🌱 Marketing = Life. A timeless principle behind every decision
Let’s kick off the year lightly and take a look at a general marketing principle.
Specifically, the principle of unintended consequences in marketing — and why every strategy involves trade-offs.
One that’s been immutable for thousands of years.
There is something beautiful about marketing in that its core principles lie in our very own human nature.
To put it another way, there hasn’t been much change in the way human act (or react) in accordance to the stimuli they encounter.
Loss aversion. Time preference. Risk vs benefit analyses. They all are examples of thinking mechanisms deeply imprinted in us, and we do them, each hour of the day, more or less consciously.
But a LOT more evidently when deciding how to spend our money.
Now, reverse engineer this, and you can see here’s where a marketer’s position fits.
Marketing = Psychology = Human nature.
🎯 Unintended consequences in marketing
Apart from human nature, there’s a second aspect we need to take care of to get the hang of the best marketing moves out there.
From physics, we know that every action has an equal, opposite reaction.
In behavioral sciences, this is no farther from the truth. Except that any intervention leads to not one, but multiple, reactions:
Action A -> Reaction 1 + Reaction 2 + Reaction 3 + …
The chain never stops.
But we can simplify things by looking at several types of possible reactions.
Reaction Type 1: Intended consequences. What we wanted to achieve
vs.
Reaction Type 2: Unintended consequences. What happened after our intervention and we did not want / expect.
In practical terms, this is what often causes marketing strategies to backfire — not because the idea was wrong, but because second-order effects weren’t considered.
Definition: In marketing, unintended consequences are secondary effects of a campaign, pricing change, or brand decision that were not part of the original objective — but still impact perception, customer behavior, or revenue.
Yet, there’s one particular set of unintended consequences that stands apart.
⚠️ Unexpected drawbacks every marketer faces
They are unexpected detriments that appear besides the intended consequences of our decisions/experiments/interventions.
And here’s the challenge: can you think of anything, any decision you made, that doesn’t have an unexpected drawback?
The truth is, that no matter how well-intentioned our decisions are, there will always be unexpected negative consequences, small or large.
Exhibit 1: Lower the price -> Increase occupancy -> Lose clients that love space.
Exhibit 2: Add a benefit -> Some clients don’t like it -> They leave.
Exhibit 3: Target a specific niche -> Alienate people who oppose the views of that niche -> Lose clients.
Let’s take a look at what GREAT marketers DO.
📉 Handling Unexpected Drawbacks in Marketing Campaigns
1️⃣ Remove the “UN” from UNEXPECTED
Great marketers are always in the know.
(IMPORTANT NOTE: You’re reading my newsletter, so you’re already here.)
They stay informed, use the best examples and monitoring tools out there. They know PRECISELY what will happen after their campaign rolls off.
That’s what Dove did when they intentionally rejected industry beauty standards and highlighted “real” women in their “Real Beauty” campaigns.
They expected to lose clients who preferred aspirational imagery. BUT, they also expected to win the hearts of authentic women worldwide.
And they stick to the script. Right up to their latest stance against gen-AI use in commercials.
2️⃣ Make the COUNTER-MOVE
I’m willing to bet you’ve heard about the Sidney Sweeney “has great jeans” campaign by American Eagle and all the hype it got from what was deemed a “divisive” slogan.
But what you might not is the AE campaign produced later the same year and featuring 84-year-old Martha Stewart, an American icon from the opposite side of the political and generational spectrum.
AE decided to make a counter-move, aiming at bringing back any alienated customers.
(It probably won’t bring determined haters back, but I’ve got an edition prepped specifically for this situation, so stay tuned.)
3️⃣ Oopsie-Does-It
DO NOT be afraid to make amends if one of your moves goes awry.
After all, we’re humans, and mistakes DO happen.
Who would’ve guessed an ad featuring a hydraulic press crushing pianos, paintings, and books is a fancy and eye-catching way of saying “our latest tablet replaces all those bulky, creative things”?
Well, surely not Apple fans (or others for that matter), who got all the wrong vibes from the horrible demonstration.
Apple later apologized and pulled back the ad.
Good gracious!
The best marketing strategies don’t aim to eliminate trade-offs.
They anticipate them.
Because in marketing — as in life — every action creates consequences beyond the intended result.
