Marketing has always been about promoting something so that people will buy it.
So it’s always interesting to see campaigns where a company is encouraging customers not to use their own product. Probably the most (in)famous example is the tobacco industry funded anti-smoking campaign. I’ve also always liked how McCormick tells people to throw their old spices away. (albeit to buy fresh ones)
But lately, I’ve been impressed with Microsoft’s campaign to get people to stop using the Internet Explorer 6 web browser.
IE6 has lots of problems that I won’t get into here, but Microsoft has launched a campaign to get people to stop using the program. There’s a consumer-side campaign centered around the website, IE6countdown.com, as well as developer-side messaging like this…
It’s an interesting thought experiment for your own business. If you had to launch a campaign today that encouraged people NOT to use your product, what would be the negative aspects you would center the campaign around?
After you figure that out, why not go ahead and fix those things now?