Stop Advertising Your Failures
Driving down the road, I see a gas station sign that reads, “Clean Restroom.” Without a doubt, this is most certainly not the place I’m going to stop to relieve myself. I understand that it used to be (and maybe still is) a huge draw for travelers to have a “clean restroom” at service stations probably spread lightyears apart, but in my mind there seems to be a mental block preventing me from believing that particular sign. Business owners love to flaunt their benefits and features at us in order to get us to spend money with them. Gas station owners post “clean restroom” signs all the time, but what strikes me as odd is that I would rather stop in at a gas station restroom that didn’t advertise clean restrooms.
Don’t think that I have a fetish for nasty potties–I prefer pristine ivory just like the next bloke–it’s just that when you tell me, “hey, come here, our restrooms are clean,” I automatically tend to think, “restrooms are supposed to be clean–why wouldn’t yours be?” Maybe the restroom in question had some problems with tidiness recently, and they need to juice up their ego by reminded themselves–and you–that their bathroom is now clean. Either way, I’d prefer to visit the guy who’s always kept his bathroom the way it’s supposed to be: not dirty.
The correlation I’m trying to make can be summed up like this: Would you buy a Ford Pinto (that doomed little car from the ’60s and ’70s that tended to explode in rear-end collisions) if they started advertising that “Now they don’t explode!” I didn’t think so.
Would you buy the apple juice that says “Won’t get you constipated” or the quiet one that simply says “Apple juice?”
Or would you visit the country that advertises “You won’t get shot, mugged, or kidnapped here,” or the country that promotes its beautiful landmarks.
I see advertisements and marketing ploys like this all the time. We need to stop advertising our BAD QUALITIES in a GOOD LIGHT, and start advertising our GOOD QUALITIES in a GOOD LIGHT. Advertising things that are or used to be bad may work on a few skeptics, but the rest of us naive souls who didn’t know Pintos exploded or that gas station restrooms sucked are only going to wonder, “Hmm, are they telling the truth? What was it like before?”
If your product or business has an evil history, don’t flaunt it. Be honest and upfront about your past failures when asked and when compiling your company’s memoirs, but don’t try to entice your customers (who probably didn’t even know there was a problem at one point) by advertising a “fixed”solution.
Stop telling me you have a clean restroom if I already expect a clean restroom. That’s built in to my paradigm of restrooms–just don’t prove me wrong.
Stop selling me on the expectations I already have of your product. If you’re the best accountant in town, tell me why, don’t tell me why you’re not the worst anymore.
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