“Never criticize. Never complain.” – Dale Carnegie
Dale Carnegie’s 80-year-old advice still has merit when it comes to marketing.
It doesn’t take much time on social media to realize that positive, upbeat, inspirational and problem solving posts get the most shares and likes. “How to do X…” marketing posts are very popular.
Nothing negative about the most retweeted tweet of all time:
The same is true for your messaging on other channels. After all, Dos Equis featured “the most interesting man in the world”, even if in jest.
I send out daily email marketing tips to subscribers. If those email tips came with a constant stream of negative Subject lines, it wouldn’t take long before most people would be thinking, “Jeesh, what’s with this guy?” People want answers, not complaints.
Legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden said, “I can’t begin to coach until the player does something right.” Managers are generally advised to give employees 8 or 9 positive message for every criticism.
Sure, ultimately life is tragic: we all die. Many comics have used satire, and many great novels and dramas end tragically.
But leave that to the artists. For those of us in marketing, use positive messaging.
Did you think this was interesting? Then sign up to get our daily email marketing tip that people call “very impressive and helpful”
