Paranoia Marketing Works, But What About Ethics?

Noobpreneur blog’s writer Ivan Widjaya has created a new term: paranoid marketing. I agree with him that this works, but to me it’s the same as fear marketing; it only has a new name. He’s right that people will do almost anything to avoid negative situations.

People stay in an unhappy marriage so as not to upset the other spouse or to prevent being out on the street; people don’t go to the dentist, for obvious reasons; many women, in particular, don’t go to the doctor for breast cancer screening and other disease screening procedures. No one likes a negative situation; no one likes to think about bad news. So people will spend money to prevent certain negative situations from happening.

Home Invasion Insurance
Seth Godin blogs about fear marketing and about how it’s not right for people to make a buck by inducing fear in others. Godin talks about getting an offer for insurance against home invasion, carjacking and other man-induced negative situations that people fear. For $110 a year, Godin can get psychiatric care and even “reward money leading to the apprehension of the perpetrator.” The insurance agent likened this insurance to flood insurance. Godin disagrees and thinks that this kind of marketing (fear marketing or scare tactics) is bad for any brand, and I’m willing to go out and say this insurance company’s brand. 

Fear marketing works by playing on people’s emotions, not their logical brains. Part of Marketing 101 is that ads that play on emotions work best. Why do you think there are so many sappy TV commercials? The Kleenex brand’s Let It Out campaign with people crying on a couch in the middle of NYC (I assume), needing a Kleenex tissue created lots of money and talk about Kleenex. Kleenex is there to sop up your tears, no matter what the issue, is the takeaway. People aren’t rational when they’re emotional, which is why impulse buying works so well at the checkout lines at the grocery store. It’s why brands attach a “cool”-ness to themselves – for people to associate certain emotions with that brand.

Ethics, people?
So is it okay to scare the bejeezus out of people just to get their money? I certainly don’t think so. There are already enough scary things in the world to be worried about, and I think companies that are coming up with new scary situations that are unlikely to happen is ridiculous. Some would say that it’s not their fault everyone is so skittish and that they aren’t responsible (terrorism insurance). But just because a company isn’t responsible doesn’t mean that they aren’t responsible for not taking advantage of people. That’s just wrong.