The Pizza That Cried Wolf: Backlash Marketing

Let’s pretend that you run a pizza business. A big home-delivery organization, like Dominos or Papa John's. Let’s also--for the sake of this hypothesis--assume that all pizzas are created equal, and there’s no quality or taste-based reason to purchase one brand over another. While your competition is trying to figure out how to make money on a three-topping pizza for $10.99, you announce that you’re going to start selling three-topping pizzas for $5.99.

How did you do it? You simply cut costs by doing away with the cardboard. No pizza box. The delivery guy just hands the customer a pie. His bare hands to theirs.

Are you thinking now that maybe that isn’t the best business decision? That perhaps the cost-cutting measure isn’t worth the return? The best- case scenario sees consumers terribly burned by molten cheese and boiling sauce. The worst case is some Jabroni in an ‘02 Ford Taurus is getting his man-mitts all over somebody’s sad-ass dinner.

So comes the inevitable backlash. Offices the pizza-eating world over are abuzz with the question, “Would you order a pizza that didn’t come in a box?” Sure. There are a few pretend tough guys who say they wouldn’t care, but really, we’re all pretty much universally disgusted by your company’s cost-saving strategy.

A few day’s later--and this part is important--before you even sell a single pie sans box, you retreat on your position. You say that the cost savings isn’t worth it, that the allure of the $5.99 price point was too great, that you flew too close to the sun, that you're sorry, and that from now on all your pizzas will arrive in a standard cardboard box.

In the hands of a company that doesn’t know what it’s doing this would be a bold and stupid move, one that would cost them dearly in the press. But to a savvy company in a very tight situation, this could be an example of Backlash Marketing (my term, feel free to spread it around).

Backlash Marketing is the act of intentionally doing something publicly unpopular, so that the inevitable repercussions create a desirable byproduct.

Your nasty raw-dogging pizza company is an allegory of the greatest Backlash Marketer of all: Ryanair. The Irish airline has, in the past, put out press releases claiming that its planes will be standing room only; that they will remove the lavatories from their aircraft; and that they will do away with the excessive luxury of a copilot (claiming that in the event of an emergency, a knowledgeable passenger could be pressed into service).

Ryanair never actually intended to go through with any of these measures--many aren’t even legal--but by dropping these incendiary press releases it stirs up mud, gets people talking and, even if it’s in a semi-negative light, intrinsically links its brand to the idea of cost savings. It may look like burning the house down, but it's a very strategic, controlled burn.