Protesting against the cliche

Product descriptions and unique selling points (USP) are often plagued by Cliché monsters (ironic really!). When you see products described as ‘best-in-class’, ‘unique’, ‘unrivalled’ or ‘market-leading’, you know they are probably not. These claims are likely not only to be invalid but are also potentially quite harmful to the brand. If customers are reading about similar claims by competitor brands, then suddenly your USPs become less credible. And we don’t want that do we!

When you use them ingeniously. Because clichés are immediately recognisable, they can do a lot of ‘the hard work’ to convey the unique value of a brand — as long as we think of a new way to apply them. A cliché can get to the heart of a specific benefit for a particular audience, but the secret is to implement an unexpected twist or use it in a play on words.

These three B2C companies took clichés right out of the ‘Book of Clichés’, but put a unique spin on them and created taglines that were both memorable and humorous:

Shave Time. Shave Money. (Dollar Shave Club – razors and grooming products delivered to your door)

We’re cooking now. (Denny’s – a 24/7 restaurant)

Works like a dream. (Ambien – medication used for the short-term treatment of insomnia)

So how do we escape the Cliché monsters and start producing creative ideas that can demonstrate a fresh social relevance of the business proposition? Sometimes it’s about changing the perspective, making surprising connections. Take for example a dairy-cow footbath producer who is challenged by the fact that footbath hasn’t changed in 20 years. It’s still long, ankle-deep and, most important, swimming with too much copper sulfate metal. Add that it’s a largely overlooked category, even a great metal-minimizing solution like HOOF-TEC™ would need help turning heads. Enter “Too Much Metal,” a campaign created by our talented BBN USA’s Milwaukee agency, that tackles metal mania with in-your-face, heavy-metal hair band bros. Shot by celebrity photographer Matt Hoyle in New York City, this campaign quickly and unforgettably rocked the client’s target audience with useful, high-impact media placements both internally and out in the field. The campaign went on to be awarded numerous creative accolades by NAMA, PRSA and the BMA B2 Awards.