You’re a brilliant marketer, so you probably already know this…

A post last week on Harvard Business Review made an interesting case that even seemingly irrational or generic flattery can have a lasting positive impact on someone’s perception of a person or a business.

The point that Andrew O’Connell makes is that even if flattery might seem insincere at a rational level, it can create an unconscious positive feeling or openness to a brand that is much longer lasting than any rational evaluation.

There’s some powerful thinking behind this that could apply very well to go-to-market propositions or campaigns. We talk a lot about ‘fear messaging’ or ‘hope messaging’, but this tends to presume that the target audience is waiting helplessly for the solution we have to offer. Next time, why not consider whether more ’sympathetic messaging’ might be a good option (”you’re already ahead of the game, so we’re sure you’ll be considering [insert business challenge/solution here]“)?

We discussed some other examples of ’sympathetic messaging’ in a previous post on making the most of a more psychological approach to buyers. In that post, we looked at the potential to encourage buyers either to feel indebted, or to accept a proposal based on being consistent with their previously expressed views/actions.

As the most successful campaigns get more and more personal, these psychological angles will become steadily more essential to consider and get right…