I saw a recent article (can’t recall where) talking about the Swine Flu Virus.
While the article as a whole was interesting, there was one apparently flippant quote that caught my attention: ‘nothing sells quite like fear’
This was in relation to the mass panic buying of 99 cent surgical masks in the blind hope that it would ward off infection.
I’m of course being flippant myself when I state 'apparently flippant'.
After all fear is the counter-balance to hope and together they have been employed by marketers for eons.
Just think of the marketing of socially sensitive products such as weight control, baldness, flatulence etc.
Or the murky world of insurance products.
Or a large chunk of cause-related marketing.
In fact come to think of it I struggle to identify many high-involvement products which don’t sit somewhere along this continuum.
As Aristotle said ‘hope is a waking dream’.
And at a base level isn’t that what marketing is all about - fulfilling dreams?
