Persuasive Advertising - J. Scott Armstrong [69]
3.5.1. Consider using a threat related to likely or severe consequences that can be avoided
Fear sets man deliberating—but no one deliberates about things that are hopeless.
Aristotle
In the United Kingdom, it was common for university students to violate the TV licensing law by getting the signal without paying for the required license. To address this, in 2005, TV Licensing, the agency responsible for the collection of the television fees in the United Kingdom, devised a campaign with a threat followed by a way to avoid the consequences. Its “Work it out for yourself” campaign refuted some myths among students, such as, “You don’t need a licence because your parent’s licence covers you,” “There are no real consequences,” “They don’t let law officers on campus,” and “The TV detector vans don’t work.” The campaign achieved 94 percent awareness among the target audience in the first month following its launch; students understood the message clearly. Revenue generated from the increased sales of TV licenses was 12 times the campaign cost. This was an IPA award winner (Green 2007).
As long as they are able to take sensible actions against a threat, the more fear people have, the more likely they are to take action.
Let customers know about threats in terms that make the threat seem likely to occur to them. People have difficulty understanding losses associated with low-probability events; to address this, find a time period that makes the loss easier to understand. For example, in a safety campaign for automobile seat belts, the message might be, “Seatbelts can reduce people’s chances of dying in an automobile crash by 45 percent over their lifetime.”
Once an ad has established a threat as serious and probable, it should quickly show how a product or action could solve the problem. Some ads promote fear without a way to resolve it. For example, in recent years the U.S. government has periodically issued warnings about the threats of terrorist attacks, but without specifying actions that people can take to reduce the danger to them.
Stories can provide an effective way to transmit fear. An anti-smoking TV commercial in New Zealand showed a man in despair as he was dying of lung cancer. All he had to look forward to was a visit from his daughter. The ad closed by saying that he died before she arrived.
In the early 2000s, there were approximately 10,000 illegal minicabs in London. Unfortunately, some of the drivers were sexual predators. While their percentage was tiny, their existence resulted in serious harm to victims and widespread fear. To solve the problem, the Mayor of London’s Office arranged for more bus routes at night, regulated minicab operators, and set up a special police unit to arrest illegal drivers and register their DNA. These steps had no appreciable effect on the number of rapes. The Mayor’s Office then used an advertising campaign based on fear: “Know what you are getting into.” The fear was in the statement, “Last year over 200 women were sexually assaulted in illegal minicabs.” The ads then described how to reduce risk: “Check that the minicab driver knows your name and destination before you get in. Always sit in the back and carry a mobile phone.” Rapes dropped by 22 percent in the first 12 months of the campaign. This campaign won an IPA award for effectiveness (Hoad 2005).
Evidence on the effect of threats
A meta-analysis examined 98 experimental and non-experimental studies on the effects of fear on persuasion. Their findings suggest that fear principles are most persuasive for experience goods—those in which people learn from their use of the product. They were also more persuasive for people who have high self-esteem, perhaps because these people believe that they can handle the situations (Witte and Allen 2000).
Fear is high when severe