Put Some What? Where?!

In an industry where words are everything, we spend a lot of time counseling our clients on exactly which ones to use. When trying to cultivate or support an exact brand image, every word, phrase or punctuation choice is important. Good slogans or taglines support brand recognition and adoption, while bad slogans earn scorn and ridicule from the masses (particularly from those of us in the industry) before passing quickly from our minds.

Good ones are:
GE –We bring good things to life (memorable, succinct, conveys powerful brand messaging about the type and quality of products as well as what they enable)
UPS – What can brown do for you? (underscores their cornerstone value proposition of service, while solidly tying the brand to their logo for added recognition)
Nike – Just Do It (encourages the athletic mindset of “get out there and play or run or race or train or…” and appeals to the spontaneous side of us all)

Bad ones are:
Easily forgotten


On a recent vacation I found myself enjoying a “Pig in a Puppy”* at King’s BBQ in Kinston, NC where I saw signs for their Oink Express food delivery service. Being a fan of the “Pig in a Puppy” and being very interested in learning how to get one delivered to me at home in Seattle, I began flipping through the brochure. Unfolding it all the way, I learned that their tagline (I kid you not) is:

“Put Some South In Your Mouth, Ya’ll!”

Once I got over the misspelled colloquialism and a big case of the giggles, my mind immediately began evaluating the tagline for its validity in driving brand recognition. And while at first, it definitely makes me chuckle, I think it’s a great tagline for King’s BBQ’s Oink Express:
The rhyme is memorable but not obnoxious, it includes a call to action, highlights their key offering of southern food, closing with “ya’ll” lends credibility to their claim of expertise in southern food and endears them to the target audience and the (probably unintentional) double entendre adds intrigue and edge.

So with the combination of good food and a creative tagline, the Oink Express gets two snouts up from me. Next time you’re craving hushpuppies, collard greens or banana pudding, you know who to call for some south in your mouth.


*A “Pig in a Puppy” is a chopped pork barbecue sandwich, where the pig is placed in between two slices of a very large hushpuppy, rather than a bun.