Nothing to fear but …?
For an end to anxiety marketing.

Fear has destroyed more things in this world than it has created - Paul Morand [Eloge du repos]


H

as marketing become so powerless that it must exploit fear as a last resort to drive our social and economic activities ? If we attentively decode our immediate environment, we realise that fear, that “highly emotionally-infused psychological state that accompanies the awareness of real or imagined danger or threat”  (Petit Robert dictionary definition) is at the core of numerous strategies, decisions, offers, initiatives and communications that concern us.

Fear must sell, if we consider that it was necessary to remind advertisers not to use fear in their communication [cf. ICC - International Codes of Marketing and Advertising Practice (since 1997): Article 4.2: “Advertising should not without justifiable reason play on fear”, Article 4.4: “Advertisements should not play on superstition”]. Perhaps this injunction restricts usage of horror movie recipes and codes; perhaps, although not if we look at the number of recent ad campaigns playing on fear or morbidity, which advertisers claim to deactivate with a touch of quirky humour. But it does certainly not restrict strategists, opportunists, or symbol manipulators from shameless exploitation of the infinite field of our everyday fears.

Big fears and everyday fears.

In today’s depressive Europe, fear has never leaked so surreptitiously from the pores of our fellow citizens. The anger of the vengeful gods, the famines and great epidemics, the civil wars or the perspective of an international conflagration have become more remote. But, turn by turn and in the disorder of their media focus, everyone is beginning to fear the rise of terrorism, economic domination by China, the collapse of our public health systems, the irreversible destruction of the ecosystem, the bursting of the real estate and financial bubble, AIDS, SRAS, or street crime. Each big fear overpowers the other and we can predict without a shiver that things will remain this way indefinitely.

Everyday fear is more interesting to observe. It can be latent and unexpressed. It can seem trivial and ungrounded. It takes root in the most diverse terrains. It is more or less conscious, controlled or succumbed to but it explains a lot of behaviour: that of consumers and citizens, as well as that of specialists who profess to influence the formation of our opinions.

“Mummy, I don’t want to die”

In becoming more open to emotions, our society has imperceptibly become more sensitive to everyday fears. These fears are linked to our strange relationships with time, with others and with ourselves.

The most structuring of our western fears is the fear of death. A death that has been chased from our homes (70% of all French people die in the hospital), even if it returns, omnipresent – yet so virtual – via the TV screen.  A death whose occurrence we would like to control by pushing it as far back as possible, at considerable medical cost or invasive "precautionary measures" like seat belts in the front and back seats of cars, 360° airbags, child protection barriers around private swimming pools, or body searches in airports, to name a few. We multiply the systems and practices aimed at reducing the unpredictable side of this encounter with mortal destiny. The paradoxical irony of this trend is that death seems to escape human control to such an extent that abortion, euthanasia and suicide are usually presented as legitimate and ultimate expressions of individual freedom.  Yet we transfer the responsibility of this freedom to the  legislature, in hopes that it will assume it in a deserving and beneficial manner!  

Food has long been considered as one of the main ways in which death enters a body that is visibly made to live. Consumption excesses or deficiencies have now been added to the traditional poisons, bacteria and viruses. In 2002 and 2003, over 427 new advertising campaigns made references to health, with two key communication acts: well-being (the very strong “wellness” trend in the US) and the fear of death (Source : Sofres). Mad cow, salmonella, obesity …reactions of collective hysteria have forced the big brands into openly guaranteeing a minimum of harmlessness in their products and, at best, their preventive or curative properties (like the medi-foods).

Advertising no longer talks about how foods taste but about their (more or less proven) positive effects on the body. A familiar brand on our breakfast tables boasts the fact of its cereals’ being “developed by nutritionists” and “using simple recipes and no preservatives” and it ends with, “Things our kids like should also be good for them”.  Fear means urgency: the latest phobia over high-sugar carbonated drinks has turned the sale of a mere spring water into a health emergency: "it is urgent that we give taste back to the water our kids drink".  

Today’s automobile communication subliminally plays on the fears of childhood: the threatening monster, the shadows of death, the anxiety of separation, etc., to radically outdate the old models that had been implicitly presented as unsafe. “You see things differently when you are well protected” reminds the manufacturer of a small city car – as reassuring as a big teddy bear and as endearing as a security blanket. While another brand boots dangerous cars into the toy section in order to enhance the safety features of its latest model.

The latent fear of death and of passing time is also what feeds today’s pervasive “youth-ism”. Our society basks in the mirage of adolescence: belief in eternal youth (vitamin supplements, Botox and cosmetics), fear of commitment ("supportive yes …but not loyal"), tribal conformism (“roller blades and scooters for everyone”), regressive rituals (“70’s style, Hello Kitty and marshmallows”) and exacerbated narcissism (“explosion of sales in mobile phones with built-in cameras”).  

Along the same lines, is the fear of diminished physical and intellectual abilities. The days and the nights go by inexorably but we still hope to deny their effects behind over-investment in body care and appearance. In fact, cosmetic brands no longer hesitate to play on  the threat – which is presented as inevitable – of undergoing corrective surgery. Recent ads for anti-wrinkle products tell us, “surgery can wait !" , "surgery, not yet !". A scene from a magazine ad for anti-wrinkle cream features a woman’s face covered with post-op bandages.

The times call for performance assessment, for reviewing one’s life (“you must monitor your employability”). Everything must be successful, the result of real control of one’s physiological and psychological equity: there is no room for failure, for slumps, for fragility or the unexpected. Corporate news, the business media or women’s press unmercifully exploit the vein: “For a successful dinner with friends, for a successful a PowerPoint presentation, balcony plant arrangement, salary negotiation, for a successful couple or even …for a successful day at the beach ?). Physical, psychological, professional, or social death can wait …the longer, the better.

You can’t scare me!

As a corollary to the anxiety of death, we are witnessing an explosion in the security market. In a world that is increasingly dependent on data circulating at high speed through the extreme capillarity of our business and interpersonal exchanges, the fear of the “big bug”, of the destructive virus, the hacked byte or pixel is legitimately growing. In France, there are already more security guards (170,000) than there are police officers (140,000). Every year, 600,000 new surveillance cameras are installed, some of them even capable of detecting people in a crowd “displaying unusual behaviour”. In the name of security, our degree of resistance to anything inhibiting our freedom and our trust is quietly eroding. Freedom and trust: two ingredients considered as essential to the economic and social development of our societies.  

Out of ignorance or indifference, we often live over-insured and over-assisted lives. There are fewer and fewer product or service offers with high added value that do not include a warranty extension, openly treating our fears of unemployment, death, invalidity, accident …even disappointment, (“Satisfied or your money back”). In fact, the logic of risk management that is so dear to us today, tends to invade every corner of our everyday lives.

Knock-knock, anybody home?

Others are also a source of fear, as much from their difference, their mystery as from the potential risk of missing out on a relationship with them. “Either you’re in or you’re out": clannishness, tribalism, communities all impose their codes and rhythms. The image obliging you to resemble this or that becomes tyrannical. Bemoan the excluded one who forgets, neglects or refuses to adopt the customs, behaviour and values of the community in which he evolves.  Behind the apparent casualness of its attire, our society hides an active conformism that is putty in the hands of today’s trendsetters.

In our civilisation of the masses, it is in fact solitude that we fear, even if we deny it loudly. Under the triple effect of prolonged adolescence, the breakdown of the family unit and the extension of our life span, increasing numbers of people are suffering from solitude, more and more often. It terrifies us to imagine not having anyone with whom we can regularly and easily dialogue, whose presence we can feel, of no longer feeling the pulse of life fleeting by. Everyone has seen the reticence at equipping teens with expensive mobiles give way before a mother’s obsession at “at least staying in contact" with their volatile and unpredictable offspring. The success of instant messaging on the Internet or text messaging on mobiles owes less to the quality of what pre-teens have to say as to their unconscious concern with constantly checking to make sure they belong to their group of affinity (“Hi, where R U? Wassup?  later J “). Nor is it likely by accident that every year, 2 million French people consult a fortune teller or soothsayer or that 12.5% of them admit doing it regularly    (“living alone is okay for a while  but when am I going to meet my soul mate?”).

To belong or not to belong ?

The fear of finding ourselves alone reminds us of our own real or perceived limits. It exacerbates the fear of not knowing, not having, not being able, or of being ‘had’. Our media consumption borders on bulimia (nearly 3.5 daily hours of TV per capita in France). With the earphones of a mobile or music device constantly glued to our heads, silence and incommunicability oppress us (we resemble the child who whistles to reassure himself as he crosses the family back yard at night). The rate of individual savings in French households is one of the highest in the world (the incorrectly named “life insurance” is one of the locomotives). Viagra has already been the focus of heavy counterfeit traffic over the Internet. The regulatory and legal machine is overheating to generate, interpret and apply a continuous flow of legal clauses officially aimed at preserving the interests of all.

“Why have to choose between a summer dress and his toys?” coyly asks the campaign of one of the country’s biggest supermarket chains on thousands of billboards. “It’s never too late to enjoy life” proclaims a consumer credit company. “And what if your project was a better life?” wonders an up-market hotel chain. Faced with the hours inexorably drifting by, we more or less adroitly try to live the moment intensely, or to compress time. High-speed trains, high-speed data connections, express service, revolving credit, accelerated production modes or cycles, a profusion of innovations …quickly, you need to grab it all before someone else can take it, before “you won’t be able to anymore”, before you are overwhelmed … or before it’s too late. 

One of the world IT leaders plays on the fear of change by depicting a man lost in a stressful, hazy world and positions itself as the saviour by proposing “solutions for the adaptive enterprise”. Often, the companies marketing information are the ones that play on fear most openly. “What manager has not imagined, one day, having to pay the consequences of incomplete or erroneous information on a client that proved insolvable, on a supplier under liquidation?” threatens a financial tracking service. “An ocean of data to explore …no longer causes sea-sickness” announces a world software leader. Knowing, knowing before the others, knowing entirely, knowing really: these appear to be the manager’s anxiety-generating issues, to which scores of well-intentioned brands and businesses propose the answer.

Unexpressed, latent or denied fear is at the core of our business and social relations. It is insidiously present in corporate and administrative decision-making processes. It gives ideas to marketing and sales specialists who are especially eager to use it since they are having trouble profitably exploiting an eroding dynamics of need and desire or else because they themselves are the focus of everyday fear in their daily lives. Fear of not being capable of assuming one’s responsibilities, the fear of not justifying one’s salary, the fear of having to personally assume a collective mishap, the fear of judgement by one’s loved ones or peers – everyday fears are indeed there, hidden behind a façade of activism and assurance.

Afraid of being afraid?

From a positive standpoint, one could say that fear is an interesting source of energy and mobilisation. It makes a significant contribution to the creation of economic value. It promotes the pooling of resources by identifying a common risk or enemy. Is it not on high-risk earthquake zones like Japan and California that two of the world’s most innovative centres are located? Could the imminence of the “big one” or a cultural conviction in “the impermanence of things” have truly stimulating effects on humanity? In that case, the debate would be pointless: fear could almost be declared “in public interest”. 

The problem is that we are not all equal before fears and that some people use it as an easy way to exploit the fragility of their own kind. Maintaining a serene, balanced attitude towards death, towards passing time, towards the unknown or the judgement of others is not an easy task for everyone.  Yet we feel that many of our wounds, frustrations and feelings will fade under the more fruitful and confident expression of our deepest desires: to like ourselves, to love, to be loved, to build, to grow, to doing something with our lives. It is in fact the confusion of these structuring desires that nourishes increasing recourse to an unbridled exacerbation of our senses and emotions. More noise, more light, more optical effects, more pace changes, more multi-sensorial experiences, more fantasy-stimulation to try to maintain a desire to consume, a jubilation in being alive that is eroding day after day. 

“Possessing”, “being possessed” or “being had” – the borderline is fine and some do not hesitate crossing it by more or less consciously manipulating the mechanisms of our most respectable fears. In doing so, they surreptitiously undermine the foundations of two of the most important factors of sustainable growth: trust and hope.


© Aubry Pierens* / We



Would you like to give your marketing strategy another inspiration?

© Aubry Pierens, founding partner of We consultancy, is the co-author of "Les Clés pour Innover" (Editions Liaisons) and a professor at the M.I.P [Management Institute of Paris]