The Theory of Negativity
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The Theory of Negativity is the only magical marketing secret we have ever come across.
And you get to hear about it on these pages because our good friend, the brilliant Steve Manning of Igor International has already put everything he knows on the internet for anyone to download and read.
Steve is a big deal naming guy. He gets to decide what new casinos are called and stuff like that. He makes a high fee in the process and he’s worth every penny.
The Theory of Negativity isn't about negativity in the sense of being pessimistic or dour. It's about negativity in the sense of the positive and negative sides of a battery or a magnet.
Have you ever driven to work and arrived at your destination only to realize that the whole journey is a blur or a blank? You might have killed someone!
In reality, this is our brain doing what it is supposed to do. You tossed data out as fast as it came in because everything was as expected.
The Theory of Negativity suggests that what’s memorable is what’s unexpected. The best names, logos, messages, and campaigns surprise us. They seize. They make us tilt our heads and pay a little bit more attention.
Our favorite is the popular business messaging tool Slack. Slack’s name is classic Theory of Negativity. Think: slack off and slacker, slack in the system…for a productivity app!
How about Virgin Airlines? Do you really want someone flying you around the country that’s never done it before? Two classic Steve Manning examples or Yahoo! And Sallie Mae. The list goes on.
Quick! We’re thinking of a construction equipment company that makes backhoes and diggers, rollers, and cranes. These machines are clad in yellow paint.
We love to give this prompt in large crowds and then ask everyone to say the name of the company in unison: Caterpillar!
And yet most people have never owned or operated a Caterpillar machine.
Note: recently the company has started using just “Cat” alongside a mark of a black cat. That sound that you’re hearing is the sound of someone losing their job. Caterpillar is one of the great American brands of all time and no one should be allowed to mess with it again.
Caterpillar makes a little bit of descriptive sense in that some of the treads of the company’s machines look a little bit like a caterpillar as they move along — that was the name’s origin. And there is good evocative fodder available too — a caterpillar turns into a butterfly, and likewise, a hole in the earth can transform into a gleaming tower of glass.
If we were naming a construction equipment company, you’d be naturally inclined to call it Titan perhaps, or TITAN in all caps — yes, that feels right.
But Titan is what you’d expect. Titan is as expected — and not memorable. Caterpillar most certainly is not. And as a result, everyone knows and remembers the brand.
The Theory of Negativity doesn’t just apply to naming. It applies in design, too.
Take Apple’s logo. That mark is ubiquitous. They don’t even need words anymore. What’s memorable about the Apple logo?
The bite is what’s memorable. The bite is what’s unexpected. The bite suggests rotten, or spoiled. It also suggests temptation and the loss of innocence. This is some downright illicit hardware, baby!
Credit is due to Regis McKenna, Steve’s Job’s longtime ad and marketing guy, and McKenna’s graphic designer Rob Janoff. That bite was worth billions.
When someone comes to the Apple website today, not much has changed. What’s the Apple website’s job? To get me brand drunk, of course.
Apple devices are overpriced. There’s no debating that. The website’s job is to convince me that it’s okay to make what can only be described as an irrational purchase.
Let’s do one more design example. Suppose we renamed Apple Computer. Suppose we called it Leaf Computer instead. Leaf Computer it is. We don’t care what you think. We’re in charge. And we get to pick the name.
What 9 out of 10 of you did while you were reading the previous sentence was imagine the Leaf Computer logo.
No doubt it had actual leaves, vines, and ventricles in it, something out of Jack and the Giant Beanstalk, perhaps? Or maybe something more modern, perhaps akin to what Nissan did for their inaugural electric vehicle?
You’re so predictable! We all are. Sadly, the logo you so quickly imagined would be just as easily forgotten. How might the Leaf Computer logo look if it were to be instead rather unexpected?
It might look like the Yeti coolers logo, for example — all black, sans-serif, caps. Inorganic.
Not all names and brands use the Theory of Negativity, but many of the most successful ones do.
And now that you know about the Theory of Negativity, you’ll have a hard time not noticing it everywhere.
Just like the Courage To Be Incomplete, the Theory of Negativity requires some guts to do the unexpected. What’s expected won’t get you fired, after all. But it does lead to mediocrity. If a name is the best free advertisement on earth, it’s well worth the risk.