By Tom Raftery
There is not one product or service in this world that is all sunshine and roses. The most successful company that comes immediately to my mind is Apple and I can just as quickly think of the last time that Apple had something negative happen with a product – the antenna on the iPhone 4 (the picture above is of the volume buttons on an iPhone 4).
Sweeping things under the rug or putting your fingers in your ears and pretending there is only one side of your product/service story – the smiley side – is of the old marketing world. We know that social media allows consumers to help tell the story of a product or service and, therefore, there’s more to your product/service story online than your smiley side. So, as an extension of your social media and online marketing, why would your blog act like there’s still only the smiley side?
I have clients in several industries who, just like any company in any industry, have perceivable downsides to their offering. When these perceivable downsides come up on newswires, clients have two choices – they can either ignore them or they can be real with themselves and their audience and address them.
If there is negativity hitting the newswires about your product, service or industry, your audience can see it just like you can. Not addressing negativity can only lead to your audience thinking, “They must not want to address the negativity or perceivable downsides to their service or product because there is some legitimacy or validity to the negativity.”
The truth is, almost every brand or business would be better served addressing the perceivable downsides to their product/service that exist because they either would come out looking the better for it because they have legitimate and valid responses for the negativity or they need to recognize the negativity as legitimate and valid and improve their product/service for the good of the company and its audience.
Which brand or business out there do you wish would own up to the negativity that exists for their product/service, like Dominos has done recently in their latest campaign?
