The tagline
How powerful is the tagline?
I personally recieve text messages, emails, messages, myspace bulletins, facebook messages, and digital presskits by the dozen, on a daily basis.
They pour in, as they do for everyone. I scan through the inbox, the news feed, etc, and I sort them according to worth by the words in the tagline;
If I’m interested in the subject line, the tagline, it gets read, if not it goes out the window.
So the effect of the traditional print media’s headline is holding true on the net.
While newsagents used to (and to some extent, still do) have large scale headlines printed by the side of the door, or on a billboard, we on the internet are now using these headlines in our digital messages.
However, in an effort to achieve greater exposure, these taglines are becoming more and more misleading. Myspace bulletins abound with lines about the cancellation of the free service or Green Day breaking up…clicking on these merely brings up another hum drum news bulletin.
I think this is admirably exemplified in a recent news article on the website Ninemsn. The headline was “Ricki Lee caught in Porn scandal”.
I shared the article with a number of different people, male and female, avid internet users and non users, and the reaction was the same:
All readers believed, from the headline, that Australian singer Ricki Lee had been exposed in a pornographic video or photo or something similar.
The actual article though, detailed a scandal involving an acquaintences involvement with porn several years prior to their close friendship.
If headlines and taglines are increasingly uninformative, the question arises of how will we now be able to sift through the chaff to find the good wheat?
