Here's My Theory

The Negative Ad Fallacy

You can tell a lot about a person or company just based on what they choose to showcase in their ads. The superior one is usually the one who highlights their strong points instead of pointing out the weaknesses of their competitors.

This can be seen in ads for both products and politicians. For instance, if you’ve ever seen an Optimum Online commercial, all you hear is negative things about Verizon’s FiOS service. Some smug guy is telling you about how FiOS customers keep switching back to Optimum and trying to scare you into thinking that the fact that FiOS is superior is a myth.

Their other commercial features a FiOS salesman going door-to-door while his mother reveals the “ugly truth” that her son is keeping from the unsuspecting Optimum customers.

The idea here is that is Optimum is selling an inferior product, the only way they can keep their customers is to scare them into thinking that Optimum cares about them like their moms do and FiOS is the guy in the van full of puppies trying to kidnap your children.

FiOS, on the other hand simply spits out statistics about their superior picture quality and internet speed and call it a day.

As mentioned above, the other place you see this constantly is in politics. Whenever one politician has a better platform because they are more closely aligned with the people, the inferior competitor comes along with a negative ad campaign that highlights obscure, out-of-context anecdotes from the superior politician’s life.

The lesson here is to not be fooled in scare-tactics. If you can sense that someone is trying to scare you into trusting them, they’re entirely full of shit and should immediately lose you as either a customer or voter. Consider it a decision-making shortcut.