Advertising Fear

Just after 9/11, I suggested a Manhattan client remove the brownstone address from her web site. Her reply, “I don’t think so! I won’t give into fear.” Well, did I get the message or what?

Once people begin omitting or removing portions of profiles from their sites, perhaps with subsequent abandonment of still other information and photos, then we notice a level of fear will have set in.

Projecting fear into one’s business can be tricky especially when consulted don’t do this or that, because ‘it’ could ultimately hurt or bring unpleasant experiences. Well, of course ‘it’ will hurt anyway when constantly wondering where and how protection is missing.

Misguided marketers / consultants advise their clients to ‘go for the pain.’ Behemoth agencies continually produce ads with fear subliminally projected. The subliminal tool deliberately desensitizes unwitting readers and viewers, and eventually causes affected shoppers, some our clients and their clients, feel disconnected from community. Advertising gurus want the public to be loyal, spending beyond reason to get (re)connected with community.

If we are awake to corporate laden, insidious bravado, we have opportunity to notice its fluff, and not feel repressed by it. We are awakening to a spectrum of fears rising out of raucous advertising as well as fears seeded in our professional consultations.

It is not so much about privacy and security that bring on these conversations, but the want to love genuinely; to nurture care for another’s professional and personal well being. Through demonstrations of empathy, in conversations, writing, marketing, and in advertising, we are able to stay awake to the worlds we are creating for ourselves, and will likely help make more of the same for those around us.

Our constant curiosity is key
to watching what’s being created.
~ David Moorhead