“Under New Marketing”

“Under New Management”

Why do businesses continue to use this in their advertising?

Several times recently I’ve heard businesses of all kinds include the phrase “Now Under New Management” (or ownership) in their advertising…on radio, on business marquees, or on TV.

I know the scenario is likely this: the new owners just took over, and heard a lot of complaints about the previous owners. Now they feel the need to let everyone know that “we can’t help what THEY did, but things will be different now, so try us again.”

There are a couple of reasons this is a bad strategy.

First, those people who had no issues with the previous owners have now been alerted to the fact that there was some (vague) problem. You’re essentially telling everyone, “This place wasn’t run properly before, but we think we can do better…and we’re new so who really knows how we’ll do?”

Second, it (at the very least) implies there is/will be a lack of consistency with the product being sold. This is a world full of almost too many choices—people will accept consistently average service or product quality, but they hate inconsistent service or quality. (Need an example? McDonald’s.)

Changing managers/owners IS an important detail for any company. It’s just not good commercial copy. It has all the charm of reading a disclaimer.
If you MUST get this kind of message out, try to be more positive. “Come meet Doug—our new manager!” tells me that there’s possibly someone new in town that just got a job he really wanted and is likely enthusiastic about it-and now I already know his name.

“Under New Management.” Another example of marketers not knowing the difference between “what’s important to us” and “what makes good advertising.”