Marketing’s secret weapon
When marketers start laying on
the hype, our BS meters quickly start clicking. By the same token, we are attracted to brands that speak to us with candor and honesty
and respect.
When it comes to insincerity, human beings have fairly sensitive antennae. Instinct and experience make us naturally wary of politicians, car salesmen, and, if you are a woman, men in bars. We instantly put up walls to protect ourselves from being duped.
We relate to brands in much the same way. When marketers start laying on the hype, our BS meters quickly start clicking like a Geiger counter in Chernobyl. Hyperbole and spin often produce the exact opposite of their intended effect. Hucksterism, no matter how subtle or sophisticated, tends to make us less receptive to both message and messenger.
But the opposite is also true. We are attracted to brands that speak to us with candor and honesty and respect. Truthfulness, it turns out, is the secret weapon of marketing.
The credibility dividend
One textbook example of corporate truthfulness is the response of Tylenol® to its product-tampering crisis back in 1982. When 10 Chicago-area residents died after taking Tylenol, Johnson & Johnson officials didn’t try to cover up or minimize the tragedy. On the contrary, they were models of disclosure and transparency. The media at the time rewarded their candor, and so did consumers. Though Tylenol’s market share dropped from 35% to 8% immediately after the crisis, sales recovered promptly, and the brand soon went on to become the leading OTC analgesic in the United States.
There’s an elephant in the room
Here’s another example. For decades, the conventional wisdom among car manufacturers was: never promote safety features because doing so is a tacit acknowledgement of the dangers of driving. Such an acknowledgement will create a negative brand association and scare buyers away. Or so it was believed until a plucky little company from Sweden proved otherwise. While Detroit refused to admit that safety was an issue for consumers, Volvo® made the issue its own. By daring to tell the truth—that there are risks to driving and car buyers therefore should consider safety—Volvo has built one of the strongest brands in the global automotive industry.
Keep it real
There is a story that when Ernest Shackleton, the great British explorer of the South Pole, needed to recruit crewmembers for one of his expeditions, he placed the following classified ad in the Times:
Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.
The response to this ad is said to have been overwhelming. While this story may be apocryphal, the point is not. As a marketer, go ahead and put your best foot forward. So resist the urge to exaggerate, to sugarcoat, to overpromise. People trust people—and brands—that tell them the truth.
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