Demarketing and negative marketing-demystified

Most marketing practitioners and professionals, think of marketing as an activity that demands more and more selling. It is as if marketing is omnipresent and is compelling us to buy more and more and that too all the time.

Hold on, not all the time. Marketing pros also deploy demarketing. Demarketing is the use of promotional tools to decrease demand for a product. In other words Demarketing urges only some customers to buy the products, services and not all customers. It is not a very loud, no. It is a very subtle undercurrent of saying no to unwanted customers.

Demarketing can be used as a concept that can limit the usage of the product to the most profitable segment of customers. In other words, make the product available to select customers only. First time visitors to a five star hotel are shocked at the opulence and the spic and span look that the hotel presents.

Even the guard at the entrance is big (often they are strapping six footers). They are dressed impeccably. They have shaved to the skin and reek of authority. Most of the first time visitors by comparison look shabby.

The entire thing is a set up. Five star hotels are built at huge costs and they definitely don’t want all and the sundry to visit them. At the same time five starhotelsby definition are public places and can’trestrictentry. So they deploy Demarketing techniques.

Parking lot for two wheelers is far away. After all visitorswho come on two-wheelersare not the target customers! The target customers are people who come in cars and nonchalantly tip the valet Rs 100/- for parking their cars.

More Demarketing is on display inside the hotel.The plush décor and the impressive cutlery throw most people off their zone of comfort. The prices on the menu come as a big shock. A pot of tea would set back the customer by a cool five hundred or even a thousand rupees.Even apiece of soft cake could cost a couple of hundred. The message is very clear. “Most of you are not our target customers”.

Groucho Marx the famous criticonce said"I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member”. The allure of any select club is the exclusivity. Once we become part of that club, the club loses the exclusivity. It is said that most people can’t even get to test drive a Rolls Royce.

A smart alerky salesman would enquire “who has recommended you to us sir?” Later a smartly dressed chauffeur will take you for a spin. Enquiries about buying and features would be answered suavely. The message is very clear “A Rolls Royce is for a very select few– crème de la crème”

Negative Marketing: is using the tools of promotions to make people or customers not use or buy unwanted products or do a thing that is negative in nature or is harmful. Asking people to stop smoking, stop drinking or stop taking drugs come in this category. Negative marketing does good for the society. It actually beseeches people from doing negative acts like “don’t drink and drive, think of your near and dear waiting for you, at home’.

The advertisement that dramatically encapsulates the concept of negative marketing is furnished. The dramatic visual (hats off to the visualizer and the photographer) is a study in simplistic clarity of thinking.
The visual has a pistol with its magazine thrown open. Instead of six bullets there are six cigarettes. The gun is fired and one of the cigarettes is thrown out of the gun.

The message is simple and clear. Cigarettes can kill and they can kill as certainly, effectively and as efficiently as a bullet that is fired from the gun.

This is one dramatic message that goes for the jugular. Every smoker knows that each time he smokes he is reducing his life span by six minutes but the visual representation of the gun and the cigarettes brings the horrors of cigarettes smoking into the conscious mind and makes it stay right there. It will sit like a fat Sumo wrestler in the conscious mind and will pinprick the smoker’s conscience every time he smokes. Kudos to the creator and the advertising agency.

Keeping to the topic of cigarette smoking I remember the discussion we had in our class of statistics. Our statistics professor was explaining about probability and remarked that there is a very high probability of smokers getting throat cancer. One of the students objected saying that his grandfather was a smoker and that he is hale and healthy at an age of 85. The student was sarcastically hinting that may be smoking is actually good for health.

Our Professor was a smart cookie. He said “Ravi, let us take the busiest place in Hyderabad, which is Abids. And its busiest which is 1200 hours (midafternoon) crossing the road from one side to the other is risky but mostly safe if you are cautious. What would happen if you are blindfolded and attempt to cross the road?”
The class roared in laughter at the response, as the student sullenly replied “most probably I would meet with an accident”

The Professor quickly added "you got it right. If your eyes are open, that is if you are not smoking in most cases you will not get cancer. If you are not fortunate you might still get cancer (the case of the pedestrian crossing the road carefully but still meeting with an accident because of unruly driving or unexpected turn of events).

But if you are blind folded that is if you are a smoker you will most probably meet with an accident. In other words you will most probably get cancer. In very rare cases if you are lucky you might manage to reach the other side unharmed inspite of being blindfolded.

But the probability of that happening is very slim. In probability parlance your grandfather is the lucky blindfolded person who dashed from one side of Abids to the other and still did not meet with an accident. Thank your stars for the good fortune”. Crushed by the clever and logical explanation and suitably chastened Ravi sat down.