How do you increase consumer engagement with your marketing communications? We suggest using negations in your brand messaging (e.g., “It doesn’t get any better than this”). Four studies, including field studies that analyzed more than 53 million interactions between consumers and brands, find that consumers are more likely to engage with brands when their messages include negations. This occurs because brands seem more powerful when they use negations in their brand messaging, and consumers generally want to associate with more powerful brands. Moreover, the positive, indirect effect of negations on engagement, through perceived brand power, is stronger among consumers with a higher need for status. These findings deepen our understanding of the often-surprising ways seemingly innocuous language features influence consumers, including how they perceive and interact with brands. The managerial implications are straightforward—incorporate negations in your brand messaging, especially when communicating with those that desire status.

您如何提高消费者对营销传播的参与度？我们建议在您的品牌信息中使用否定词（例如，“它不得到比这更好的”）。四项研究（包括分析消费者与品牌之间超过 5300 万次互动的实地研究）发现，当消费者的信息包含否定时，他们更有可能与品牌互动。这是因为品牌在品牌信息中使用否定词时似乎更强大，而消费者通常希望与更强大的品牌相关联。此外，通过感知品牌力量，否定对参与度的积极、间接影响在对地位有更高需求的消费者中更强。这些发现加深了我们对看似无害的语言特征影响消费者的令人惊讶的方式的理解，包括他们如何看待品牌并与品牌互动。管理影响很简单——在你的品牌信息中加入否定，