Dumb-liner: please stop this end-line writing madness

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We need to talk about end lines. These pithy, pervasive, and preposterous phrases have spread like a great plague. From the world of big brands – to start-ups, schools, local businesses, institutions, and government departments. The contagion has now reached a critical level, where even your local tradespeople bung some sort of verbiage on the side of vans and business cards. Pimlico Plumbers, the UK’s largest independent team of pipe un-cloggers used the ambiguous: “More than just plumbers”. Taking this line literally results in great disappointment: they have neither the equipment, nor the inclination to (a) groom your dog, (b) remove a concerning mole from your back, or (c) offer savvy crypto investment advice.

Luxury brands are among the worst offenders for putting out lines that are somehow grandiloquent and meaningless at once. Watch brand Tag Heuer has been “chasing dreams since 1963”. Private jet company Flex Jet claim to be “commanders of the sky, serving captains of industry”. London hotel The Emory simply claims to be “like no other”. Cruise company promises that “you are the destination.” Cryptic, misleading, patronising pony, all of it.

Where end lines are concerned, there are a few rules to consider. Here’s the first: your business doesn’t actually need one. If your brand team get together and can only come out with some banality, it’s best not to bother. The second: if your end line has the word “tomorrow” “future”, or “world” in it, scrub it out and try again (think of “Different Worlds, One McKinsey”, just dreadful). Finally: if you have to say it, it’s probably not true. Mercedes-Benz Group should therefore re-think its claim of being “unlike any other”. For 95 percent of brands, it should be end-times for end-lines.