Brand Failures

People failures 189
68 Ratner’s
When honesty is not the best policy
One of the most popular and influential books ever written about marketing
is The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing¸ written by Al Ries and Jack Trout
and first published in 1993. Their fifteenth ‘law’ is ‘the law of candour’. This
states that if a company admits a negative aspect about a brand, the consumer
will think more highly about that brand because of the company’s sheer
honesty.
Ries and Trout say that it goes against corporate and human nature to
acknowledge a problem or weakness. ‘First and foremost,’ they write,
‘candour is very disarming. Every negative statement you make about
yourself is instantly accepted as truth. Positive statements, on the other hand,
are looked at as dubious at best. Especially in an advertisement.’
The authors go on to give a list of companies which have used this honest
approach to great effect. They admire, for instance, the strap line ‘Avis is only
number two in rent-a-cars.’ They also declare that ‘positive thinking has been
highly overrated’:
The explosive growth of communications in our society has made
people defensive and cautious about companies trying to sell them
anything. Admitting a problem is something that very few companies
do.