Say who your product is NOT for

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Marketers spend hours filtering creators by age, gender, location, and engagement rate to find the perfect influencer for their brand. 

And yet, brands see “audience mismatch” as the top reason for influencer campaign failure (42% of the time).

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📝 Context

Topic: Messaging & Copy | Ads
For: B2C. Can be tested for B2B
Research date: June 2025
Universities: University of Alabama in Huntsville, Georgetown University, Florida International University 

You’re starting a new sunrise yoga class and putting together a campaign to promote the class to your followers. As you do, you’re struggling between two options for your tagline:

• Not for those who like a groggy start to the day

• For those who like an energetic start to the day

Science says the first option might be more effective. Here’s why.

P.S.: Using negative framing in your descriptions or ad copy (e.g. “Don’t miss our sale”) can also make your message sound more powerful, leading to higher engagement and more recommendations

📈 Recommendation

Use negative framing, highlighting who your product is not for (e.g. “If you don’t like rock hard beds, this mattress isn’t for you”) in your ads, social media, website and product descriptions.

This is especially important for products or services where people have strong personal preferences (e.g. dark vs. milk chocolate).

Your target audience will be more likely to choose and want to buy your product, and will engage and click more on your ads or social media posts. 

🎓 Findings

• When a product advertises who it’s not suitable for (e.g. an adventure holiday package saying it’s “Not if you want to laze by the pool”), its target audience says they’re more likely to choose or buy the item, and its ads receive more clicks and engagement.

• As part of a series of 8 online and field experiments, researchers found that:

  • Dark roast coffee lovers were 48.4% more likely to choose a coffee when it was framed negatively (“Not for you if you don’t like dark roast”) vs positively (“For you if you like dark roast”)

  • When asked to imagine themselves as fans of hot sauce, negative framing (“If you don’t like your wings with a kick, this is NOT the sauce for you!”) led to 11.1% higher purchase intentions than positive framing

  • When toothbrushes were framed negatively (“But if you prefer hard bristles, Grin is not for you.”) instead of positively, it led to 28.6% more clicks on a link, 30.2% more clicks across the page, and 31.7% higher engagement

🧠 Why it works

• It’s not always true that we dislike negative statements (e.g. “You don’t need to charge this every day”) or find them less informative than positive statements.

• When we consider ourselves similar to the people in an ad, we’re more likely to have a positive view of the brand and consider their product.

• When we see a product highlighting it’s not meant for some people (e.g. “Not for people with low spice tolerance”), we assume it’s more specialized and better for other groups of people (people who like spicy food).

• The more specific and targeted an ad seems to us, the more we feel the product is a good fit or tailored for our needs.

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✋ Limitations

• The study focused on food and drink items (e.g. coffee, hot sauce) where people have taste preferences. It’s likely, but hasn’t yet been tested, that the effect works similarly across other product categories.

• The experiments asked people to share their product preferences, they did not measure actual purchases or whether there was any impact on longer-term customer loyalty.

• The research was conducted on US audiences. The effect may work differently in other languages or cultures. For example, how common negative phrasing is in some cultures (e.g. Australians frequently say “Not terrible” instead of “You did well”) may impact how the effect works.

• The study didn’t look at whether there were any long-term impacts from negative framing. As this is relatively rare compared to positive framing, its effectiveness may diminish over time if it becomes more common.

👀 Real-life example

BOOM! Beauty’s products focus on providing older women with healthy, sustainable beauty products centered around embracing the aging process.

❌ Issue: BOOM! showcases who their products are for, women seeking to stay true to themselves and embrace aging, but never mentions who their products are not for.

✅ Solution: To increase the likelihood of their target audience choosing their product and wanting to buy it, BOOM! Beauty should:

• Switch how they talk about their audience to use negative framing. For example, they could say, “Not for women trying to hide their age”.

• While they have a story behind the name BOOM!, switching to a more feminine sounding name would increase the chances of customers liking and choosing them.

• Frame using their products as an experience (e.g. “With every brushstroke or pat of your nose, we’re here to help you feel like your best self.”) to make their customers feel closer to the product, and more likely to review it. 

Highlight the sustainability of their all-natural ingredients more prominently, as it implies higher quality products to customers and makes them enjoy the experience of using the product more.

🔍 Study type

Lab and online experiments, and field experiment (Meta ads about soft or hard-bristle toothbrushes, with over 64,000 impressions over 3 days in summer of 2020)

📖 Research

This Article Is Not for Everyone: The Impact of Dissuasive Framing on Consumer Response to Product Messages. Journal of Consumer Research (June 2025).

🏫 Researchers

• Karen Anne Wallach, University of Alabama in Huntsville

• Sean Blair, McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University

• Jaclyn L. Tanenbaum, Florida International University

Remember: This is a new scientific discovery. In the future it will probably be better understood and could even be proven wrong (that’s how science works). It may also not be generalizable to your situation. If it’s a risky change, always test it on a small scale before rolling it out widely.

🎁 Bonus mini-insight

Check your knowledge from previous insights (for paid Platform members only). Read the full insight here if you are already a member.

🎓 Insight: Mention a rival to get more engagement

📈 Recommendation: Showcase your brand’s strengths by comparing them to a rival’s product (e.g. Our Note 12’s battery lasts for 3 days, compared to the iPhone’s 2 days). People will be more likely to engage with your content and want to learn about your brand.

✋ Careful: This only works if you have a clear rival (e.g. Coca-cola vs. Pepsi, Hubspot vs. Salesforce, Teams vs. Slack), it won’t work with any competing product (e.g. Teams vs. Discord)

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🎓 It took me, a PhD analyst, and a marketing pro 13.5 hours to accurately turn this 22-page research paper into this 3min insight.

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