TBWA C/D To Levi: Drop All Taglines

One Winning Pitch Idea Relied on Presenting Brand as Icon
SAN FRANCISCO-As part of its winning pitch for the $90 million Levi’s account, TBWA Chiat/Day proposed abandoning the use of a tagline in future advertising while reducing the brand’s reliance on TV, sources said.
Lee Clow, the Venice, Calif., agency’s chairman and chief creative officer, told the review committee: “Your brand is your tagline,” said sources. Levi’s has not been advertised without a tagline in decades.
Instead, TBWA C/D presented a strategy to reinforce the brand’s iconic status with ads focusing, for instance, on a single element of Levi’s image, such as the red tab found on its jeans, said sources.