And Memorable Slogans And Tag Lines.
Headliner Example: Developing A New Tagline for A Ski Resort
Let's say you have been retained by a Colorado ski resort to help
launch a new promotional campaign. Part of what they want is a catchy
tagline that goes with their 30-second TV spot showing a skier blasting
down a slope of fresh powder with the sun shining in the background.
They want a line that ties to the feelings of good times, exhilaration
and excitement one gets when snow skiing.
To get started, you click on your Headliner icon and the following
window pops up:
Headliner will start a project folder for you to keep your work in. You key in the label "Ski" and click on the OK button. Headliner then displays the Project Folders Window that will take you through the different steps for developing that perfect tagline. You enter a more descriptive project name such as, "Ski Resort Promotion" and move your mouse over the different parts of the window to read the Helpful Hints that appear on the right.
After completing your review, you click on the Select Databases check box to pick the expression databases you feel might help you develop new tagline ideas:
You scroll through the list of Headliner's 26 different databases and decide to search everything but Proverbs, Quotes and Personal Expressions. You click on each of the lines to unselect them, leaving a total of 23 databases or 75,903 expressions to search.
You then return to the Project Folders Window to see that the next step is Look for Words and Word Twists. You haven't a clue what a word twist is so you press F1 to display Headliner's Help System and then quickly find this definition:
... The word twist technique involves partial substitution within well-known phrases to catch the reader's attention. It differs from "punning" largely in the emphasis given to selecting words and phrases that effectively communicate the sales message ...
"No ifs ants or bugs about it" for a pest control service.
"To each his phone" for a new personal pocket telephone.
Headliner gives you a simple way to search for expressions that contain common words and automatically substitute different key words in their place. To perform a word twist, use the syntax old<new in the Search Window, where old is the word or root you want Headliner to search for, and new is what you want Headliner to substitute in its place.
You start thinking about how to use a word twist for your ski resort tagline and jot down key words that relate to skiing and the great time resort visitors will have: words like fun, snow, powder, etc. Next to some of these words you list more common, sound-alike words like go instead of snow and power instead of powder. You then decide to key these initial ideas into Headliner using the old<new word twist syntax when appropriate, and so you click on the Look for Words and Word Twists check box to display:
The Search Window now contains your three search strings as displayed above. You click on the check box to start your search and in a matter of seconds see hundreds of resulting expressions in the Review Window. You note that Headliner displays every expression it finds containing the word fun without any changes. However, every time it finds go or power, it substitutes snow or powder before displaying the resulting expression, as you told it to do when you entered go<snow and power<powder.
As you scroll through the results of the search in the Review Window, you double click on any ideas of interest to automatically save them as "Keepers." As you save each idea, you can edit it, wordsmithing it into a more appropriate candidate tagline:
After reviewing and pondering the results of this initial search, you have a couple dozen "idea starter" expressions with just a few minutes of effort. You can now tweak and play with these further, repeat the same search but with different key word and word twists or try one of Headliner's other search techniques (note the other steps and options displayed on your Project Folder - like rhyming, acronyms and alliterations.)
At any time you can also print out your results, copy them into your word processor or save everything you've done to disk. You can then come back to Headliner whenever you have more time, click on your Ski project folder and pick up where you left off. Headliner will automatically reload the search strings you had saved, the expressions you had selected and stored as "Keepers," and your final top tagline candidates.
This example illustrates just one of the many ways you might want to use Headliner.