Make us care.

I'd like to shake the hand of the person who came up with eBay's tagline. Now that's doing it the way God intended. "Shop victoriously" even beats "Just do it," the granddaddy of perfect taglines.

I'm so tired of seeing taglines being adulterated. "The Supply Chain People," "The Supply Chain Results Company," "Your Link to Supply Chain Solutions," these are but a few examples of this shameful practice. You don't have to be associated with the supply chain industry to know where I'm coming from. At business-to-consumer companies, where you think you'd find the more sophisticated marketers, it's the same deal. For some products in my house right now there's "Good call." (Miller Lite), "Closer to stylists. Closer to hair." (Goldwell), "knows fabrics best" (Tide), and "Endurance. Sport. Training." (Avia).

Wow, I get what you're all about. You're all about you.

In Guy Kawasaki's book The Art of the Start, required reading for anyone working at anything anywhere, he sets the record straight on taglines. Taglines are meant to be guidelines for customers on how to use your product or service. They're a call to action. An imperative sentence. And the incredibly effective ones also find a way to capture the essence of how customers can expect to feel when they do business with you.

For goodness sake, stop using taglines as half-baked, cutsie, say-nothing company descriptors. It's all about us -- not you. Make us care. There you go, a pretty good tagline.