The Law of Candor - Law #15 under the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing
“When you admit a Negative, the prospect will give you a Positive”. One of the most effective ways to get into a prospects mind is to admit a negative and then twist it into a positive.
Why would anybody accept or stand for anything negative, that too in business? Does not sound logical, right? It’s all about getting the much needed attention, just like mentioned in the previous article on The Law of Attributes, businesses needs attention. Once we have the attention needed, we can get them to hear us on what we have to say but for a very brief period, within which you will have to win their loyalty. It is human psychology where one starts to think that the person accepting the negative is probably saying the truth. Being truthful is rare in business according to consumer psychology and if someone is bold enough to willingly associate themselves and stand by a negative, then they ought to be trusted. This is exactly what Al Ries and Jack trout have justified in their book.
The above is one way of looking at accepting something that is negative in the business like the famous Listerine example. The other benefit is something about the name of the brand itself. There are examples where a brand had a funny or an odd name when launching. This actually cuts down the advertising expenses to less than 30% in getting people know about your existence. When was the last time you spoke about a new brand that was normal like any other brand in the market and that offered services like anybody else in the market? You can’t remember right? That’s normal human tendency, why would you want to talk about something that is usual and normal to be. You would rather want to talk about something unusual and out of the moon with excitement when you meet someone. What else would you do when you find a brand with an extremely odd name doing a normal business. You would immediately share the name with your friend and the immediate next question is about what business they are into. This automatically gets registered into the person’s brain like never before, therefore satisfying the implications of the Law of Mind very smoothly and effectively.
Let’s look at some of the recent and not-so-normal names that the businesses have gone with. Naaptol.com for the online etailer was one of the most enterprising of the lot due to the name that actually addresses the ambiguity that an online buyer will have. ohmysecrets.com an etailer dealing with sexual wellness products as in india talking about sex in public is still considered a taboo, stalklovebuy.com, an etailer dealing with fashion clothes, freekamaal.com, an online portal dealing with distributing free samples from primarily FMCG brands, freebies, discount coupons and so on.
In today’s digital world this would spread like wild fire on social media at a very marginal cost compared to before. All we need to do today is to give the audience something catchy and unique and the audience will do the rest. If the content gets liked by the auddience, it gets tossed around so much that within no time your content will be viewed and shared by millions across the globe, even in the unintended geographic markets.
Like mentioned by Al Ries and Jack Trout in their book, it is very critical to pick the right negative element within the service or product market to be associated with. You do not want to be ruled out of the market to have been on the complete opposite side of the product. Digital Media has completely fastened the communication process today. Information spreads at lightning speed these days and therefore it is very critical to think before we even wink, forget about launching a branding exercise that can bring catastrophic after effects. The Law of Candor is therefore one of the most valid laws of the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.
