Why is a bad move?

Here is promotion that a local new home builder posting on their website, they give buyers a $10,000 off if they buy townhouses. It seems a typical promotion that everyone may use to attract attention of potential customers.
It is a bad move! Why? Two reasons.

First, let’s start with a real story. On December 16, 2015 in Republican party primaries, HP ex-CEO, Carly Fiorina, resorted to a trick textbook to support their concept of opponent abortion. A true story of a medical malpractice results an abortion with full of imagery details moved audience deeply. She got attention from media and social networks, immediately. It was a nice move, wasn’t it? Wrong, Fiorina’s supporting rate from 15%, before her speech, dropped to 4%. It destroyed her. Why? Because she built a connection between she and a dead baby in people’s brain. Yes, she was talking about the story to against abortion, but it is not how human’s brain works. If two things often appear together in human’s brain, people equalize them. People doesn’t like dead baby, so people refused to vote her.

Back to the $10,000 off ad, it connects the brand to a huge discount in people’s mind. That is all it does. If the builder can track the deals brought from this promotion, they may find higher chance buyers asked for a huge discount, no matter what houses they buy.
An advertise should talk to people’s desire, like Coca Cola links happiness to their products, Apple links people’s desire of creativity to their products. They both talk to people’s subconscious. Make people feels there is a connection between me and the products, to answer the question of why this thing is matter to me? Not “simply put in black and white, $10,000 off”.

I will talk about the second reason why it is bad move in part two of this blog.