As is customary when these things are announced, the tagline was met with widespread criticism. The announcement set in motion the usual chorus of radio hosts and callers opining how bad the tagline is and how they could come up with a much better one for a lot less money.  Bloggers, of course, have been relentless.  UPDATE: There’s even a Facebook page devoted to hating on “Live like you mean it.”

I am usually uneasy about this kind of criticism. Just because a creative idea is widely criticized doesn’t mean it’s not great. Some of the best ideas ever envisioned were initially misunderstood and even hated by the masses. In fact, I would be more worried if everyone liked the campaign right off the bat, because it meant it didn’t take people out of their comfort zones and challenge their thinking like good marketing should.

That said, I don’t particularly like the slogan. It’s not terribly inspiring and does not allude at all to what makes Wisconsin unique. But I’m willing to give it a chance.  Besides, state tourism marketing campaigns are a different animal. They’re almost always watered down due to politics involved.

But that’s not the issue I want to address.

I hate, hate it when people think marketing is so easy that anyone with a pen, pad of paper and some spare time can do it. Sure, it’s easy to look at a campaign, decide you don’t like it and try to come up with something better. You may even be successful. But let’s see you start from scratch.Blank sheet of paper. Come up with a brand positioning that will cover everything the client has to offer. It’s not so easy.

But that’s a problem that we, as marketing professionals need to address. We all face the problem of having clients that think they can do it themselves. And it’s our problem, not theirs. We’re the ones that need to change that perception.

And it starts by placing less emphasis on having big announcements about marketing campaigns.Really, who cares? They happen all the time. In addition to Wisconsin’s, in 2007 the NFL made a big announcement about how they were tweaking their logo. Earlier, McDonald’s put out an announcement about their new tagline, “I’m lovin’ it.”

This is news? It may get some nice publicity for agencies and clients, but at what cost? The buzz I heard about all of these announcements was negative, mainly because it didn’t give people proper context. The McDonald’s campaign has turned out to be pretty darn good. But at the time, all people heard was a three-word slogan that cost millions of dollars.

If we make marketing seem so trivial, then we get what we deserve when people think our jobs are so easy.

Our jobs are to help our clients be successful. That usually means to help increase sales, but there are other measures of success. Our jobs are not to get publicity for patting ourselves on the back.

Will the “Live like you mean it” campaign be successful? I don’t know. Given time, it could be. But that underlines the problem with this approach to marketing. Some companies, in this case the state tourism board, seem to think that all that’s needed is a catchy new tagline, and that will somehow move the needle. And that a new one is needed every year or two to get people interested and excited about whatever it is they’re selling.

And that leads to big, self-congratulatory announcements. When perhaps really what’s needed is a sound, consistent, strategic way of telling the brand story. Sure, a tagline is nice. But changing the brand image every few years does more harm than good. People don’t know what you’re about.

As marketing professionals, if we want less criticism like that being leveled at the state tourism people these days, we should focus on advising our clients to be smart over flashy. We should provide advice that reflects the complicated nature of making believers and advocates out of people, not just shouting at them with ads and logos.

And we should avoid, at all costs, perpetuating the notion that marketing is simply sitting around coming up with cute slogans. Sure, we may have to give up some short-term income – the “Live like you mean it” slogan and logo reportedly cost $50,000 – but it will pay dividends in long-term credibility.

Our job is hard. But we make it so easy for people to think it’s easy and frivolous.