The Lovecraft angle: Fear in Marketing

I’ve been waiting for the moment in the recession when marketing articles start opening with HP Lovecraft quotes:

“That is not dead which can eternal lie / And with strange aeons even death may die.”

Ooops, wrong quote.   But in Anna Papadopoulos’ excellent article this week (Neuromarketing:  Why Fear Sells, Sex Doesn’t ), she begins with one of Lovecraft’s OTHER well-known maxiums:  The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear.

It’s an interesting article, especially for those of us who suspect that the practice of marketing is often armchair psychology (perhaps more Jung than Freud) mixed with applied economics.    In personal practice, I’ve observed that leading with the fear (YOU WILL DIE) vs the benefit/aspiration (YOU WILL GET THINGS/BE THINGS YOU WANT) (note: if this wasn’t the Geary blog my language might have been stronger there - we are dealing with primal drivers here, people) can indeed be very powerful - but can also trigger avoidance in your target.  And maybe that’s what horror writers know – fear in general, great.  Anything that makes you scared sticks with you, works on you.  All part of the death drive. Fear applied in a specific way to you – what?  Sorry, I can’t hear you over all the singing I’m doing to not pay attention to you.  Have I been to Perez Hilton yet today?   After all, how the heck did we GET into the economic messes we’re currently witnessing?  Not paying attention to the fear that is our credit card bills is definitely a factor.

Fear is the ultimate activator, no question.  After all, in the survival food chain, survival trumps reproduction (slightly).  But the trick is knowing how and when to inject the activation message in a susceptible moment.  For the ultimate fear card, I’ve sat in research with patients who were candidates for very serious medical therapies - and watched some move quickly into denial and rejection states when advertising suggested that they needed to take (x) action in order to live.  Highly motivating, yes.  But in the presence of true horror – fear made personal - the mind shuts down. Lovecraft understood that well.  After all, isn’t there always the point in his stories where everybody goes crazy with the overwhelming hopelessness of it all?   That’s a total lack of consumer motivation for you.

So how do us marketers use fear effectively (driver) rather than trigger avoidance?

Let’s consider projectability.  Vague horrors (”Is your food safe?  STORY AT 11″) can be considerably more palatable and intriguing than specific terrors (”You will die if you are not driving a Volvo”).  And the solution for the fear must be baked into the fear-inducing message - after all, we’re looking for solutions as consumers, not more things to worry about (with a strong product association).  I’ll argue that Global Warming didn’t ‘catch on’ as a general cause (too big! too scary!  must avoid!) until “An Inconvenient Truth” helped to frame the fear by having America’s favorite high school vice-principal stand-in (you know I’m talking to you, Al) tell us we COULD and WILL solve it.  Scared the hell out of us, sure, but the message of hope gave us the strength to carry on and drive home from the theatre.  And maybe turn off the lights we weren’t using when we got home. Now that’s activation.

So if you’re going to introduce a fear, think about the novel solution you’re proposing for the consumer.  And why they get to be closer to the aspirational self they want by being part of it.  (ah, there’s the sex.  Sort of).    After all, Lovecraft also said:  “I never ask a man what his business is, for it never interests me. What I ask him about are his thoughts and dreams.”

Speaking of which, thoughts?

I totally want to do an article about what marketers can learn from horror writers now.  Thanks Anna. 
Sarah