Picture this. You have created a relevant brand-centric tagline that your customers parrot, the marketplace recognizes and your competitors covet. You have reached the holy grail of marketing: You have embedded your marketing message into the mind of the consumer. Your research shows that believability and recall for your product and the associated tagline are incredibly high. This tagline has helped to catapult you to a leadership position in your product category.

What should you do now?

Nothing.

Why is it so hard for companies to leave a good thing alone? Typically when an organization walks away from a rock-solid, consumer-celebrated tagline, one of a few things has happened:

• The organization recently hired a new head of marketing.

• The organization recently hired a new agency.

• Internally, they’re bored with the current tagline.

The example I often use is Coca-Cola. Don’t you imagine that Coke employees would like a break from red? But they’re smart enough to realize that red equals Coke in our minds. So, they shut up, leave it alone, smile and count their profits.

A few years ago, watchmaker Timex dropped its famous “Takes a Licking and Keeps on Ticking” tagline for the incredibly bland “Timex. Life is Ticking.” The company’s brain trust made this decision despite the fact that “Takes a Licking and Keeps on Ticking” ranked No. 40 on Advertising Age magazine’s list of the top 100 ad campaigns of the 20th century.

Why would they do something so dumb? They had hired a new chief marketing officer, of course. He has since left that position. And their current tagline? “Timex. Be there now.”

How sad is that?

Drew McLellan can be reached at  Drew@MclellanMarketing.com.  © 2007 Drew McLellan