Whether you’re a professional copywriter, a marketer, a sales person or your business hires copywriters, marketing people or salespeople you’ll know that when it comes to promoting your product or service people often focus on trying to write copy or communicate only the benefits of a product … how the product or service will transform the buyer’s life in some way. How it will help buyers solve that problem.

Trouble is, not every product is perfect. In fact, many products have a flaw … a flaw that, if not written about or communicated in the right way, can detrimentally effect sales.

What’s the solution?

It’s not only positive words that sell.

But before I share what the solution is let me say that this IS NOT to be used for selling crappy products or services. It’s only to be used for quality products that do have one or two ugly, superficial features.

And - of course, what you write copy for or communicate needs to be true (that goes without saying).

So - let’s get into it…

If your product has a flaw (apart from all the benefits that it does deliver), be upfront about it.

Point it out. Then - “spin” that flaw into a benefit. Doing that will have an interesting impact on your sales.

You see, when people only hear or read glowing things you have written in your copy, about a product, they get a little skeptical (and rightly so) and start looking for the flaws. But if they hear a balanced argument, they’re much more likely to believe your sales presentation or your sales copy.

In the 1980’s American brewer Coors used a negative spin in their advertising and it had a massive increase in sales. They promoted their refrigerated trucks and warehouses implying that the flavour of Coors required non-stop refrigeration to ensure it is properly preserved.

Through this advertising, consumers then perceived that the beer had superior taste.

When you’re selling something that’s a lot more expensive than the competition be upfront and admit it eg.

“Sure, we’re more expensive than the competition – but there’s a good reason for that …”

40 years ago, the manufacturers of Volkswagen cashed in, in a big way using negative advertising when writing copy promoting their VW Beetle.

When man first landed on the moon, VW ran a newpspaer ad featuring a photograph of the moon-lander with the headline,

“It’s ugly, but it gets you there. VW.”

The ad was a huge hit for two reasons .

First – it cashed in on the popularity of the moon landing, which, at the time,was the most watched event in history.

Next – it worked because it was blatantly honest. In the 60’s people thought the VW was ugly. And because the manufacturer was honest about that, people say them as being a highly credible organization.

Volkswagen continued this “ugly” theme for years with great success. When they introduced automatic transmissions in vehicles they ran the headline,

“You’ve called it ugly. Now you can call it shiftless”.

It wasn’t just VW who profited from negative advertising. Many highly successful advertising campaigns across many different industries, have been built upon advertising an obvious negative. Here’s another example- Avis.

Avis became famous for its slogan, “We are no. 2 … we try harder.” It acknowledged that they aren’t the market leader and in doing that, the company gained credibility. In the minds of consumers, it showed that they do try harder because that’s what underdogs do to get to the top whereas companies that are on the top tend to be more complacent.

As you can see by these examples, copywriting and selling isn’t always about only saying positive things. It’s also about being “real” - the best copywriters and salespeople know that.

So how can you apply this to your marketing?