Want to help your competition grow? It’s easy, just watch the republican campaigns this fall election season and do what they do. I sometimes wonder if they want to lose or if the Dems have broken the code and are actually paying for the Republican ads. Yup they work that well.
Marketing today is based on a huge history of social science and human psychology. One of the works in the field of psychology most used by marketers is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. From those needs you can derive several distinct human points of connection. For example at the base of Maslows pyramid is our physiological need for safety and survival. In marketing terms this is our “fear of loss”.
Next time you see an ad for an alarm company look closely. It is all based on fear of loss.
The problem is that fear is a primal instinct, and it can be triggered many different ways. The Republican marketing machine has used fear as a cornerstone of it’s smear and mud slinging campaigns for years.
Now if you are saying that businesses can’t do that, I’m here to say sure they can. What do you think Verizons “Can you hear me now” campaign was all about. They were smearing all of the other companies without saying it. They were praying on your primal frustrations that happen when communications breakdown and you can’t get your point across after the call drops. Fear of loss at its finest. Very subtle, very effective.
There is another facet of human psychology that plays a big part of the marketing game and where the Republicans might be helping the Democratic agenda.
Our minds grasp three or four things at a time. Thats why phone numbers were originally three numbers and a letter. Eventually we went to three parts of a number. The area code, the prefix and the number itself. Really we have a four digit phone number to this day. A lot of science went into this.
The other oddity of the mind is that we don’t perceive negatives. We imagine all kinds of negative events and worry about them all the time. Our world is filled with negative imagery and yet we still get out of bed every day and go about our lives.
And what does this have to do with marketing you ask? Well last election cycle, Harry Ried, a Senator from Nevada had very low approval numbers and the Republicans looked like they finally had a shot at his seat. The only Republican bumper sticker I remember from that year is “Anybody but Harry”.
Who are they advertising here? I don’t know who the other candidate was, and probably didn’t even then. When you analyze that sticker as a marketer or business owner, you take out the negative and what do you have? “Harry”.
In the entertainment world there is a mantra that “There is no such thing as bad publicity”. I think Ronald Reagan must have figured that out since he was both the Governor of California and the President of the United States. Arnold Schwarzenegger broke that code too. Jerry Brown, who is primarily responsible for California’s crazy spending habits and wild pensions has figured this out too.
In todays current election, the Republicans appear to be spending twice as much money to tell us who not to vote for as they are telling us who they want us to vote for. Let’s see then….
Democrat buys one ad with his name. Republican buys two ads with his name, one ad with republican name, and viola, Democratic candidates name appears 3 times more often than his republican opponent and he gets to spend less.
If you want your competition to succeed, follow the Republican marketing plan. If you want your business to succeed, stick to marketing your name. Never pay to print their name. Verizon never said who’s phone service you couldn’t hear, it is implied that only theirs worked and the ad starts and ends with Verizon. Thats the way to run a fear and smear campaign with a smile.
