If you can't get people to love you, get them to hate you to the tune of thousands of dollars
Who wants to be liked when you could be rich?
Sometimes you see things when you’re sitting in your office at 2am. Odd things
Like this.
Earlier this month, I sat in my office at 2am watching the NHL playoffs. The camera lingered on two people in the crowd. An older man and a younger woman, bedecked in the jerseys of the away team. Nothing special there. Even if that man is pretending to be a predatory cat.
Except, wait a moment. I’d seen those Florida Panthers fans before. A week earlier, during Toronto’s game against Tampa Bay…
I wasn’t the only one. Turns out Ervil Di Giusto and his daughter Dani never miss a Toronto game.
But they absolutely hate the Leafs. They actively want them to lose (and tend to get what they want).
So they have season tickets, and away jerseys for every potential opponent, and a couple of times a week they turn up to cheer against the home team.
That’s weird.
It gets weirder. There are 31 other teams in the NHL. The jerseys cost £116 apiece. I know, because I own two. That means Ervil and Dani have spent £7,192 on hockey shirts out of spite.
That’s a one off cost though. What about ongoing costs? It gets madder. The cheapest season tickets in Toronto are £1,754. And they’ve been doing this for years. Ervil’s done it since the team moved to their new arena. In 2002. It’s about £11 for a pint in the Scotiabank too, and your man looks like he enjoys a drink. Call it two beers a night, for 41 home games a year? You do the maths.
Tens of thousands of pounds, spent going to tell a business they dislike them and want them to fail. And it’s all firing up people who’ll spend even more to support the business you hate.
Remember that the next time you’re worried that a piece of marketing material might upset a couple of people. Even negative emotions can end up being very, very useful.
Something mint - this classic copier machine ad Richard Shotton shared on Twitter
There’s a conversation we have a lot about messaging with our clients. If you compete only on price, you’re leaving all that space under you for your competitors to move into.
If your whole message is “we’re the most affordable option,” you only need someone to undercut you by a penny and you’re done.
If price is going to be part of your message, it’s got to be part of something larger. Like value, or fairness. This Savin ad does that brilliantly.
The message here isn’t just “we’re cheaper than Xerox.” It’s cannier than that. It’s that you’re getting more for less. “We’re better value than Xerox.”
The headline copy looks like a wry dig at the market leader, but it’s more than that. It recognises that this isn’t an impulse purchase.
You’re not going to drop 17 grand on a copier because of a joke in a newspaper. You want to compare your options. Make an informed purchase.
Unfortunately, the ad says, even getting hold of a Xerox to compare before you buy is punishingly expensive. Superb.
The line’s brilliant, but this is also a great example of an art director taking that message and visualising it. You don’t just pay less, you get more.
Especially when at that price, what you get from Xerox is absolutely nothing while you’re saving your pennies.
Message first. Good for writers, perfect for designers.