Endline Research

When approaching writing an endline for a project i'm currently working on I was directed towards this blogpost:


http://scampblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/tuesday-tip-no66-how-to-write-endlines.html


It's brief and informative, well worth a read if you're in the same position as me as a copywriter or just generally interested in that kind of thing. 


It was pointed out to me that "the main points are:

• Before you come up with an endline you must be able to summarise what you want to say in 1 word, e.g. ‘explosion’
• Rhymes, alliteration and neology are useful and often effective techniques.
• Find relevant words with double meaning

The models commonly used for endlines are these

1. What we are  e.g. a mobile phone brand
2. What we believe e.g. that communication is essential
3. What we offer e.g. stylish, advanced phones
4. What we do for you e.g. make you look cool"

When approaching these 4 models explicitly with the brand/product i'm focusing on I realised i'd already thought about them to some extent subconsciously, and it's pretty straight forward.

1. What we are - A confectionary brand.

2. What we believe - Flavour is important.

3. What we offer - Tasty, real fruit sweets.

4. What we do for you - Supply an enjoyable treat.

These 4 points made it clear that I already had the '1 word' to summarise what I was trying to say, Flavour. With this in mind and after a bit of brainstorming and a lot of binned paper I instigated the "Zingy language" suggested in the scampblog post above. Rhyme is a great tool in advertising and I was eager to use it.

Trial and error led me down various paths, some more fruitful (or should I say less infuriating) than others. I can't stress enough how useful trial and error is, in my own (short) experience of the industry I've come to see very early on not to stop at your first good idea, there are better ones yet to be seen. 

The campaign so far for the product in question had a lot of focus around a race/hunt and so I tried to bring this in as much as possible.

After a few ideas I settles on "The Juice is Loose", only to discover after some quick research that this was in fact an endline run by Starburst in the '90s.

Here's one of those ads:

This is a good example of why you should always check that sort of thing, there's nothing wrong with taking inspiration, in fact you should take inspiration from everything possible, but nobody likes a plagiarist. It is, however, annoying to come up with something yourself only to discover someone else has already done it. 

I'd tried and i'd made an error, so it was back to trying! After a few more ideas, including "Join the Fruit Pursuit" which just seemed a tad too forced to me, I again settled on another idea.

"Taste the Chase" - I was happy with it but went for a second opinion from the art director i'm working with (who can be found at http://thereisnoboxgt.blogspot.com) who instantly suggested swapping the words around,  and so the endline had been decided.

Chase the Taste

 

Second (and third) opinions are useful, use them!