enthalpy

Monday, November 26, 2007


Your lame motto sucks.
Impactful or not, does a college really need a motto? Quick: What's the slogan of your alma mater? An extremely informal and decidedly unscientific survey indicates that many people don't know.

But mottos do matter, at least according to the branding experts who get paid to think them up. The problem, these experts say, is with slogans that try to say everything and end up saying nothing.

Most slogans play it too safe, according to Andy Valvur, a senior brand strategist for Igor, a naming and branding agency with clients like Nokia and Cisco Systems. His agency has been working with a college, which he declines to name, that wants a new motto and a new name. The college's brand identity is "too generic," he says, and fails to "capture what they do well."
Motto: the first bastion of the small minded.



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