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The use of negative marketing and fear, which has proven pivotal to the Australian federal election and UK Brexit referendum results, offers lessons to marketers beyond the realm of politics.
Cummins&Partners global chief strategy officer, Adam Ferrier, who spoke to AdNews about why negative campaigns still dominate politics, singled out one of its most controversial proponents as someone marketers could learn from.
“The major lesson for marketers is we’ve all got to think a little more like Donald Trump,” Ferrier said.
“We’ve all got to realise that we are appealing to people’s emotions, not their intellect. We’ve got to keep things incredibly simple and play to people’s most base fears and acknowledge that people are very busy and confused with lots going on.”
To do this, Ferrier recommended keeping messages “incredibly simple, incredibly emotive, incredibly evocative” and never assume people are going to process much more than the general vibe of a message. “Unlike Donald Trump, we have to use those powers for good,” he added.
Part of the problem, Ferrier said, is the democratic system as we know it has outgrown people’s ability to comprehend the complexity around key issues, a sentiment that was echoed by Pollinate managing director Howard Husbands–Parry at the recent Exponential Brand Summit where he was presenting on the power of positivity in marketing.
“An issue like whether the UK should leave the EU should never have been put to a referendum because it’s too complex an issue for people to be able to vote on,” he said.
Negative advertising has always been a staple for political advertising, particularly opposition parties, because humans are hard–wired to pay attention to negative stimuli over positive by a factor of 20—30%, an evolutionary survival instinct.
The most high profile example of this in the run–up to the federal election was Labor’s ‘Mediscare’ campaign, which is widely credited for propelling the Labor Party to within a whisker of the Coalition, with a hung parliament a very real prospect.Although negative marketing has proven effective, political marketing expert, Dr Andrew Hughes, told AdNews that positive campaigns which offer hope, such as Kevin 07 and Obama’s presidential run, have the potential to resonate better to the important swing voters that often determine the outcome.
Meanwhile, Ebiquity chief executive, Richard Basil–Jones, has been monitoring sentiment spending across several federal elections and believes negative campaigns tend to resonate well when the public is ready for change.
In the UK’s Brexit referendum, the Leavers ran a cynical scare campaign high on emotive topics like immigration and low on much resembling fact. The Remain campaign fought back with more fear, playing the economic doom and gloom card if the country left the EU, which so far is proving to be more accurate in the wake of the decision to leave.
In the US, presidential hopeful, Donald Trump, has bulldozed through his opponents by mobilising enough support with a divisive and, at times, spiteful campaign.
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