Trading Punch Lines with Hit Girl

You’d think a comic book geek like me woulda seen Kick-Ass when it hit theaters back in April.

I didn’t, and I’ve got no good excuses.

But I finally caught up with it on DVD.

Loved it, loved it, loved it…

Kick-Ass is kind of a twisted mix of Spider-Man and Kill Bill.

But what I wanna talk about today is the movie’s adorable little 11-year-old assassin with a potty mouth — Hit Girl.

She’s a showstopper.

Wearing mask, purple wig, and kilt, Hit Girl literally darts, leaps, spins, stabs, and shoots her way through roomfuls of drug dealers and mobsters.

When she’s done, there ain’t nothin’ left but dead bodies…and maybe a few stray parts.

But here’s what makes Hit Girl really special…

She gets all the best punch lines.

This moppet of mayhem never launches or finishes a bloodletting without a dirty joke or naughty tagline.

I wish I could share a few of her choicest remarks with you, but I’d blush.

Anyway, while watching Hit Girl do her thing, I started thinking about the importance of good taglines.

They’re a vital part of a business’s identity. In a few words, they’ve gotta be understandable, sum up what you’re about, maybe build trust, or even trigger a purchase.

Here’re a handful of famous taglines, or business punch lines:

“Visine gets the red out” (Visine)
“The pause that refreshes” (Coca-Cola)
“Our repairmen are the loneliest guys in town” (Maytag Appliances)
“Don’t leave home without it” (American Express)
“Leave the driving to us” (Greyhound)

And here’s one of my all-time favorites:

“The nighttime sniffling sneezing coughing aching stuffy head fever so you can rest medicine” (NyQuil)

My tagline is “Smashing wage slavery one job at a time!”

So what’s yours?

If you don’t have a punch line for your business, you’re probably missing big opportunities.

If you don’t have a business yet, what few perfect words summarize you personally? If someone said right now, “Tell me about yourself,” what tagline would describe you and what you do?

Let me know what you come up with!

P.S. If you’ve got a rhinoceros attitude about life — www.wallyconger.com/rhinotactics — you might consider “Keep charging!” for your tagline. Think about it.

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