Science Daily Week: Hype Kills

Science Daily Week continues with the study of assistant professor Vanessa Patrick (University of Georgia) along with co-authors Debbie MacInnis and C. Whan Park (University of Southern California): “Marketing: Too Much Hype Backfires.” The study shows that “people take notice when they feel worse than they thought they would, but—oddly—not when they feel better than expected.”

The team coined the term “affective misforecasting” to describe the gap between anticipated and actual feelings. This supports the old adage that people tell five others about a bad experience but only one about a good experience (“negative evangelism”?). Thus, it sure looks like “under promising and over delivering” is the way to go.

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Comments

[steve]

Essentially hype is not effective at maintaining credibility.This in turn generated a significant level of expectation from the already fickle minded fans. Since they failed to qualify for second round, the Indian cricket team is now facing a severe backlash here. Protests going on all over the nation, What the people did not realise is that this team never really had to potential to go all the way. it did for me, and I was an unemployed buffoon of 22 at the time.
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[worth]

I'm not so sure under-promising/over-delivering is the way to go, since no one notices when things are better than expected anyway, right? They only note (granted, they REALLY take notice) when you do the opposite, which is over-promise. Why not just promise and deliver (no over/under here) and give people the thing that people REALLY crave the most: the gift of a met expectation. To beat a dead horse, does McDonald's or Wal-Mart rule the world because they under-promise or over-deliver, or is it because people know EXACTLY what they're getting, no more, no less, every time they walk into one anywhere in the world?

[andrew]

but didn't this all become perfectly clear with Terminator 2? it did for me, and I was an unemployed buffoon of 22 at the time.

[Chris]

Just started reading your blog and also saw your video at TiEcon. That was way cool!

BTW, love the Science Daily Week concept - in the short time I've been subscribing to your blog, you've come up with some good marketing ideas.

Then again, I'm a geeky software developer so I always wonder about how you guys always keep so upbeat :)

Chris

[Mike Peter Reed]

I've just read the chapter in the 2004 book "The Origin of Brands" which says exactly the same thing. Essentially hype is not effective at maintaining credibility. Without credibility you are .... just a "me too". Strangely, I already knew this whilst at art school in 1990. I think Picasso knew, too.
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Art is the lie that makes you realise the truth ...

[John C. Randolph]

Two examples within the last year spring to mind: Zune and "Origami". One's already forgotten, and the other's a running joke.

-jcr

[Andre Martins]

Thats very nice.

There is an interesting paper about that here...http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=955285&high=%20i%20am%20what

The researcher write about marketing labels, feelings and behaviors.

enjoy it

Andre
http://www.ruanoblog.blogspot.com/

[Natarajan Sridharan]

Guy,

This is very true. A very good example to back this theory is the recent marketing hype created in India for its cricket team that was headed for the World Cup in the Caribbean. All over the country, in all forms of media, the Indian team were projected as favorites to win the World Cup. This in turn generated a significant level of expectation from the already fickle minded fans. Since they failed to qualify for second round, the Indian cricket team is now facing a severe backlash here. Protests going on all over the nation, What the people did not realise is that this team never really had to potential to go all the way. They were made to believe the non-existent greatness of the team by the media hype. Even though the media was aware of the true capabilities of this team, they created significant amount of hype(money, airtime and viewership are ofcourse the main reasons).
There were some great individuals but as a team we were not up to the mark. Most of the team's sponsors are now expecting to loose a lot of money over India's exit.

Note: The game cricket is almost a religion in India. A billion people share the same amount of passion for cricket that you have for Ice Hockey.

Natti

[Shakespeare’s Fool]

Guy,
I suspect they are trying to make far too much out of a study that may not be as easy to interpret as they think, a study that might not tell us much of anything.
John

P. S. Love your blog. Keeps me thinking.