Taglines are the sidekicks of copy, the loyal partners that accompany every other marketing message you create. For example: "When it rains, it pours” (Morton Salt) or "Just do it” (Nike). When they work, taglines capture the essence of your brand/message/proposition in a brief, memorable phrase. When they don't work, they're silly: Can you remember who uses the following pointless tagline? "This is who we are. This is how we earn it.”

The right process: Keep your goal in mind. It's not to be clever for wit's sake, to but to imbed a lasting sales message into your prospects' minds.

That means that most good taglines are rooted in one of two things:

Position: Books have been written about positioning, but here's the heart of the matter in one simple sentence: It's what you offer to what kind of people. The cola for a new generation. The well-engineered car for serious drivers. The heavy shoe for the mosh pit crowd.

USP or "unique selling proposition”: Your distinct specialty. The thing you offer no one else can provide in precisely the same way. Perhaps it's "absolutely, positively” overnight delivery. Or fast, "finger lickin' good” chicken.

There's a third option, "attitude,” a phrase that reflects the mindset of your intended audience, like "Just do it.” But this is dangerous ground best left to big players who can saturate the field with advertising.

Work from many options: Don't start by writing the taglines themselves! Instead, start by generating up to five or six potential positions or USPs for your given product or service.

For example, I recently worked on a tagline for an expensive piece of commercial real estate in Boston. After brainstorming with the agent's marketing director, we came up with the following potential position/USP hooks:

* The appeal of its location

Once we agreed on the hooks, then I could write a set of tagline possibilities for each position/USP.

For "location,” for example, we considered, "Gateway to the Greenway” and "At the Foot of the Financial District.” For "amenities”: "Lots of Room -- With a View” and "Access, With an Accent on Quality.”

Nail the approach first, then hammer out the words: The goal of the first round of review is not to select the final tagline, but to select the best position or USP. The first round of tags serves as illustration, an easy way to evaluate potential positions on the relative merits of their messaging substance.

Once an approach has been approved, you can go back and brainstorm new tags within that approach, or tweak previous tags that are appropriate to the desired position.

Yeah, you can anticipate numerous rounds of revisions. But that's okay -- the tagline is too important for haste. And by focusing on positions first, you save lots of time that would've been wasted in random writing -- throwing words at the wall to see what sticks. With the right position in sight, you and your colleagues will arrive at a more effective tagline in a much more efficient manner.