriters rarely find the line on the first try. They find it on the thirtieth.
Write down the position
One sentence: who you serve, what you replace and why you win. Our positioning statement template gives you the structure.
Collect raw words
List the words your customers use for their problem and the outcome they want. Interviews and sales call notes are the best source.
Write 30 or more lines
Use the five patterns in this guide and write at least five lines per pattern. Don't judge while writing.
Grade every line
Score clarity and distinctiveness from 1 to 3 each using the grading scale below. Keep only lines scoring 5 or 6.
Test in context
Put the finalists above your hero headline on a real page mock-up and read them to someone outside the company.
How do you grade a tagline: clarity or cleverness?
Grade a tagline on clarity first and distinctiveness second, and treat cleverness as a bonus that only counts once the line is clear. A clear line tells a stranger what you do or who you're for. A distinctive line couldn't belong to a competitor. A clever line adds wordplay or surprise, and it costs clarity more often than it adds it.
Score | Clarity (1 to 3) | Distinctiveness (1 to 3) |
|---|---|---|
3 | A stranger knows what you do or who it's for | No competitor could use it truthfully |
2 | A buyer in the category would get it | Only one or two rivals could use it |
1 | Needs the logo or the product to make sense | Fits most of the category |
A 6 is rare and worth keeping. A 5 is good. A line that scores 3 on cleverness but 1 on clarity belongs in a campaign, not in your hero. That's the copywriter's lens most design-led tagline lists skip: they show nice lines without asking whether a buyer would understand them on first read.
What do well-known tagline examples do well?
Well-known taglines succeed because they compress a clear position into a few words, and most were backed by years of consistent use. Below are 10 well-documented lines, some current and some historical, with what each does well. Taglines change, so treat these as studies of craft rather than a list of what each company says today.
Brand and tagline | Pattern | What it does well |
|---|---|---|
Stripe: "Financial infrastructure for the internet" | Category claim | Names a big, specific role and owns it |
GitHub: "Where the world builds software" | Place | Frames the product as the default location for an activity |
Slack: "Where work happens" (past) | Place | Claims the center of the working day in three words |
BMW: "The Ultimate Driving Machine" | Superlative | Ties the brand to one value: the driving experience |
Avis: "We try harder" (past) | Challenger | Turns being number two into a reason to choose them |
Airbnb: "Belong anywhere" (past) | Feeling | Sells the emotional outcome rather than the booking |
Apple: "Think different" (past) | Belief | States an attitude the products were meant to prove |
Nike: "Just Do It" | Command | A universal push, made specific by decades of athletes |
M&M's: "Melts in your mouth, not in your hands" | Benefit | A concrete, provable product benefit |
FedEx: "When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight" (past) | Promise | Long, but nothing about it is vague |
Notice the B2B lines at the top. Stripe and GitHub lean on clarity, which is the right call for companies explaining a category. The consumer lines at the bottom lean on feeling and attitude because their audiences already knew the products.
What are good startup tagline examples?
Good startup tagline examples make the buyer or the outcome obvious and still sound like a specific company. The 40 lines below are ones we wrote for hypothetical startups to illustrate each pattern. None belong to a real company, so you can study the structure without borrowing someone else's line.
Name the buyer
- Payroll for agencies that bill by the hour.
- The CRM for solo recruiters.
- Accounting built for Shopify sellers.
- Scheduling for clinics, not call centers.
- Analytics for teams without analysts.
- Contracts for founders who hate contracts.
- Inventory for kitchens, not warehouses.
- The help desk for two-person support teams.
Name the outcome
- Close the books by Tuesday.
- Every invoice paid, on time.
- Schedules that respect the rules.
- Ship docs as fast as code.
- Hire in weeks, not quarters.
- No more surprise churn.
- Know your runway every morning.
- Audit-ready without the audit panic.
Name the old way
- Spreadsheets, retired.
- Goodbye, status meetings.
- The end of copy-paste reporting.
- Onboarding without the binder.
- Expenses without receipts in a shoebox.
- Forecasts you don't rebuild every Monday.
- Approvals without the email chain.
- Compliance without the consultants.
State a belief
- Software should explain itself.
- Good data is boring data.
- Your customers aren't tickets.
- Small teams deserve real tools.
- Security you can read.
- Pricing with nothing hidden.
- Fewer dashboards, better decisions.
- Work should end at five.
Claim a place or category
- Where product teams decide.
- The home for every customer call.
- The operating system for independent gyms.
- Where your contracts live.
- The control room for your cloud bill.
- The source of truth for pricing.
- Headquarters for remote clinics.
- The front desk for modern dentists.
How long should a tagline be?
A tagline should be three to eight words for most startups. Under three words, lines tend to become abstract, such as "Think bigger" or "Work smarter", and fit anyone. Over eight words, it stops being a tagline and becomes a value proposition, which is fine but belongs in the hero headline or subline.
Length also depends on where the line will live. Next to a logo in a small footer, shorter is better. As a hero eyebrow above a plain headline, a slightly longer line can work. Write the line for its main home and check it still reads at the smallest size you'll use. Taglines often appear in brand identity examples as part of the lockup, so test it with the logo too.
For example, suppose a startup has to choose between two finalists
Hypothetical example: a startup sells forecasting software to finance leads at companies with 50 to 200 staff. Two lines survive grading: "Forecasts you don't rebuild every Monday" (clarity 3, distinctiveness 2) and "Finance, foreseen" (clarity 1, distinctiveness 2, high cleverness).
They put each above the hero headline "Rolling forecasts that update from your accounting data". With the plain headline doing the explaining, "Finance, foreseen" reads as a nice flourish. Without the headline, in a social bio or a deck title slide, nobody understands it. They choose the first line for the website and keep the second as a possible campaign theme. The pair approach is the same one we recommend in our guide to the value proposition.
When should a startup change its tagline?
A startup should change its tagline when its positioning changes, for example when it moves to a new buyer, a new category or upmarket. Changing it because the team is bored of it is rarely a good reason. Buyers see your tagline far less often than you do, so a line that feels tired internally may still be doing its job.
Taglines often change during a rebrand, so if yours is changing because the whole brand is, our rebrand examples show how the line fits into the wider change. If you're unsure whether your current line is still true, run it through the grading scale again against today's competitors. If it now scores 1 on distinctiveness, the category has caught up with you.
