Kill Anxiety Before Building Preference

"I think the first role of marketing is to make a decision easy to make. And that mean firstly clarity in terms of choice, and secondly it means lack of anxiety. So the first role of marketing is not actually getting preference, it’s not actually getting someone to prefer a Philips TV, it’s getting someone non-anxious about buying a Philips."

"Everybody says they obviously want to find the best television they can within their price bracket. They’d answer all these questions as if they were hyper-logical, they’d say that obviously if this thing costs less than the iPad, and it’s better, then they’ll buy it. Then reality comes into it, and actually, the reason they buy the iPad is that they know that every time they get out the Samsung, all their friends will say: “why did you get that, why didn’t you buy the iPad?” and that this will bring with it a little burst of anxiety and a little burst of effort. Never, never underestimate the importance of that. If you buy a Ford or you buy a BMW or a Volkswagen and it breaks down a lot, it’s Ford’s fault, and you and all your friends will go: “golly you’re really unlucky you bought that new Ford and the clutch plate’s gone, bloody hell, I do feel sorry for you”, and you will get a degree of sympathy from your friends, okay? If you go and buy an Alfa Romeo and the clutch plate goes, deep down all your friends are thinking: “what does he expect, he goes and buys an Alfa Romeo, what the hell does he expect?” If you’re going to buy this flash, weird Italian car, it’s going to break down."

"We seem to be very, very nervy as people, so one of the first roles of marketing is to foster reassurance that what we’re doing isn’t weird and doesn’t stand out."

"I suggest it is by far the more valuable economic role that brands play: not to be a promise of ultimate superiority but a cast iron assurance of pretty dependable non-shitness. The Fina ad is one good example. Even better is that great CDP ad for Smirnoff: “why waste money on real lemons”, which I can’t find, or the Volkswagen promise of reliability. But overall this proposition of “loss avoidance” is rare — most ads seek to boast a lot more than they reassure. Yet when you are handing over £1,000 to buy that flat screen TV, how much of your brain is worried about whether it is the best TV you can buy for £1,000, versus the part of the brain thinking “I hope this TV isn’t a crock of shite?” I’d put the ratio at about 1:2."