Adjust your contrast

This section we will discuss an advertising strategy that is not often talked about - Contrast Advertising.

What is Contrast Advertising? It is a strategy where you compare your products directly to a competitors product. Comparing 'Apples to Apples' you can say.

How do they use this? Well, let's say you have invented a MP3 player that does everything the iPod does, and yet your player was lighter, smaller, has more storage space, etc etc etc. So your advertisement will have a picture of a gadget similar to the iPod, and next to it you have your patented player with all the extra functions and benefits etc... get the picture?

Levine explains his his book, The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold that there 2 reasons how contrast in used in persuasion:

1. To convince you that what a company is selling is a better deal than what the competition has to offer
2. To alter your expectations, or what's know as your "anchor point"

Levine illustrates this scenario to describe the above points: 'Perhaps you're shopping for a certain camera. Your friend tells you he just bought one for $200. You see the same one in a discount store at $175. Good deal, right? But say, instead, the friend had told you that he thought the camera should cost $150. That $175 price isn't so attractive anymore.'

To use contrast as persuasion, you either alter a person's anchor point, or the features of the product itself.

How do you alter a person's anchor point? Well, you do it incrementally so that the person adjusts to the changing situation.

For example, suppose you meet an insurance agent for the first time because you feel that you do not have the basic hospitalization coverage everyone requires. What often happens is that, after you've purchased your medical insurance, the agent will tell you that you don't have, lets say disability coverage. So perhaps your next meeting with the agent you buy that disability coverage. Then the agent request that you meet again because he/she has told you that heart disease is on the rise in your area and you do not have critical illness coverage. So what happens, you buy critical illness insurance. This will continue as the agent tries to sell you different types of insurance starting from health, life, to home and travel insurance and so forth.

The problem here is you feel that you have only paid for a single policy, whereas the reality of the situation is you've probably bought as many policies as the agent wanted you to buy.