It was a great song in the early 90’s, and it could be a nice compliment, but it’s the last thing you want someone to say about your marketing message.
Marcia Yudkin agrees. In this morning’s “The Marketing Minute, ” she expresses her disbelief over an advertiser’s magazine ad copy.
“Oh, come on!”
That was my reaction on reading this, in the second paragraph of a full-page magazine ad: “[Company name] is virtually the only franchise brand committed to providing genuinely nutritious and delicious products.”
This couldn’t be true, I thought.
When you make a preposterous claim, it taints everything else you say. Am I willing to let that statement pass and believe that this company’s food is low-calorie, gluten-free and full of probiotics? No.
In marketing, it can be worse to say something unbelievable than something untrue.
If you have a claim that’s hard to believe, simply saying it doesn’t convince. You must either explain how it’s true, provide third-party proof or back-pedal it to a more believable statement.
Don’t expect weasel words like “virtually” to bail you out with a skeptical reader.
To check my instinctive response, before writing this piece I searched Google for “healthy food franchise.” As I’d suspected, dozens of companies show up in that category.
“One of America’s fastest growing new brands” (so they say) is rapidly shooting itself in the foot.
For starters, who places an ad with 2 paragraphs of copy? Very few people are going to read that. And by very few, I mean only people whose flights have been sitting on the tarmac for 3 hours. After they’ve run out of things to read and their cell phones have died.
Marcia’s right. When you say something that while true, may be hard to believe, you have to do more than say it. You have to PROVE it. State facts and verifiable truths and you will position your business as a trustworthy, reliable company. And instead of pigeon-holing yourself into the same category as your competitors, focus on a unique aspect of your business, and build your brand and marketing messages around that. It’s the best way to differentiate yourself.
Tags: advertising, differentiate, marketing