Best practice in guilt-trip communications
Guilt-eliciting communications are used extensively by charities when advertising for donations, and by governments when attempting to demarket behaviours such as smoking in front of children or drink-driving, but how useful are guilt-eliciting communications for conventional marketers?
Marketing messages that seek to elicit guilt are very common. Healthier food alternatives or ecological products are frequently promoted as 'guilt-free' choices. Marketing aimed at parents is another context where companies feed on the target audience's insecurities to trigger guilty feelings to motivate the purchase...