Strapline | food & drink

Project: new strapline

Client: an Italian coffee company

I worked with an agency to create three possible straplines to communicate the end client’s purpose succinctly to its target audience.

Although based in Italy, my end client was targeting eco-conscious coffee drinkers in 52 countries. Therefore a suitable strapline would need to be understandable and relevant to native English speakers in the UK and USA, as well as second-language English speakers.

After defining its purpose and tone of voice, the client had come up with a potential strapline. They asked me to analyse it and suggest three alternatives that would accurately reflect its purpose. I reviewed the grammar, individual words, snappiness. the emotion it was likely to elicit in its audience and how well it communicated the purpose. I provided this feedback in Italian to make it accessible for everyone involved.

Brainstorming options

After extensive brainstorming, I came up with three alternative suggestions. On a linguistic basis, I looked at synonyms, changing the grammatical structure and jotted down as many ways as I could think to express the sentiment of the purpose. I also took culture and emotions into account.

I came up with around fifty suggestions, some which were better than others! I whittled these down to a final three which I felt best fit the brief. My first suggestion was as close as possible to the client’s suggestion. My second strapline suggestion made the client’s role more explicit, while the third suggestion became an invite to the target audience.

Over to the client

I presented all three suggestions and my analysis in a word document. I included extensive comments to explain my word choices and thinking at every step. And, since the client was based in Italy, I included a literal translation (known as a back translation) of each strapline so the client could immediately understand the words used.