Cancel Culture About Negations Selectively

Including negators such as “not” and “never” in marketing messages risks confounding audiences. Consumers given a list of toothpaste dispenser characteristics which included “not difficult to use” liked the dispenser less than did another group given a list of the dispenser’s characteristics identical except that it read “not easy to use.” The participants had little trouble remembering what the phrasing said. It wasn’t as if they failed to see the “not.” Instead, it was that the “easy” or the “difficult” had much greater emphasis in the decision making than did the “not.” One group was evaluating the toothpaste dispenser with “easy” in mind, while the other had “difficult” in mind.
     The recommendation for marketers: To smooth the cognitive flow when you have the objective of persuading a prospect, avoid the speed bumps of negations.
     But researchers at University of Adolfo Ibáñez and University of Nevada-Reno identify an advantage of using negations in marketing via social media—enhanced consumer engagement. In one of their studies, Facebook messages for 18 brands, including Lululemon and Monster Energy, with a greater use of negation words, such as “don’t” and “none,” had higher numbers of likes, comments, and shares. Parallel results were found with Twitter message likes, retweets, and replies and with word-of-mouth intentions of recipients of direct email marketing.
     Results from the set of studies led the researchers to explain the effect in terms of brand power: From childhood, culture shapes us to maintain positivity in interpersonal communications. Use of negations by an adult implies the power of social confidence because the adult is violating a norm. The association between negations and power carries over to brand image. People like to portray social influence, which they aim to gain by engaging with brands they find to be powerful.
     This explanation for the role of negation is supported by the researchers’ finding that the effect was stronger for consumers expressing a need for status, measured by items like, “I want to improve my social standing as compared to others.”
     The recommendation for marketers: To build consumer engagement with your brand, incorporate negations into messages.
     In navigating between these two opposite recommendations, you’ll be determining the situations in which to cancel traditional cultural expectations of positivity for interpersonal communications. To help with this, assess the probabilities of shopper confusion and need for status in your intended audiences. Also attend to the appeal among consumers of the low-status underdog at times.

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