Why do IT Security taglines suck?
And how to cut through the noise
Intro
IT security taglines often fall short in grabbing attention. I believe this is because we fail to answer the question, “What do you do and why does it matter?” By the end of this blog, you will know the key tenets to a positioning tagline that can cut through the noise and make a strong first impression. If you just want the short version, see the video below to get a first draft of a positioning tagline using ChatGPT.
Tell me what you do and why it matters
We’ve all been there; you’re at RSA, Kubecon or an industry event and all the event booths seem to say the same thing. This is difficult for customers but, frankly, it’s also difficult for me. I wish all vendors would make it easier to understand exactly what they do without requiring a direct conversation or an hour of research.
Nobody wants to create a tagline that doesn’t grab attention. They generally enjoy prime real estate on the website, at events, in pitch decks, and everywhere else that matters. The tagline is your biggest chance to make a strong first impression. And we have only have 8 seconds to make a dent in somebody’s mind space.
Why, then, as an industry, are we under-performing on our taglines?
It is hard, for sure
In my experience, creating an IT Security tagline can be exquisitely hard. The technology is complicated and the landscape changes fast. We have all heard someone say you don’t really know something unless you can describe it in simple terms. But sometimes even the most technical subject matter experts find it challenging to describe a product in five words or less. And for marketers, to really learn the technology can bring an enormous learning curve. It takes years to get to know the terms, the competition, the personas, the changing landscape. Buyers are also notoriously unforgiving; any whiff of BS and the security engineer or CISO is out the door.
But I believe there is more to this challenge than the simple fact that it is hard.
Where IT Security taglines fall short
I believe that our taglines fall short because they fail to answer the one question everybody asks, ‘What do you do and why does it matter?’
If we are not telling people what we do, then what are we doing? These are common issues I see with taglines:
· The company tagline: A company tagline doesn’t describe a product. Save the company tagline for the ‘About Us’ page of the website and leave the homepage or event show floor for the positioning tagline (which we will get to below).
· Wordsmithing versus decision-making: A positioning tagline should come about via strategic decision-making about your positioning. It is not an exercise in wordsmithing. You must actually make decisions about a target audience and competitor you want to position against (hence the term ‘positioning tagline’).
· Saying too much: You can absolutely create a positioning tagline for a suite of products. But your tagline should not describe ‘all the things.’ For a tagline for a suite of products, stick to ‘why the portfolio matters’. If you are saying everything, you’re saying nothing. Adam Grant’s book Think Again talks about how to debate most effectively. His main point is to pick your strongest point, because everything after can water down your main point. I argue we should also stick to one key point in a tagline.
· Confusing category creation with positioning: Please, if your goal is category creation, hire the authors of Play Bigger and keep that conversation separate from the positioning tagline. You don’t need to create a category to create an amazing tagline that says what you do and why it matters. Category creation is not synonymous with a tagline. Take Palo Alto’s category creation with the Next Generation Firewall. The tagline for this category creating move was, ‘The Next Generation of Firewalls is here.’ Not exactly inspiring. But it didn’t matter because they were creating a category, not a tagline.
How to create a positioning tagline
In the end, the goal is to speak your value clearly to a target audience in five words or less. To do this, you will need to pack a lot into five words. Below is my personal list of what to include in those 5 words, created from years of product marketing experience for innovative companies in the notoriously noisy IT Security space.
General category
In what general group of solutions do you want to be perceived? This answers the classic question, ‘are you a bagel or a muffin?’ Put another way, are you cloud security, email security, or something else? There should be some allusion to the general category in which you belong.
Target audience
Whose attention do you want to attract? This can be as general as ‘anybody interested in network security,’ it doesn’t have to be a specific role. And you don’t need to put the role in the tagline. But your value should be very clear to the person you are targeting.
Differentiation
What makes you so special? It should be clear who you are targeting as competition, or who you compare to, by how you explain your differentiation.
Pain
What pain does your target audience experience with the competitor you have chosen to target? By naming somebody’s pain, you can stop them in their tracks. Be concrete with their pain in terms of days, weeks, or any other tangible experience.
Alternate Reality
How will you alleviate your target audience’s pain? Again, be tangible with how you can give your target audience a universe in which they no longer live with the pain of the chosen competitor.
Strong hierarchy
Have you picked the strongest message to stand on top or have you packed it into the subhead? Pick the one message that would make your target audience stop and chat with you at an event. Use that in your tagline and put the rest into a subhead.
Good and bad examples
Tagline success stories make the criteria above come to life. Let’s start with good examples:
Now compare the difference between the taglines above and the taglines below.
It’s clear that the taglines meeting the largest number of criteria have a clearer answer to, ‘What you do and why it matters.’ For the ‘bad’ taglines, is nearly to impossible to even name the company represented without being told.
Conclusion
IT Security taglines don’t have to suck. Instead, they can serve as amazing examples for how to explain the most complex technology clearly and elegantly. But one has to start with the end in mind and, above all else, make it a clear goal to say what we do and why it matters. If successful, any team can cut through the noise of the IT Security industry, opening the door to productive conversations with interested prospects, customers or investors.
If you need a practical way to put pen to paper, use the video from the introduction that demonstrates how to come up with a first draft of a positioning tagline using ChatGPT. Good luck!
