Does negative marketing work?

I understand marketing and advertising. I know that Realtors leave their signs up, with a sold sign, after they sell a house because it reinforces that they will sell your home or find you one. It is a good way to get clients. Toy companies will create a cartoon with the sole purpose to develop a market for a toy line. It is the best advertising possible for a toy line. Stores always place the candies or other impulse products right by the cash register so you see them as you wait in line. This all makes sense; it all reaches a specific market.

Suddenly I am seeing more negative ads. The ones that tell you, "don’t drink and drive", "don’t smoke it kills you" and "put on a life jacket when boating." I have to wonder how well these work. It is easy to understand positive marketing and advertising because it is targeted to our needs, wants, desires and impulses. How effective is advertising at keeping us from doing something?

I completely understand and support why the Canadian Government is using negative ads and restrictions to reduce cigarette sales. I even use negative conditioning with my kids, young as they are. I tell them cigarettes are yucky; they make your teeth yellow and your breath stinky. I hope it has an impact on them when they are older. I have watched all the changes forced onto the tobacco industry, both to the companies that manufacture and sell cigarettes.

First it was the regulations on what they could show in ads, they could not be targeted to the young anymore. Then they could not advertise or sponsor events and activates any longer. You had to show id to buy cigarettes and can be charged for buying for or selling cigarettes to minors. Soon the negative advertising started with comments and pictures on the actual cigarette packaging. This did not seem to work very well. Though I did like the TV ad that showed teens how smoking changes their appearance, makes their skin shallow and their teeth stained, that it ages them. That one seemed to work by targeting vanity not health. There came kids against smoking ads, famous people against smoking and now people who are dieing of lung cancer or have lost people to lung cancer ads.

The newest negative marketing strategy came as a shock. Behind the counter at a corner store appeared to be at first glance empty shelves where cigarettes had been. Nope it was metal doors hiding the cigarettes. You can still buy them, but you cannot look at them. This is to try and reduce impulse buying I guess, or the out of sight, out of mind idea. It is going to be interesting to see how it works. It is becoming expensive to sell cigarettes with all these restrictions and fines. I wonder if it is still worth it to stores to sell them. I think that eventually it will not be cost effective and they will stop. If stores stop caring them then the Government will have effectively reduced sales of tobacco products with out actually banning it. But is it going to work?

Let NAFTA die. We don’t want it.

Someone who lives in the US stated that they should just close the boarder and not do business with Canada anymore because we are not grateful for all they do for us Canadians. Here is what I think.

First I must say that I am not Anti-American, I am Anti-American Government; which currently does not reflect American people. I love being a Canadian, with our Canadian health care that keeps us alive even when we are poor. I disagree with policies that let US people die from lack of medical care and fresh water. Could Katrina make it any clearer? And we tried to help and were told that our boats and planes would be fired upon because we were prepared to save people and feed them. It would have been days not weeks, thank you; people did not have to suffer or die. After that we were to think the US Government was operating with all its marbles? I do not think so.

NAFTA has been one sided for a long time. Canadians did not like it when the agreement was made in the first place. I remember how angry the soft wood lumber industry was then and is now. What I find funny is that for some reason we would sell our wood to the US for a low price only to buy it back as a finished product at a much higher price. That never made sense. I remember growing up being told that we had to sell to the US because we needed the money to buy their products, and the US was our only market. So we are now quite capable of keeping our wood, oil, energy and water for ourselves and make our own stuff with it thanks to some big changes both in attitude and economy. Our Government reflects that change.

We take pride in being Canadian and have come to realize that having the US threaten us with closing the boarder is bad for the US, not Canada. What did the US Government think we would do, curl up and die, cave in and give them what ever they wanted? No we started talking with other countries. So what does the US government do, start making it difficult to cross from Canada to the US. I sell world wide, even to the US and only in the US has an item be held up for three weeks at the boarder, an item that should have taken no more then a few days to be delivered.

Do you think Canadians like having the US be responsible for protecting us? No, that is one of the worst deals Canadian government ever made and we are happy that the contract will soon be over. It is Canadian land, not US. We have increased our military, supplies and equipment so that we can provide sufficient protection for our own country when it ends in next year. We were not interested in extending that contract.

Fishing in our water, no thank you. Keep giving away our natural resources for next to nothing and say thanks for the stipend you have been giving us, when other countries are more then will to pay market price, not a special price where we loose out. Canada in the 60’s became way to dependent on the US for everything, and the US became to used to dictating to us as a country. We as Canadians did not like this, so we don’t dislike the American people, just the attitude that we should be thankful for what ever the US is willing to give us.

I know that Canadians have realized who has the real power now. We do, and we will have more if we can get out of NAFTA. US as a country needs us far more then we need them. Wake up, Canadians are making good business decisions and no longer feel we have to sell to the US. Why should we when we get treated better in our dealings with other countries that don’t think they are doing us a favor?

I am Canadian and I am proud of the stand and decisions my Government is taking with the US government.

YES I KNOW I AM ABOUT TO GET HATE MAIL, BUT TAKE A MOMENT AND THINK ABOUT IT.