Spring

Marketing

P sychologists believe fear is hardwired into all mammals, and is the most potent emotion. We evolved fear as a basic survival method. The brain’s

fear circuitry resides in a little-known structure called the amygdale. It’s the deepest, most instinc-tive part of the brain, and because of this it elicits the strongest physical reaction in us. Whenever we confront a perceived danger, our bodies respond with sweating, a higher heart rate and greater levels of adrenaline (so-called “fight or flight”) in which the body prepares either for combat or to run very far and very fast away from the danger — all very useful if you were a caveman suddenly eye to eye with a saber-toothed tiger.

This is such a deep-set reaction that our brains stop thinking, literally putting all our energy into fuelling our reaction. (That explains why you feel you lose the ability to speak coherently when you find yourself locked into a conflict at work with a boss or colleague: it’s just your body’s reaction to a threatening situation.) Only when the situation is resolved in some way and the threat starts to go away does our breathing become more measured and even and we slowly but surely return to a state of normality. Fear makes your body do something without thinking.

Marketers spend their lives trying to find ways to get us to buy their products. When there were only a handful of brands in a category, it was easy to persuade shoppers based on a product’s key attributes. Now that there are, on average, some 50,000 products in a supermarket, the stakes have been raised, and you have to work much harder to convince shoppers.

History has shown us that fear is a powerful motivator, and you can use fear with a stick or with a carrot. The emperors of Rome used the gods to control the people, who lived in fear that Zeus would send down a lightning bolt down to strike them if they did anything that might displease him. Some people might argue that fear is the rock on which the Christian church has been built on, but unlike Zeus’ thunderbolts (the stick) they created this magical, perfect place that you could go to if you were good enough (the carrot). Christ, as Jacques Seguela, the creator of Euro RSCG, once famously said, was probably the first, and most successful, ad man, having created a brand and logo that has survived and thrived the longest.

Politicians have often used “fear marketing” to draw people to the voting booths. President Johnson’s landslide victory in 1964 spoke to the public's increasing fear of nuclear warfare, with his

There’s nothing like scaring the bejeesus out of you

to sell you something you don’t need. Bianca

Cawthorne says we should be afraid, very afraid

Featuring: Al-Qaida. Clearasil. Halitosis.Lemsip. Taxes. Zeus

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Marketing

Spring

notorious advertising campaign showing a nuclear explosion set against a young girl picking petals off a daisy: “These are the stakes! We must either love each other, or we must die. The stakes are too high for you to stay at home.” Rudy Guiliani promised to stamp out fear; George W Bush won a second term by inciting fear of any Middle East country he could name, and he did so well that we got all very, very scared.

Remember all the hype around Y2K and the millennium bug? How many people were driven to buying a new toaster or DVD player thinking that they would spontaneously combust at midnight? The IT industry raked in the billions of dollars' worth of contracts to re-programme computers just in case entire corporate systems failed.

Fear marketing capitalises on our desire to keep things as they are to persuade us to buy a certain product or service. Fear marketing speaks to our inner paranoid, painting vivid pictures of the bad things that are going to happen is you fail to buy

their product, as opposed to the good things that might happen if you do. It plays on what we most fear at a deep the deepest emotional level (death, loneliness, rejection, pain, loss), and then it offers a way to avoid what you most dread.

Fear marketing has been proven to work. US in-vehicle security company OnStar doubled its members in two years (compared to a paltry 4% increase by its competitors) after it ran a slick and hard-hitting advertising campaign with an actual recording of a small girl saying: “We’ve just had an accident and my mom isn’t moving. Please help!” The aim was to get parents thinking: what would happen if we had a car crash? And what if our daughter didn’t have OnStar?

In this fear-enriched climate — of terrorism, of global economist melt-down and temperature warming, of avian flu — we are seeing an increase in fear marketing. If you look around you will find a number of brands capitalising on and playing to consumers’ heightened sense of anxiety. HSBC and Barclays have sought to communicate how safe your money is in their hands (ie not anyone else’s), given their credentials of size and age. New insurance products are being developed so that you can protect your summer holiday against redundancy. An event company is advertising its conference with a picture of a guy begging on the street with a small but telling sign saying: “I used to be a marketing director, but I was TOO busy to go to the Advertising Week conference day”.

You can see elements of fear marketing in other categories you wouldn’t normally expect. The beauty industry invests billions in making us

Clearasil plays to a teenager’s fear of being ostracised by his peers for his spots. Toothpaste brands play to our fear of halitosis (in fact, 15% of people have halitophobia, a fear of bad breath).

want to buy their products. Look carefully and you see fear marketing messages. Anti-wrinkle creams warn us in subtle way about the consequences of not using their products; the reassuring scientific language has convinced the female population that they need to stay looking young otherwise they’ll be passed over by the young, pretty thing next to them. You’re only “worth it” if you look like you’ve never aged since 25. If you worship St L’Oréal you will avoid the purgatory of ugliness.

Clearasil plays to teenagers’ fear of ostracism by their peers for their spots. Lynx plays to men’s fear that they aren’t actually that attractive. (Let’s be serious, a nice smell isn’t going to help you, boys.) Fear marketing in the parenting industry starts during pregnancy with a whole array of products and supplements that play against your fear that you won’t be a good mother.

And fear marketing strategies are being used by a number of food brands that point out that they aren’t genetically modified, they don’t use pesticides and have no artificial ingredients — all of which clearly suggest that everything else that you see on the shelf beside does.

So, what of those other brands that don’t use fear marketing? Why is it that most brands only use happy, smiling people? Thinking about three of the happiest brands around, could they benefit from a little extra help from the fear marketing strategies?

Drinks manufacturer Innocent has revised its profit projections for this year. Could they sell more smoothies if they showed someone as a tired, run-down, disease-ridden, couch potato? Could Disney increase visitor numbers by showing you the years of resentment your children will bear to-wards you because you were, in fact, never a good parent? And what about Weight Watchers? Instead of a newly slim 30-year-old trying on her favourite dress to go out to a party, you see her fat and alone on the sofa, eating crisps?

Now that you have been warned, be scared, be very scared. Unless you are a marketer and still in your job. A few things might have happened when you were reading this article. Check your email. Bad news travel fast.W—Bianca Cawthorne I—Ben Allder

A recent study showed that patients with high cholesterol are more likely to be motivated to stay on their medication after seeing an actual scan of their own clogged-up arteries.