In 2025 brands have to do… betterer
The word 'better' seems to be a favourite in the advertising world. But when almost every brand starts to use it, promoting themselves as 'better', does it start to lose all meaning? Matt Lawton, CMO of Five by Five Global, explores.
Is there any clearer indication of creative stagnation than seeing the number of brands promoting themselves as ‘better’?
In boardrooms around the world, strategists have no doubt been pitching how everything ‘ladders up’ to ‘better’ for a long time now. But since when did ‘better’ go unchallenged in a brief let alone make it through an internal review! I don’t know when it started but, just like that better car you just bought, once you see it, you see it everywhere. Emirates – Fly Better might be the longest standing example. It’s so broad, it’s boring. It’s so trite, it’s triggering… at least for me!
But whether it’s aviation, retail, financial services or consumer products, we’re led to believe there’s an entire echelon of goods and services that are superior in ways they’re too lazy to substantiate or describe explicitly in a compelling and distinctive way.
Poor LG must have been sweating bullets that life’s only good! How long before Life’s Good gets trumped by a better competitor? Luckily, they leaned into the threat and came up with a reassuring campaign headline for their new OLEDs: Our best. Now even better. Phew. Crisis averted.
It appears to be a global trait. Papa John’s – Better ingredients. Better Pizza. Northwestern Mutual – a better way to money (my personal favourite waste of words); Walmart – Save Money. Live Better. In Walmart’s case, it feels like they enviously translated Tesco’s iconic tagline, Every little helps into Latvian and then back-translated it courtesy of someone’s cousin who picked up a few words when they spent an accidental bachelor party weekend there. It’s the utterances of Neolithic Man. Just how dumb do they think their customers are? Don’t answer that.
The UK is not immune to the scourge of better either. Famously, there’s Sky – believe in better and Sainsbury’s – helping everyone eat better – which ran for two years before being replaced by good food for all of us. Proof that it is possible to do… better.
In Australia, there’s Bendigo – the better big bank; Sodastream wants us to push for better and, in case you were starting to wonder what’s better than better, gin brand Archie Rose went live with Fundamentally Australian. Fundamentally Better.
For a while there, Telstra were letting us know 26 regional towns across Australia were better on a better network. These charming animated short films were widely acclaimed for their high level of craft and perhaps show us how ‘better’ can be used more effectively.
In this case, it’s not a brand tagline. It’s a campaign line used in a context that clearly implies the benefits of coverage and reliability. The repetition of ‘better’ actually helps deliver the value proposition in a human quirk of nuance that AI surely couldn’t conceive of (at least, not yet). So ‘better’ might be ok but what could genuinely be better than better?
There’s always been plenty of societal attention on how healthy food choices improve lifestyles. Research from the Growth Distillery last year, defined 5 ways consumers see food as helping them live better lives: there’s food for fuel, connection, expression, happiness and challenge.
If you work in food at least, these areas seem like more meaningful and compelling territories to engage people with than just claiming to be better.
And if that’s still all too hard, I’ll doth my cap to the first brand who sees the opportunity to present ‘better’ in a more self-depricating way that we can all relate to by boasting they’re only ‘slightly better’. Wouldn’t that be refreshing.
Matt Lawton is CMO of Five by Five Global
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Spot on, Matt. “Better” is often the go-to catchphrase for brands – or marketers – who lack the insight or ability to uncover or articulate something truly distinctive. At US+US, we have a chat group ‘dedicated’ to the misuse of “better” in branding and marketing – and it’s very, very full.
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It’s good to see that some agencies who ultimately guide many brand campaigns are actually doing a better job of explaining why its better and the factors that sit within “better”. Hats off to the The Growth Distillery.
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I can’t believe it’s not better 😉
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