Page 96 - 100 Great Marketing Ideas (100 Great Ideas)

44 WORK WITH THE
NEGATIVE ASPECTS
OF YOUR PRODUCT

This may seem perverse: after all, everyone promotes their product’s
positive aspects and plays down the negatives. However, people are
still aware of the negatives—ignoring this elephant in the family
room is likely to cause problems if you do not address it. No amount
of positive promotion will overcome a serious negative, because
people will assess your promotion in the light of what they already
know—and if what they know about you is bad, they will simply not
accept your positive messages.

The idea

When diesel fuel was first used for road vehicles, it was almost
exclusively used for commercial vehicles such as buses, lorries, and
some taxis. Diesel was regarded as the fuel for smelly, noisy, low-
performance workhorses: the oil crisis of the 1970s changed that,
with the development of high-performance diesels for cars. The
greater fuel efficiency, cheaper fuel, and lower emissions meant
that Continental drivers switched to diesel in their millions, but in
Britain the advantages were less obvious—a small, crowded country
with urban driving being the norm meant that diesel was slower to
catch on.

Volkswagen saw this as a golden opportunity. VW began a
campaign designed to overcome the “workhorse” image of diesel.
The campaign was humorous, showing people forgetting that their
high-performance VW ran on diesel—leaving notes on their own

100 GREAT MARKETING IDEAS • 87