Most often, advertisers put a positive foot forward. They spend their marketing dollars extolling the positive attributes of their brands to raise awareness and (hopefully) sales. It’s much rarer—though not unheard of—that a brand will venture into negative territory. However, while research has shown that positive messages are more memorable, negative ads get more attention. (Bolls, Lang, and Potter, 2001)
We’re well aware, especially now, of negative advertising in the political arena. These “attack ads” have been the bread and butter of political campaigns for a long time, but it might surprise you how long. In fact, what many believe was the great granddaddy of all attack ads dates back to 1964. In 1964, Lyndon Johnson was running for president against Barry Goldwater. Goldwater’s pro stance on using nuclear weapons was well known. The Johnson campaign hired the legendary Doyle Dane Bernbach agency and Tony Schwartz to create a TV ad that has become known as the “Daisy” spot.
The spot opens on an innocent young girl standing in a meadow. She’s picking petals off a daisy in her hand, counting down as the petals fall. But her countdown gets interrupted by a booming male voice that overtakes the girl’s countdown and continues as if counting down for a missile launch. The camera zooms in on the child’s face until the pupil of her eye fills the screen. We see a flash of light and hear the sound of a nuclear explosion, followed by video of a mushroom cloud. Johnson himself provides the ominous ending voiceover: “These are the stakes! To make a world in which all of God’s children can live or go into the dark. We must either love each other or we must die.” The implication was clear: Vote for LBJ and keep plucking daisies, or let Goldwater get elected and prepare for Armageddon.
There are some brands that are brave enough to do negative marketing. It’s risky business, because there’s always the possibility of blowback—like what happened after Chernobyl. But negative marketing, when done effectively, can draw a lot of consumer attention.
Burger King broke a long-standing paradigm in 2020 when it used time-lapse video to show its famous Whopper decaying over a 34-day period. Usually fast food advertisers strive to make their product look good—really too good, the kind of hyper appetite appeal that only a cohort of food stylists and a lot of Photoshop work can manufacture. But in this case, Burger King allowed its sacred Whopper to visibly decay to being moldy and absolutely disgusting to prove a point: BK had stopped using preservatives and now uses only fresh, natural ingredients. The buzz around the campaign was tremendous. Whopper sales increased 14 percent and in spite of all that green, fuzzy mold, post research showed that 88 percent of people who viewed the ad had a positive-neutral brand sentiment.
Another brand that used negative marketing to its advantage was Nike. Their motivation was a move by the Brazilian government to ban street graffiti in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s capital city. Nike creatives understood what the government didn’t, that Sao Paulo’s urban graffiti was more than vandalism. It was an important part of Brazilian street culture. In defiance of the ban, Nike enlisted local graffiti artists to paint street murals that depicted familiar graffiti characters wearing Nike AirMax training shoes. They also used geolocation technology to drive sales. Consumers within the vicinity of the murals could pre order Nike shoes. It was a double win. The campaign caused a significant bump in Nike’s e-commerce sales and also changed the perception of graffiti as vandalism to being seen as a viable cultural art form. The government reversed its ban, and the campaign won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions Festival in 2019.
Last but hardly least on my list of negative marketing examples is Kraft’s “Mayo Haters” campaign for its plant-based mayonnaise product NotMayo. This work is visionary because most advertisers of plant-based products try to make you believe that their products (think vegan cheese, tofu ice cream) taste as good as the real thing. NotMayo’s approach was exactly the opposite, and proves in dramatic fashion that its plant-based mayo is as bad as the real thing.
The work was created by Gut, a global agency with offices from Miami to Madrid and a client roster that includes notable brands like Burberry, Welch’s, and Stella Artois. Research prior to the campaign revealed that 20 percent of Americans hate mayonnaise. “This campaign showcases NotMayo’s striking resemblance to the traditional condiment as the deep disdain remains for the true mayo haters,” comments Dean Paradise, Gut’s executive creative director. The video is basically a long-form taste test of NotMayo with a lively cast recruited from Reddit, the social news website and known hangout for mayo haters.
You really have to watch this video to get the full effect, but to say that the tasters’ performances are “authentic” is a gross understatement. As they gag, wretch, and spit half-eaten mouthfuls of mayo-laced burgers, sandwiches, and other foods into the waste buckets, the negative message is abundantly clear. For all these mayo haters, NotMayo tastes every bit as bad as the real thing.
Sure, negative marketing is risky, but most marketing that gets any attention at all is. On the positive side, the bigger the risk, the bigger the potential reward. I’m done now. Off to Burger King for lunch: a Whopper with cheese—no mold, extra mayo.
