Products are made in a factory, but brands are created in mind – Walter Landor
When a brand name is uttered, the first thing that comes into people’s minds is – the brand logo, font, and slogan.
A slogan is a short and catchy phrase.
Typically, a slogan contains around 7-8 words.
A good marketer uses it to describe the business – vision, mission, and the benefit the user would experience using the product or service.
Using those slogans consistently across all the platforms, it gets registered and becomes memorable in people’s minds.
Moreover, it improves brand awareness, recognition, customer relationship, uniqueness, and most importantly, brand loyalty.
Loreal is a top brand that understood the importance of slogans and used it to claim the top spot.
Their “I’m worth it” slogan is a phenomenon that brought them an astonishing result.
As a marketer, we have a lot to learn from it.
To help you out, we have created this marketer to explain its history and the impact it made.
Keep reading!
History of The L’Oréal Slogan
To understand the slogan and the impact created, you first need to know its history.
Ilon Specht, a 23-year-old copywriter at Manhattan’s McCann agency, created the slogan in 1971.
Clairol, the competitor of L’Oréal, has already created and launched its hair dye with the tagline “Natural hair.”
It has conquered its audience’s attention and interest and was a hit.
To counterstrike, L’Oréal created this remarkable and revolutionary tagline.
Revolutionary?
During the 70s, sexual discrimination was at its peak. In every industry, there was a lot of male dominance.
If a woman wishes to voice her opinion, her husband has to do it on her behalf.
It was the time when the women’s rights protests were lurking.
Ilon used the circumstance and created this iconic tagline keeping the women’s standpoint in mind.
This slogan was created to empower women, make them feel worthy, and have confidence and faith in themselves.
Their first slogan was “because I’m worth it.”
Then later, the slogan was turned to “because you’re worth it.”
It has been altered to “Because we’re worth it.”
It’s been 50+ years since L’Oréal started using this tagline and dominated the market.
50 years ago, Loreal launched this slogan on International Women’s day by launching their preferred hair coloring dye, featuring film actor Joanne Dusseau.
It was a massive hit!
During the 1970s and 1980s, the women’s rights movement gained momentum, and Loreal began to expand into new markets, such as the middle east, India, and Asia, making the tagline famous worldwide.
Today, this slogan is translated into 40 languages and has become the militant tagline that unites women worldwide, encouraging them to embrace their ambitions and believe in their daily worth.
The company has invested more than $1000 million in research and development and filed 498 patents in the year 2019.
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Impact Of The L’Oréal Slogan – “I’m worth it”
The ad copy released along with the slogan helped to make a great impact.
Here is it:
“Because I’m worth it. I use the most expensive hair color in the world. Preference by L’Oréal. It’s not that I care about money. I care about hair. What’s worth to me is the way hair feels. It feels good against my neck. Actually, I don’t mind spending more on L’Oréal. Because I’m worth it.”
This copy ensured the tagline’s success.
The impact of the slogan was on both sides – the people and the business side.
Let’s look at it in detail.
- On People’s Side
The iconic catchphrase goes wild.
The success of the ad campaign was not because it was written by a woman. Featured a woman. Made for women.
It spoke about the feelings of women.
It spoke about how grooming for themselves to look and feel good is essential rather than doing it to seek a man’s attention.
Since the slogan inspires people worldwide with its message of empowerment and sentiment, people easily connect with it.
L’Oréal encourages women to feel more comfortable in their bodies, skin tones, and shape. It nudges the women to look in the mirror and remind themselves that they were worth it.
The company was amazed that many first-time users were buying the product.
It was also not teenagers who were experimenting with the products. It was divorced women who were using it.
Herta Herzog, former L’oreal head researcher, shared in Gladwell’s book, “We had far more women who were getting divorced than Clairol had. Their children had grown, and something had happened, and they were reinventing themselves”
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- For Business Side
Since the slogan has created a massive impact on society and many people started to buy L’Oréal products, their business growth has been exponential.
The slogan became their brand identity.
Since then, they have used the momentum to grow their brand and take it worldwide.
At the end of 2021, they made sales of 32.28 billion euros with historic growth of +16.1%, twice the beauty market growth.
They chose influencers and brand ambassadors who likely had the same ideology and believed in women’s empowerment.
They featured talented women like Beyonce, Viola Davis, Sonam Kapoor, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Addition Rao Hydari, Deepika Padukone, Eva Longoria, Viola Davis, etc.
What Can You Learn As A Marketer From The L’Oréal Slogan – “I’m worth it”?
With such a short, catchy, memorable, and revolutionary slogan, L’Oréal’s advertising made a mesmerizing impact.
As a marketer, here are a few things you should learn from L’Oréal’s slogan:
- Brand positioning and recognition: L’Oréal started using the slogan “Because you’re worth it” to empower women, live their ambitions fearlessly, and believe in their self-worth. They weaved their product’s benefit, company motto, and human emotions by greatly positioning. This self-worth effect helped people connect, motivate and inspire themselves, instantly connect with the brand, and start using their brand. Plus, it gain them the recognition they wanted in the industry and among people. Since most people started to use their product, it kind of skyrocketed. They used social responsibility perfectly during the peak time to gain the people’s attention and level up their game.
- Building customer relationships: The slogan helps the business connect with people. This slogan bridges the gap between the business and customers for a long-term relationship. Since the company slogan delivered a positive message in such a caring and emphasizing tone, it developed a positive attitude towards the brand. It touched human feelings and attracted people to the brand.
- Stand out from the crowd: When L’Oréal’s many competitors were promoting their products like “Natural” hair and stuff like that, L’Oréal stood with their social responsibilities – to empower women in society and gain a sense of importance. Their self–worth and positive stuff made it memorable and impactful to people’s minds.
- Increase demand for the product: A slogan should talk about the benefit and how it feels when using a product. In that case, L’Oréal made a greater impact on the women going through a divorce at the start, gave them a sense of importance, and made them feel special to start over their life again. It lit up the fire of Demand in the market for the superiority people feel. Now, L’Oréal is a brand recognized by people worldwide and has products designed for men and women of all age categories.
- The slogan is predictable: Your good outer appearance will make you feel fine, confident, and worthy. Because you’re worth it, directly tell the customers that they’re talking about their appearance and it’s a beauty product. It’s direct and easily recognizable.
- It elaborates the perspective of the business: The slogan explains the perspective of the business. To make people feel empowered, confident, and worthy and follow their ambition. When the equal rights protest was on a high, it connected with the audience easily, with their emotions, and attracted their target audience.
Conclusion
A good slogan must be unique, clear, catchy, predictable, and convey information about business and benefit.
L’Oréal is a perfect example.
They weaved their social responsibility, brand’s vision and benefit a customer would acquire in their slogan well.
As a marketer, you should learn from how they took advantage of the circumstance and stepped into success.
The above tips will help you create a memorable and outstanding slogan in the future for your customers or brands.
