Dec
22
2005
Self Deprecating Marketing

Few companies can truly pull off great self-deprecating marketing. Volkswagen’s “0-60? Yes” ad comes to mind. The trick is that the attribute/flaw you are drawing attention to must be something that customers shouldn’t really care about, given what the product is designed for.

If you pull that off in the mind of the potential customer, you’ve just convinced him that the other guys are somehow pulling a fast one on them, and he’d be foolish to fall for it. And people like to feel smart.

Here’s a great example I just learned of. Buckley’s is a company that makes cough syrup. Thier slogan? “It Tastes Awful. And It Works.” They even have a gallery of people making showing their “Buckley faces”. Genius.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 22nd, 2005 at 2:41 pm and is filed under Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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