Marketing in the Pandemic #1: If It Bleeds, It Leads
Photographs in hazmat suits and charts with ever-climbing statistics of deaths and infections is quite effective in painting an apocalyptic picture of the kind of world we are living in. It is enough to put the fear of God in any onlooker, and news outlets are capitalizing on that emotion left and right. When fear becomes a clickbait, it leads to desensitization of and distancing from the whole issue, like a celebrity’s fashion faux pas that makes us grimace before we move on to the next article. We can’t really blame companies capitalizing on this fear through their marketing campaigns. After all, one of the biggest emotions instigated through some disturbing elements that market religion is fear. (Too controversial? Fair warning: this is only going to get more uncomfortable.)
You call it dark, I call it humor.
The Victorian government must be applauded for the perfect use of fear in its advertisements to scare its citizens into staying home. One of their most famous campaigns featured a covid patient who was in an induced coma and suffered the loss of his mother, ending it with the bandaged-wrapped man tearfully saying, “Covid is real. It is very real.”
Beware the boogie man. Who would not buy more masks and shut their doors tight after seeing that? Fear incites a survival instinct. It leads to a fight or flight response. It leads to buying products that can help you stay safe and put a push notification on all vaccine-related news.
However, it leads to two very important questions. One, how long is fear effective before the desensitization sets in? Two, is it ethical to capitalize on negative emotions?
According to some studies, fear alone is not an effective enough tool to ensure the success of a marketing campaign. Pete Lin, managing director for North Asia at We Are Social said, “Blatant fear-based messaging causes unnecessary panic…using fear as an implied mental state of the masses and building messaging above that has become common practice very quickly.” A message wrapped up merely in terror may lead to loss aversive activities, blatant ignorance or, as history proves, even the ‘lipstick effect’ where people end up spending on small luxuries and indulgence instead because wars and famines make them so hopeless about the future that a sense of hedonism for the present with complete disregard of the future arises.
Blatant fear-based messaging causes unnecessary panic…using fear as an implied mental state of the masses and building messaging above that has become common practice very quickly.
-Pete Lin, Managing Director for North Asia at We Are Social
We need something more than fear. We need fear packaged up in a shiny wrapping paper with a pink bow on top so you actually feel like opening it up. For example, to encourage people to stay home and save lives, the US State of Oregon came up with the slogan “Don’t accidentally kill someone.” It is so graphic that it is actually effective. If I am going to die tomorrow, I want to spend today in an amusement park, but I would never- for any hedonism- wish to become a human landmine.
Therefore, three things are required along with fear – one, some kind of hope. When AIDS campaigns in the last century turned up the fear too high, it ended up stigmatizing the ailed. Two, a call to action is impertinent. Vaccination companies are coming up with advertisements of beautiful places that anyone would ache to travel to, and they end it with a simple solution – get vaccinated if you want to go out. Third, it needs to be impactful and memorable. As Jonah Berger said, our message needs to be sticky. If I remember the haunted eyes of the victims on TV who lost their loved ones, some part of my behaviour will be altered. And if my behaviour is altered, the marketing strategist has succeeded.
For the people who are waiting for the more uncomfortable content, stay tuned in (from home though) for the next post where we talk about the ethics involved in fear marketing.
