Negative Publicity Raises Awareness, For Better and For Worse

Research from a marketing professor at the Wharton School, Jonah Berger, along with a couple of his Stanford University colleagues posed the questions “Can negative publicity actually have a positive effect? And if so, when?”

The New York Times took a closer look (the article about the research was originally published in Marketing Science) and the findings suggest that negative publicity can raise awareness, which can actually help in specific circumstances.

For example, the article points out that even a bad review of a book can positively impact sales if the book is written by an unknown author.