is to tell people that they’ve been doing something wrong. Especially to tell them they’ve been doing it wrong all their life.
Electric can openers don’t sell because their marketing team call people who use the hand-held can openers dumb.
Ipods don’t sell because they say people using Walkman’s don’t understand what it means to have music in their pocket.
Even pizzerias don’t get new people to try their pizza by advertising that people have been going to the wrong place.
If what we do, use or eat gets done what we need done, the how doesn’t matter and surely doesn’t make it wrong. Hell, some even take pride in their traditional ways.
Yet, over and over I see people advertising their product or service by announcing someone has been doing it wrong.
- “You’ve been baking that cake all wrong! Read our step-by-step guide on how to bake that cake!”
- “You’ve been doing it wrong all your life! Buy our ten-in-one tool!”
- “Can’t sleep in hotels? You’ve been doing it all wrong!”
A lot of the products and services that use this marketing approach might be right, but saying someone is doing something wrong doesn’t scale.
What scales is telling a story, showing what the product or service does (letting the user choose if what they’ve been doing is actually “wrong”) and marketing the feeling that the user will have when they use the product or service. That(!) scales.
Stay Positive & Seriously, Marketers, You’ve Been Doing It All Wrong
Photo credit
- Established Goals - November 22, 2024
- Lessons From The Presentation - November 21, 2024
- Tightropes - November 20, 2024
