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

7 points| pitdesi | 15 years ago | reply

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?

18 comments

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[+] maxdemarzi|15 years ago|reply
Try a few alternatives:

no joke

no kidding

no bullcrap

no hogwash

no nonsense

hassle free

painless

hooray!

[+] ggchappell|14 years ago|reply
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.

[+] shii|15 years ago|reply
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.

[+] willheim|15 years ago|reply
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.

[+] dandrews|15 years ago|reply
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.
[+] thaumaturgy|15 years ago|reply
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...

[+] jranck|15 years ago|reply
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.
[+] msredmond|15 years ago|reply
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.
[+] instakill|15 years ago|reply
I had the same issue so I went with buffalo chips. Same meaning, less offensive.