Fear Appeal In marketing

For the second section of my essay, I will be talking about how Fear Appeal is used in Marketing. As such, I compiled all of my findings together from various sources to help isolate the best way of explaining, and to communicate to the readers as efficiently as possible. 

Fear Appeal In Marketing

1-Fear appeals have been employed in advertising of products and services. It dominated areas such as life insurance, road accident campaigns, promoting political causes, drug-prevention commercials, and in the development of social awareness of serious concerns (Latour & Zahra, 1988), such as the COVID-19 and other public health-related issues. (Addo et al., 2020)

-When Should I Use the Fear Appeal?

2-"particularly if there are consequences for not purchasing a product. For example, if you sell fire extinguishers and your advertising strategy is to show how you may save your family members’ lives if you have an extinguisher during a fire, you are appealing to a fear in consumers that if they don’t buy a fire extinguisher, they are risking their family members’ lives.” (Newbold, 2017)

How to apply fear appeal in advertising

3-"use images and phrasing designed specifically to evoke fear or concern. You might think to the famous no-smoking ads where people had developed serious deforming illnesses from smoking. The images of people with holes in their throats, missing teach, ruined vocal cords, and lung cancer were designed to make people fear smoking.” (Newbold, 2017)

4-"Products that are perceived to overcome a specific risk or dangers, fomenting fear, and more successful in reducing perceptions of danger, attract higher purchases" (Newbold, 2017)

5-"Appeal to fear is a commonly used marketing method that attempts to change behaviour by creating anxiety in those receiving a fearful message. It is regularly used in public health initiatives such as anti-smoking, anti-drunk driving campaigns as well as in hypertension awareness campaigns. “  (Simpson, 2017)

6-"Using appeal to fear as a tool of persuasion can be valid or fallacious depending on the truth of the premises within the argument." (Simpson, 2017)

Transition this into the medial Section

7-"Marketers use a variety of methods in an effort to persuade target audiences to modify behaviours in the interests of bettering their health. One of the ploys used by the developers of public health campaigns is to provoke an emotional response. Emotional appeals may include fear of ill health, death, disfigurement, as well as shame, scorn, humiliation or even disgust [1]. According to Witte [2] p.329 “Fear appeals are persuasive messages designed to scare people by describing the terrible things that will happen to them if they do not do what the message recommends.” Appeal to fear is often presented as a warning:”  (Simpson, 2017)

8-"Use of the appeal to fear, in the form of threatening health messages, is commonly used as a strategy for changing behaviours within a population in relation to public health initiatives. The tactic involves using images or messages to elicit negative emotions such as anxiety in the expectation that the audience will be motivated to adopt the healthier behaviours [28].” (Simpson, 2017)

Sources

Addo, P. C., Jiaming, F., Kulbo, N. B., & Liangqiang, L. (2020). COVID-19: fear appeal favoring purchase behavior towards personal protective equipment. The Service Industries Journal, 40(7–8), 471–490. https://doi.org/10.1080/02642069.2020.1751823

Newbold, C. (2017, September 14). THE FEAR APPEAL (ADVERTISING). The Visual Communication Guy. Retrieved July 11, 2022, from https://thevisualcommunicationguy.com/2017/09/14/the-fear-appeal-advertising/

Simpson, J. K. (2017). Appeal to fear in health care: appropriate or inappropriate? Chiropractic & Manual Therapies, 25(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12998-017-0157-8