Gotcha Marketing

Bob Sullivan recently published “Gotcha Capitalism”. It’s all about the culture of how hidden fees designed to rip you off every time, have somehow become so common we barely notice or know how to avoid them anymore.

While Bob’s got it right that we’ve become so used to rip offs like rental car insurance, airline fuel fees, bank fees, and the like, he’s missed the marketing tactic at work. This is a tactic that works, when it shouldn’t.

“Gotcha” is less about capitalism and more about marketing. Capitalism and free markets would never allow a company to get away with half of what they do because it would be too easy for a competitor to step in and back-door them for their silly nickel & diming practices.

Here’s the deal.

These “gotcha” or “ripped-off if you do and ripped-off if you don’t” tactics are about marketing a service in such a way as to be seen as cheaper, better, faster up-front while actually charging more, becoming slower, and allowing service to suffer on the back-end.

That’s Branding, positioning, pricing strategy, creative service level agreements, loss-leaders, etc. Those are all marketing strategies, not effects of a capitalist free market.

If a service is to be competitive without employing silly “gotcha” tactics, it’s got its work cut-out. I believe that the way to differentiate from these “gamers” and “gotcha-artists” is to combat their marketing with your own.

We can’t change the way airlines, cell phones, car rentals, or banks market their business with these “gotcha” tactics, but we don’t have to do it their way. We will lead by example, even if they won’t.

Check out Bob Sullivan’s book, “Gotcha Capitalism” on Amazon.  You can listen to the audio podcast of this post here (1:16).