Famous Slogans: Brand Examples, Their Origins and How They Changed

Why famous slogans stick

A slogan has one job: to survive being repeated by people who are not paid to repeat it. Most famous slogans do this with rhythm rather than meaning. Have a break, have a Kit Kat repeats a sound. Just Do It is three syllables you can say while running. Neither explains the product, and neither needs to.

They also leave something unsaid. A Diamond Is Forever never mentions a ring, a price or a proposal, so the listener supplies all three. That gap is where the line becomes personal. The guide to how to write a slogan breaks this down into practical steps, but the old examples below show it working in public.

Famous slogans by brand, with dates

The table lists brand examples whose dates are documented by the companies or by major news coverage. Where sources disagree, the earlier and better-supported date is used. Kit Kat’s line, for instance, was written in 1957, while its first television use came in 1958. Readers can treat this as a starting reference, not a popularity ranking.

How a brand slogan changes over time

Coca-Cola is the clearest example of a brand that treats its slogan as seasonal. The pause that refreshes ran from 1929, Always Coca-Cola arrived in 1993, Open Happiness in 2009 and Real Magic in 2021. The bottle shape and the red have barely changed through all of it. Only the words keep moving, roughly once a decade.

L’Oréal changed its line by pronoun. Ilon Specht wrote Because I’m Worth It in 1971 for a hair colour ad, giving the woman in it her own voice. The pronoun later shifted twice, first to you and then to everyone. In June 2025, a documentary about Specht won a Film Grand Prix at Cannes Lions.

Gillette went the other way. It introduced The Best a Man Can Get in 1989 and kept it for decades, then in January 2019 released a film built around the variation The Best Men Can Be, about bullying and harassment. Reaction split sharply, showing how closely customers feel they own a famous line, even one written for a razor.

Famous slogans that left advertising

Some lines escape the brand entirely. Wendy’s Where’s the beef? from 1984 became a political attack within weeks, when Walter Mondale used it against Gary Hart in a primary debate. Got Milk?, launched in 1993, turned into a fill-in-the-blank joke format. Neither company could control how people used the words after that.

Nike’s Just Do It has the strangest origin. Dan Wieden, who wrote it, said it was inspired by the last words of Gary Gilmore before his execution in Utah in 1977, which were reported as let’s do it. The line first ran in July 1988 and is still printed on Nike products in 2026.

McDonald’s took the reverse route. Its i’m lovin’ it began in German as ich liebe es and launched in Munich on September 2, 2003, as the company’s first global campaign, with English vocals by Justin Timberlake. The five-note ba da ba ba ba became as recognizable as the words, a story told in the guide to advertising jingles.

When a slogan becomes a liability

A slogan is a claim, and claims can be tested. Red Bull’s gives you wings was challenged in a United States class action filed in January 2013, which argued the drink did not improve performance as advertised. In 2014, Red Bull agreed to pay $13 million while denying any wrongdoing. Eligible buyers could claim $10 in cash.

Context can turn a line too. In August 2020, KFC paused It’s finger lickin’ good in new advertising because, in the middle of a pandemic, telling people to lick their fingers did not feel right. The slogan had been in use since 1956. Even the most famous slogans are written for a particular moment, and moments end.

Avis dropped its number two line in the United States in 2012 after about fifty years, replacing it with It’s Your Space. Marketing writers mocked the swap, and the European business later revived the old line on television. Retiring a famous slogan rarely goes quietly. People notice the absence more than they ever noticed the presence.

Canadian examples and the French question

Molson Canadian’s I Am Canadian is the obvious national example. It became much bigger than a beer line after The Rant aired during the Academy Awards broadcast in March 2000, and actors performed the speech live at hockey games that spring. In 2025, during the trade dispute with the United States, the original ad circulated widely again online.

Quebec adds a constraint that brands elsewhere rarely face. Its Charter of the French language requires French to be markedly predominant on outdoor commercial signs, and since June 1, 2025, only registered trademarks can appear without French. A national slogan therefore often needs a French twin. More regional ads are collected in Canadian commercials people still quote.

New brand slogans, as of 2026

Recent launches show how risky a new line has become. In November 2024, Jaguar unveiled a rebrand built around the phrase Copy Nothing, with a teaser film that showed no cars at all, and the online reaction was largely hostile. A slogan announced before the product it describes leaves people with only the words to judge.

Since then, the pattern favours very short lines and older ones revived for nostalgia. Tim Hortons returned paper cups for its rim game in 2025, Molson’s 2000 speech found a new audience online, and Kit Kat’s break is now older than most of its customers. Which of the slogans written in 2026 will a grandparent still be able to sing?