Is your company’s slogan just a nice word to be framed and displayed?

Vision, mission, values, founding principles, action guidelines, interviews with management. The corporate slogan is finally completed after many times of reading and interpreting these words, which form the basis of corporate management, and after many elaborations and discussions at meetings. However, even when the slogan is released internally and externally, it does not quite catch on. It ends up being just a nice phrase to be framed and displayed, not functioning in any way. Isn’t this the case? There are many companies that have also made their corporate slogan a guideline for each and every employee. What is the difference?

The general method of slogan development is to review multiple slogan proposals prepared by outside copywriters at internal meetings. From among the many drafts developed from various directions and angles, management carefully selects the best one, adjusts the details, and finalizes it. The slogan proposals that are brushed up during the review process will capture the company’s current situation and express its vision for the future, and will be more precise and complete. With the support of a copywriter, the slogan can become a very good expression of the company’s vision. However, this approach has one major drawback. It lacks the passion created by the employees themselves. Conversely, the passion created by the employees themselves, who sweat it out in the field every day, is an essential element in the development of a slogan that works.

An effective method for developing a slogan through the proactive involvement of employees is the workshop format. There are many different ways to conduct a workshop, and the success or failure of the workshop depends on whether or not it can be facilitated in a way that suits your company. Our approach is to first select members from within the company to serve as brand committee members.*1
In the actual workshop, all members first take stock of their company’s values and identify important keywords.*2
Then, based on the keywords suggested by the employees, we will propose several draft slogans as a starting point.*3
Since the slogan is only a rough draft, we begin the process of brushing up the possible ideas with all the members. *4
As we revise and adjust the draft slogans until we are satisfied with them, the enthusiasm grows with each round, and the slogans become the one and only slogan created by the members themselves.*5

*1. There are several important criteria for selecting members, such as “spanning across departments” and “having a wide range of ages. The composition of the members largely determines whether the discussion will be fulfilling or not.

*2. How the keywords are extracted and organized within the framework of the slogan is an important point in the subsequent development of the slogan.

*3. Since not only copywriters but also several consultants participate in the development of the preliminary draft, the possibility of expression can be explored from multiple perspectives.

*4. The method of working on the brush-up will need to be devised, such as doing all participating members at once, in a team system, or proceeding with individual work.

*5. In some cases, logo development as well as slogan development is conducted. Therefore, in our case, there are cases where designers participate from the mid-stage of the project. By including the opinions of designers, we are able to elaborate a more unique expression of the company.

We supported Company A, a general real estate developer, in a slogan development project through such workshops. Company A, a comprehensive real estate developer, is celebrating its 50th anniversary in business in various fields related to housing and living, including the sale of condominiums and detached houses, management of office buildings and commercial facilities, and remodeling and brokerage. In the real estate industry today, needs are diversifying due to aging and declining populations, technological advances, etc. Company A was also experiencing a variety of changes in its environment, including the diversification of the values of its stakeholders and employees. As the company’s business diversified, there were many questions at the time, such as what exactly we were, what was the purpose of our existence, and what kind of growth we should pursue in the future. Through the anniversary project, which was a milestone for the company, a slogan was formulated to serve as an indicator for all people around the company to look in the same direction, with the aim of making further strides and becoming a stronger organization with more centripetal force.

The slogan created for the anniversary project has the effect of clearly stating to society what the company should be. At the same time, anniversary events provide an excellent opportunity to reexamine one’s own way of being. Therefore, we decided to make Company A’s anniversary project more than just a place to formulate a slogan. We decided to develop a slogan in the form of a workshop so that the employees of Company A themselves could rethink what they should be and what they should aspire to be on the occasion of their 50th anniversary. The project was to create a slogan that would unify the employees’ awareness and firmly penetrate both inside and outside the company.

The workshop was led by a 15-member Brand Committee convened from among all Company A employees. Thorough inner communication was also conducted to foster a sense that the slogan was being developed not only by the project members, but by all employees. This created a common understanding that all employees are working toward the same future.*6
In workshops where members meet for the first time, it is often the case that discussions become stagnant and do not proceed well. However, by taking advantage of the stimulating materials we had prepared, the discussions gradually became more heated.*7
In the course of multiple workshops, we derived Company A’s unique characteristics, such as the security and trust it has provided to stakeholders and its attitude of continuous challenge and creativity, and based on these discussions, we proposed several slogan ideas based on keywords that emerged from employees. After lengthy discussions, we refined the slogan into an expression that is uniquely Company A. Everyone was focused on each word, pursuing the meaning behind each word and brushing up the slogan to make it a slogan that would help the company move forward into a better future. Each time the slogan was refined, it became a slogan with the soul of all the members.

*6. It is necessary and important to have measures in place to report on activities to employees other than brand committee members as needed.

*7. We prepared not only competitive information, but also materials analyzing recent slogan trends, and provided support for discussions to determine what kind of expression would be appropriate for the company and the direction it should take. In addition to textual materials, we also prepared visual stimulus materials that depicted the corporate image that the company should aim for, so that even members who were not accustomed to creative work could work on the project with ease.

During the workshop, many unique aspects of the company were mentioned, such as its history of creating towns as a comprehensive developer and its history of opening up various possibilities in the community. In the end, a slogan was completed that expresses the company’s stance that creating towns and livelihoods means allowing possibilities to flourish, and that it will continue to take on this challenge for the next 50 years. At the beginning of this presentation, I mentioned that it is important for employees to create their own lives. This is because it is the employees who are working there now who can appropriately select the keywords to be used and refine the slogan to make it more effective both inside and outside the company. Furthermore, by creating the slogan themselves, they can become attached to it and use it in their daily work as a guideline for their actions. This is why it is most important for employees to be actively involved and to weave their own words into the slogan. The slogan that was developed generated positive comments from within Company A, such as, “We have developed the will to take charge of the new 50 years,” and “We want to make the next 50 years even better. We created it ourselves. It is because of this desire that it became something that is deeply engraved in their hearts.