The Importance of Hope In Marketing
Ladies and gentlethems, it’s bleak out there.
Online, we’re constantly reminded. Spend 5 seconds or less scrolling through social media and you’re likely to encounter an avalanche of marketing designed to make you feel inadequate and afraid- unless, of course, you buy the one thing that will make your life shiny and perfect.
From unattainable, enhanced projections of perfection to capitalist myths about worth and productivity- the digital landscape is often a miserable one.
Hope is the antidote.
Hope is something we all crave. This means that hope is a powerful marketing tool- one that is often misunderstood and misused.
A Small Ode To Hope
The meaning of “hope” can quickly become obscured when we’re trying to sell stuff. Let me explain my definition of hope.
True hope is empowering. It opens your mind to the possibility of a happy future and how much fun, relief, or connection you could have while realizing that dream.
It’s not about fixing a broken you, it’s about blossoming into your full potential. It’s not about accepting broken systems and just finding the best way to cheerfully navigate through oppression, hardship, and injustice. It’s about imagining a better system. It’s not about conforming or performing, it’s about embracing and growing.
If this doesn’t seem reminiscent of the quick fixes, miracle cures, social pressure, and aspirational images you’re constantly being bombarded with via digital marketing and advertising… Well, you’re right.
What marketing often packages as “hope” is really just a manipulation of your fear. There’s a reason many marketing conferences, guides, and think pieces focus on buyers’ pain points.
It would really be a different digital world if we could start prioritizing buyers’ hope points.
Marketing does have a well-earned bad rap for selling false hopes. Let’s discuss some tactics to avoid, and some more, well, hopeful ones.
Toxic Positivity in Marketing
If you only ever acknowledge the positive aspects of a situation, you are ignoring a large percentage of the human experience.
You can’t positive think your way out of being harmed by racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, etc. If you just think happy thoughts, you still might not have enough food to eat, or money to pay your kid’s medical bills. You can chant “live, laugh, love” all you want, but your husband may still beat you, your best friend might still struggle with addiction, the police might still murder an unarmed Black teenager around the corner.
30 Days to A Rockin’ Beach Bod might give you hope for toned abs, but it doesn’t address why you think toned abs are going to cure your sadness or stop your man from cheating. 10 Steps For a Successful Business Launch might give you some structure to follow, but doesn’t neutralize the mean inner critic that’s preventing you from honing strategy specifically for your business.
True hope demands acknowledgement of what’s truly going on: the thing that’s hurting that you need to heal, the situation you want to get out of, the growth you want to make. So does true empathy.
Toxic positivity pretends to cure symptoms of shame, low self-esteem, financial terror, etc. It is denial of pain- not the healing of it.
True hope brings the full person, the full situation, into the vision of a better future. Not just the Instagram-filtered version.
Have you been conditioned to believe you’re not allowed to appear weak? Are you afraid of acknowledging the extent of some harm? Heal that, love.
How to avoid toxic positivity in marketing:
Don’t minimize pain, hardship, and struggle.
Don’t attempt to portray a perfect, “positive vibes only” image. Incorporate humanity into your marketing.
Engage in respectful conversations with concerned customers and observers. Don’t ignore problems and missteps.
Examine your own discomfort with acknowledging painful or unpleasant emotions. All feelings are trying to communicate with you what your needs and boundaries are.
Unwoke Marketing
Toxic positivity in marketing has been showing up in a really ugly way as brands try to capitalize on social justice movements that are gaining popular momentum. Before you jump on that hashtag, or claim a value that is not actually reflected in your business, take a pause.
You should always make an effort to think through your messaging in a larger cultural context.
Remember the shit storm that ignited when Kendall Jenner solved racism and police brutality by handing a cop a Pepsi in that roundly derided commercial? What about when DiGiorno jumped on the #WhyIStayed hashtag, not realizing it was about domestic violence? How about BMW, Shell, and other well known brands jumping on the greenwashing bandwagon and having ads pulled for making false environmental claims? Can you encounter disingenuous rainbow capitalism without cringing?
Don’t claim alignment with social justice causes for the trend of it. That’s unethical, and if you do it, honestly, your brand deserves the hit to its reputation.
Social justice bonafides require walking the talk and NOT USING THE VIOLENT OPPRESSION OF MARGINALIZED PEOPLE AS AN OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE MONEY. Please don’t.
If you care about the cause, participate. Donate money, do the activism. Don’t make it an advertising ploy if a decent percentage of the money isn’t going directly to the cause.
Of course, everyone makes mistakes. If you do something ignorant in your marketing and get called on it, own up to it. Publicly. Make reparations where you can. Ignoring your misstep or getting defensive is just going to make it worse.
Also, please don’t use the “isms” as a marketing tactic. (For example: no hinting that the best version of ourselves just happens to have more Caucasian features and hair texture.) Unwoke marketing hinders hope rather than gives it.
Conversely, releasing negative and limiting beliefs and rejecting toxic messaging does give the gift of hope.
For example, more than 4 million people on Instagram are following as Jameela Jamil and the I-Weigh movement work to deprogram marketing and media messaging that equates slim bodies and whiteness with fuckability and fuckability with worth.
Some ways to avoid unwoke marketing:
Hire diverse marketers.
Always research a hashtag before you use it.
Always research the organization or individual before you show public support or make a donation.
Add your commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion into your company values- and live them.
Work with a diversity consultant to regularly check your messaging and business structure for alignment with these values.
Listen to the concerns of marginalized customers and observers. Apologize when needed. Make reparations where you can.
Work to deprogram your own internalized racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, etc. etc.
Miracle Cure Marketing
Cynics can sniff b.s. from a mile away with miracle cure marketing.
Sure, false promises of quick fixes may give some buyers a brief hit of hope. But it evaporates as soon as the purchase has been completed. This makes for disappointed customers who won’t be coming back and- depending on how much you pissed them off- might damage your brand reputation.
As tempting as it may be to promise customers everything they want to hear, it’s just not a good marketing practice. Not only is it destined to disappoint or induce skepticism, it’s not very memorable. There are a whole lot of other businesses making the same overblown promises. If your marketing can’t even make a lasting impression, it’s definitely not giving hope.
Remember, you don’t have all the answers to everything ever. You’re not an expert in every single thing. Also, there are probably zillions of other businesses providing similar products or services.
The only way for your messaging to stand out is for you to include what you and only you can bring to the table.
So, you’re going to have to get vulnerable. What’s your backstory? Why do you do what you do? Why do you care? What’s your motivation? What are you trying to build?
This gives people something to connect with and relate to. You’re not going to want to go get a beer with an ROI percentage. That checklist isn’t going to comfort you when you don’t know what to do or how to pick between conflicting listicle advice.
But, just to pick a few of the marketing campaigns that actually worked on me recently: feminist advertisers who swear and want to empower women to make more money? Yes. An anti-capitalist business coach who insists on factoring in emotional, mental, and spiritual health into every aspect of entrepreneurship? Yes.
Now there are oodles of advertising and business coaches I could have chosen from. Thanks to ad targeting, I see scores of pitches from them anytime I take a casual scroll.
I chose who I chose because they gave me hope. That I am allowed to be an intersectional feminist in business. That I don’t have to tone down my powerful voice to make money. That I can reject the corporate conditioning that really didn’t work for me and still be successful. That my mental health doesn’t have to play second fiddle to my productivity. That emotional awareness is an asset, not a liability.
That kind of hope is really powerful. Note: neither one’s messaging sought to convince me I’m broken, wrong, or defective in some way. Instead, they sought to empower me: “here’s how to do more with your gifts.”
This is the kind of hope that marketing should strive to tap into.
How to avoid miracle cure marketing:
Don’t pretend to have the solution to every problem. Know your lane, and stay in it.
Don’t exaggerate probable results.
Aim for empowerment, not reliance.
Do be vulnerable. Share your story, motivations, and vision.
Hope Motivates
Disempowered people shut down, avoid, or act out. Empowered people are motivated to dream big and create. Who do you want to work with?
Aim to use marketing to empower people. Bring hope to the masses. Do some good.
Want to launch a marketing campaign that does just that? We’re happy to help.
