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August 30, 2005
The Power of Weakness
Posted by Brad Abare | Filed under: Marketing
Earlier this year, in a Monday Morning Memo from the Wizard of Ads, Roy H. Williams had some keen insights on being authentic when it comes to marketing.
Features and benefits, features and benefits, features and benefits. We've polished our pitches to such a degree that we've dimmed our abilities to persuade. The customer is only half listening because the inner self is asking, "What are they not telling me?"
To win back the attention of customers and earn credibility, Williams suggests that marketers learn to name features, benefits, and the downside.
Trust me, the customer is already trying to figure out the downside. Why not just tell them? It's the best possible way to insulate yourself from the backlash when they finally figure it out for themselves. ... This powerful "tell the truth" technique is easily perverted into just another oily sales trick when the downside you name isn't the real one. As Francois Duc de La Rochefoucauld observed 350 years ago, "We only confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no big ones."
I agree with Roy. I guess people aren't as stupid as we think.
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