Ask HN: OK to use the word "bullshit" in our company tagline? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: OK to use the word "bullshit" in our company tagline?

7 pointspitdesi18 comments

We're doing a homepage redesign and part of that is exploring a new tagline. In a meeting, one of us randomly threw out that one of our value propositions is "no bullshit" when finding a credit card processor. Somehow it stuck, and we all like "no bullshit" in our tagline... but we're unsure how the market perceives this.

Do you guys know if this turns some people off? We are a B2B site - FeeFighters.com … many of our customers are online businesses, but we also have a number of small businesses - dentists, restaurants, etc. We're contemplating changing our tagline to "Compare credit card processors. They compete. You win. No bullshit." Is the general population offended by the word "bullshit" or has that gone by the wayside?

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Try a few alternatives:

no joke

no kidding

no bullcrap

no hogwash

no nonsense

hassle free

painless

hooray!

An issue you might want to think about, which is not related to the particular choice of words:

When you say something along the lines of "we're not lying", in my mind you are implicitly reminding me "this is a situation in which we might reasonably be expected to lie". Thus, an attempt to inspire confidence may in fact be subtly undermining it.

Okay, so lying might not be the issue, but something negative is the issue. Do be careful that the message you want to send, might not be the same one that is received.

Risky, but I think in the end it'd be a positive that'd attract me to your product if I ran a small business (which I do). But your tag of 'no bullshit' might not be feasible for an entirely other reason: Gandhi.net seems to have trademarked the phrase and uses it as part of their tagline as well: http://en.gandi.net/no-bullshit

I can't find any outside references for the trademark registration however.

"Gandhi.net seems to have..."

It's http://gandi.net (without the H).

"I can't find any outside references for the trademark registration however."

Search for "no bullshit" here: http://www.tmview.europa.eu/tmview/welcome.html

Ah, thank you. I was searching through US companies for some reason - silly considering Gandi is a French company...

It seems that they have trademarked the tag officially as well[1][2].

[1]:http://www.tmview.europa.eu/tmview/details.html?id=008458168...

[2]:http://www.tmview.europa.eu/tmview/details.html?id=3667252&#...

When you resort to callous language you demonstrate a lack of creativity.

There's an energy drink company up here in Canada with some rather terrible ads but one thing I do like is their tagline: "No Caffeine. No Caffeine Crash. No Bull"

That works on two levels. 1) Obviously they're hitting on what you're hitting (No BS) and 2) A dig at the leading energy drink Red Bull.

I think a better idea for you would be to aim for a positive message (not a negative).

- They Compete. You Win. Right On! (cute) - Better. Cheaper. Win-Win! (more accurate) - They Compete. You Decide. (play on Fox News and puts power in consumer's hand which is what they want)

Or what if your third part of the tagline rotated so that each time the screen refreshed it changed to another awesome final point? That would grab attention.

I chided the folks at Gandi for their "no bullshit" tagline, thinking it uncultured at best. They sent me a thoughtful response, saying that they'd weighed the possibility that it would be considered crude, but that it was a clear description of their corporate mission.

You could maybe have a lot of fun with this, without actually triggering fallout from the easily-offended crowd.

e.g., "No bulls hit!", with a drawing of a surprised or relieved bull. Or, "No bulls sit!", with a drawing of a crowd of standing bovine...

You know the old saying.. If you have to ask, you probably shouldn't.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Seven_dirty_w...

It depends, does the risk of offending potential users outweigh the gain? Or do you think you'll get more users with a more radical marketing approach? If you guys like it that much I would A/B test it and see what works.

One problem is that some filters automatically block people from going to pages based on the words on that page. Using bullsh*t may help mitigate that.

I had the same issue so I went with buffalo chips. Same meaning, less offensive.

How about BS?

I'd go with BS

Links

Current site: http://feefighters.com

Wireframe options:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3446069/homepage-pick-winner-keep-ho...

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3446069/homepage-they-compete-you-wi...

Better a two-sentence tag line than three-sentence.

I agree. I think "They Compete. You win." is a better tagline without the "No bullshit." not because I'm offended by your word choice, but because it's more succinct.

Confusingly similar to "When banks compete, you win"? (A live trademark of Lendingtree, Inc.)

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