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Smoking Kills

26th July 2009 published by Martin Henley

Smoking KillsI was actually overwhelmed recently whilst I was shopping for my lunch at a supermarket kiosk by the health warnings on the hundreds of packets of cigarettes - SMOKING KILLS.

It has kind of lodged with me ever since wondering why anyone would buy them given that the irrefutable evidence is that Smoking kills, Smoking causes ageing skin and Smoking causes fatal lung cancer and the manufacturers are actually printing these things on the packet.

We could offer them more marketing messages like Smoking causes you to smell bad, Smoking makes your mouth look like and taste like a smoked trouts and Smoking makes you poor with no benefit to you whatsoever. The question is would these messages be effective in reducing sales, and the answer is probably no. 

You see what the tobacco advertisers have known forever is that people are actually self destructive, they don't want what is good for them or what is logical, hence the most popular cigarette at our school was JPS which "famously" caused "a whole in the heart" and at college the most popular brand was Silk Cut.

What I know from my more direct and aggressive sales experience is that there is no pyschology in sales more powerful than reverse psychology. If you really want someone to buy something, tell them they can't, or that it won't be any good for them, that it isn't meant for them, or they cant afford it, or that you don't want to sell it to them and I promise you they will take your hand off.

At The Effective Marketing Company we work very hard to convince our prospective customers that marketing works, that marketing is affordable and accessible and we are extraordinarily nice to and patient with them, nurturing them to make the right decisions.

Taking the example of the tobacco advertisers and my experience of reverse psychology we should be telling them the worst of it - effective marketing, if you haven't done any before, is likely to take a considerable investment in time and money but you can't have it, it wouldn't be any good for you, it isn't meant for you, you can't afford it and we don't want to sell it to you anyway.

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