So, a university finally figure out how quatifiably measure and justify what direct marketing agencies have known since the turn of the century. When you show a chink in your armor, it makes you more real and therefore people can bond with you and are more likely to buy your product or service. See original story here:
Dr. Danit Ein-Gar of TAU’s Faculty of Management at the Leon Recanati Graduate School of Business Administration, working in collaboration with Baba Shiv and Zakary Tormala from Stanford University, has uncovered the “blemishing effect,” a counterintuitive benefit of negative information. When utilized in the right way, she says, a small flaw can actually improve consumer opinion of your product — and make people more likely to purchase it.
“Intuition tells me that if I have a small flaw in my product — nothing harmful, just a minor imperfection — I should hide it,” explains Dr. Ein-Gar. “But providing consumers with information about both strong benefits and a small shortcoming may improve their overall evaluation.” The surprising study will be published in theJournal of Consumer Research.
Not to be a humbug, I’m glad they put this info out there because there are ethical businesses who don’t know it and therefore are missing out. If they wanted to get to this conclusion quicker, they could have just run a A/B test on a direct marketing campaign and then look and their bank accounts. 😉
Try google-ing ‘damaging admission’ and I’m sure you’ll come across some valuable info on this topic. Try it your marketing and reap the rewards. 😉