Scott's Turf Builder - Shame Marketing - BITTER

Scott's is running a commercial for its Turf Builder product right now which I really don't like. It falls into a category of ads I called either "stigma marketing" or "shame marketing". (Dan and Chip Heath did a great piece on this concept in Fast Company last year.) These ads try to create a problem to make the viewer feel ashamed or embarassed.

In this particular commercial, a husband and wife are discussing the tradgic problems they had with their lawn. It was riddled with dandelions and they were the bain of their neighborhood. They felt awful because they never wanted to be "that neighbor". Finally, though, after using Scott's Turf Builder, their lawn was cleaned up and perfect. They profess that, "now the neighbors wave at us" as if prior to "perfecting" their lawn they were treated like the scum of the earth. Its the equivalent of trying to make all women think they need to be a size 4 to be accepted. Truly ridiculous.

At what point did someone decide that dandelions were the worst things in the world? I have small children and, at one point, was a child myself. These were actually the greatest things in the world at the time. Free flowers you could pick and attempt to cultivate in a paper cup. Spores you could try to blow out like birthday candles. This is living to a child. When did the lawn become the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?

When I eventually do have a front lawn of my own, I fully intend to go natural with it. No chemicals fertlizers or weed killers. Just hopefully a lawn without any big missing patches and hopfully a few of mother nature's beauties for the kids to bring in to their mother.

Scott's, for trying to make all of us feel criminal, you get a BITTER.