NAKED PAPER’S PROPERLY CLEVER TAGLINE

We're absolute suckers for a bit of wordplay that serves a purpose. (We're just suckers for wordplay in general, really.) And this new tagline-slash-positioning statement from when Naked Paper rebranded from Naked Sprout is an absolute banger. It's a positioning statement, a joke, a catchy line and a flag in the ground, all in 5 words. Too good. PS. How good is this little snippet from their rebranding announcement? Naked Sprout made sense to us at the time. As a fledgling business our name was fresh, natural, and gave a nod to the fast-growing bamboo in our tissue. But it turns out not everyone hears “sprout” and thinks “bamboo”. Five years on, and hundreds of questions about brussel sprouts later, we’ve grown as a team and as a business. 

We're going to be straight up here: there's no guaranteed, repeatable process to writing a banger of a line like this. It usually comes after writing 15, 20, 30, 50... forgettable headlines. Even when you know that this is stacking techniques like antithesis (a pair of opposing ideas) and paradox (how can it be brown and green?) and reframing of category expectations, it's still really hard to write a line this good.

But here are a few questions that might shake something loose.

Write down every apparent flaw, quirk or thing-that-needs-explaining about your product. The colour, the texture, the price, the process, the ingredient you don't use... then for each one, try to complete this sentence:

"It's [flaw] because it's [virtue]."

You're looking for a line that feels a little bit surprising and a little bit eye-opening.

But if that doesn't shake anything loose, there's still a bigger thing worth nicking here.

This line isn't just a banger because of the wordplay. It's a banger because it repositions Naked Paper in their category.

Who Gives A Crap own sustainable toilet roll as fun, colourful, and personality-led.

But they bleach their loo roll. (With environmentally-friendly methods, but still.) 👆 That was the gap that Naked Paper could own. Their whole message is that even eco-bleaching is still an unnecessary step. So saying "It's brown because it's greener" isn't just saying "we're eco-friendly". It's saying "we're more eco-friendly than other eco-friendly loo roll". Love that. Wicked smaht.

And we guarantee that kind of gap and opportunity exists in your category. The trick is to find it and then figure out how to make sure your brand owns that space.

(We looked at how Goodrays did this as well, if you want some tips.)