Bad News is Good News really.

How do you market bad news? Well there are those who must. Tobacco manufacturers, politicians, the booze business, to name but three. I am prompted to raise the matter by something I saw a couple of days ago in the local Co-op. A young woman was buying a packet of fags. She looked sensible enough, but there she was shelling out five or six pounds for a packet of material that the very manufacturer was telling her, could kill her. I couldn’t help wondering; if the same warning was printed on the wrapper of a bar of chocolate, would she have bought it and consumed it with the same calmness? Yes I know smoking is an addiction, but even addictions have to be acquired, you’re not born a smoker are you? And surely if you see a warning as stark as that every time you take out the packet you would think at least twice before putting a match to it? I have been a smoker, cigarettes, cigars, I smoked them both with great pleasure. Then came the evidence and after a struggle I was able to stop. I didn’t do it overnight, it took quite a while. I did it by telling myself that I hadn’t stopped I just didn’t fancy one at the moment. Eventually I stopped fancying them altogether. I had to… the evidence that smoking is dangerous is overwhelming. There are much less painful ways to kill yourself!
 
The encounter led me to thinking about the mindset of those responsible for marketing tobacco products. They too have all the evidence and they too know the dangers. Yet still the products are there and new brands are regularly brought to the market. By law the warning must appear on the packet and that hardly adds to the allure of the product, so how do they set about making the product attractive? By the pack design? By the colours they use? Or do they rely on the generally accepted view that young smokers regard it as sort of right of passage to being an adult? I think they build on the latter and design the pack to incorporate and encompass the warning. Make the warning so much a part of the overall image that it virtually becomes a part of the brand. By so doing the warning is negated. A classic example of familiarity breeding contempt.
 
Our politicians are doing much the same thing just recently. Their equivalent to the warning on the pack of cigarettes is the “Dire Economic Situation” No Good News there! Gearing themselves up for the General Election they are all busily telling us not what they will do for us as they normally do but what they will do to us. Each vying with the others to inform us just how much they will cut from this or that budget. “Any cut you can make we can cut deeper” is the song they’re all singing. And of course that means that they are being open, honest and frank with the electorate doesn’t it? Well… doesn’t it? They also seem to have invented a new way to encourage our most successful industry, finance; constantly criticise it and vilify those in the City who run it. There are a number of ex-directors of once large organisations who will testify to the folly of knocking their own company’s products. Politicians would do well to have a word with them about the results of such actions. Sadly there is no mention of what they will do to create new wealth for the country, just plans to stop spending the wealth past generations made for us, what’s left of it!
 
The booze industry too is currently beset with problems. Binge drinking by those too young to be drinking at all, anti-social behaviour in our towns and cities after too much drink. The cost of all that to the NHS. Yes…they too have their fair share of bad news to cope with. How do they respond….? Do they emphasise the quality of their products? The taste? The differences? The varieties from all over the world? No they put on bottles and other publicity sites the plea to “Drink responsibly”….then at every checkout point in every supermarket and off-licence they place huge piles of multi-pack beers, lagers, wines and spirits all offered half price or less. Then complain when pubs are forced to close through lack of business. Fortunately pub owners have seen the writing on the wall and have set about changing the face of their pubs and re-inventing the pub as a meeting place. As in every business the best will survive and the others won’t.
 
So, the lesson that comes out of all this in marketing terms is that to market bad news you must focus attention on the very worst news available, then present your particular packet of misery as being “The Truth spelt out to intelligent people in an honest and open way” and of course point out that it is much less threatening than the rest of the horrors around. In other words you try to convince everyone that the bad news you are presenting is really good news in disguise because having discovered what’s wrong, all can now be rectified. How? By hard work and sacrifice by everyone. Yeah!