Fear-based marketing warns consumers about risks and negative consequences, while hope-based marketing inspires them with possibilities and positive outcomes. Both strategies can be effective, but the key is knowing when, where, and how to use them.
Full Podcast Transcript:
Greg Marshall:
Greetings everyone, and we appreciate your joining us today for our podcast. I'm Greg Marshall.
Mark Johnston:
And I'm Mark Johnston.
Greg Marshall:
And we are the co-authors of Marketing Management. Today we have a wonderful topic to share with you. We both enjoy this topic very much, and this topic is fear-based marketing versus hope-based marketing. Which one works best? Well, as you might imagine, marketing campaigns often tap into human emotions to influence decision-making. Two of the most powerful emotions that marketers can leverage though are fear and hope. Fear-based marketing warns consumers about risks and about negative consequences. While on the other hand, hope-based marketing inspires them with possibilities and positive outcomes. Both strategies can be effective, yes, but the key is knowing when, where, and how to use each. So Mark, what is fear-based marketing?
Mark Johnston:
Well, that's a great question, and I almost feel like we should have some Halloween music here with the fear-based marketing. But fear, as we know, is a primal emotion that triggers an immediate response. People naturally want to avoid harm, loss, failure, or pain. And fear-based marketing capitalizes on this by highlighting the potential dangers, threats or negative consequences to persuade consumers to act. Let me give you a couple of examples of this. One are the long-running anti-smoking campaigns, the CDC Tips from Former Smokers. You may remember that campaign used very graphic images and personal stories of individuals suffering from smoking-related diseases. By showing the real-life consequences of smoking, the campaign effectively encouraged many people to quit.
Another example of fear-based marketing is the long-running series of LifeLock identity theft ads. And LifeLock is a cybersecurity company that has used fear-based marketing to highlight the risks of identity theft. Their messaging often emphasizes how easily personal information can be stolen, creating a sense of urgency to invest in their protection services. So there's a couple of examples and a little bit of what fear-based marketing is, but Greg, when do you think fear-based marketing works best?
Greg Marshall:
Ah, that's the key to success, isn't it, Mark? When to use it and when to use something else. Let me give you a few thoughts on that. I would say that fear-based marketing, first and foremost, works best when immediate action is necessary. There's some sort of crisis or something is very pressing. Some examples of this could be in the public safety sphere, for example, weather is coming, there's a security issue that needs to be dealt with, health warnings. I mean, anything within that kind of immediacy range where the marketing needs to be extremely focused on getting people to act, fear-based marketing often is the best choice for those types of approaches.
However, overuse of fear can easily backfire, and marketers must be extremely careful about this because just put yourself in the position of receiving an overwhelming amount of fear-based marketing. It causes us as humans and as consumers to either feel overwhelmed or maybe we've heard it so much that we just begin to ignore the message. Think about that, for example, in the context of many medical related ads where they're constantly beating individuals over the head about side effects and things of that nature. And one other thing I'm always concerned about is that too much fear can create a general negative association with the brand itself. That's a very, very scary thing. So Mark, we've talked about fear-based marketing. What is hope-based marketing?
Mark Johnston:
Well, I feel better already talking about hope-based marketing.
Hope-based marketing focuses on possibilities, transformation, and positive outcomes. Instead of pushing consumers to act out of fear, it encourages them to envision a better future and take action to achieve it. So let's consider a couple of examples. Probably the best example or certainly one of the best examples is Nike's, just do it. Just get out there, give it a shot, give it a try, and you'll be amazed at what you can accomplish. So there's no fear, don't think about the negative consequences or whatever. Nike's approach is just get out there and give it a try. Just Do It. An absolutely great example of hope-based marketing. Another example is Coca-Cola's, Open Happiness Campaign. Coca-Cola's marketing often involve positive themes, themes around joy and connection and positivity. And their openness, open happiness campaign follows that same trend, emphasized togetherness, fun and shared experiences, creating a feel-good association with the brand which Coke has done for many, many decades. So when do you think, Greg, that hope-based marketing is most effective?
Greg Marshall:
Well, I do feel much more positive after what I've learned about hope-based marketing versus fear-based marketing. And I will want to say that if we could create a tagline for hope-based marketing, it could be hope springs eternal. And in fact, when you hear these key areas in which hope-based marketing works the best, I think you'll very clearly connect with what I'm saying.
Number one, when the goal is to build long-term brand loyalty. Brand loyalty is a pinnacle for marketers. We want folks who look at the brand and believe in it and all of those positive things that lead us to say, I will always select fill in the blank brand there, Nike, maybe. How about Coca-Cola? That is glue because you now are extremely connected to that brand, and that's brand loyalty. So yes, hope-based equals higher brand loyalty. Another interesting approach to using hope-based is when you're targeting what you and I might think of as our aspirational customers, individuals who don't really know what the heck they're doing with regard to a particular product or service or some other deliverable, they want to improve their lives.
And if the customer is aspiring to being, doing, living something better, I wouldn't want to use fear-based marketing as the primary approach. Hope-based marketing connects in with their aspirations to be better, to live better, to do better, and to improve their lives. And I'll give you one more that I think hope-based probably wins the day on, and that's in certain product or service groups in particular. And I mentioned this slightly earlier, but let me pin this down. When you're promoting lifestyle health brands that with them have some inspirational characteristics to it, remember, we're not just talking products here, we're talking product services, experiences. And if your brands are focusing on kind of transformational types of activities, hope-based is super powerful. Whether that's weight loss, whether that's taking care of some particular financial condition that you want to come out of, anything you can come up with where I inspire to do, be, and live better, that is a use for the hope-based.
So in the end, I think hope-based marketing works well when the consumer sees themselves in the positive vision, and they feel empowered to take action. And in fact, really great hope-based marketing campaigns can spur those behaviors on the part of consumers to be better. The only problem is the downside. If your communication is relatively vague, if it's unrealistic, if it's too much over the top, shall we say, it can feel inauthentic. And being authentic in marketing and branding is just about the one thing out of all many things that we could mess up, we don't want to mess that up. We must be authentic with our customers. So with that thought in mind, I've got a question, Mark, for you, and that is, which approach do you think is most effective?
Mark Johnston:
Well, the classic answer is it depends. So in this case, it actually does depend on the industry, the audience, and what your campaign goals are. And in fact, what we see is that companies will sometimes adopt both approaches where they may start with a fear-based approach and move to more of a hope-based approach. But if we look at some key factors here, and we've talked about some of these things already, but just to reinforce some of this, if we look at some of these factors that can help marketers decide when to use what type. So for example, when is it best to be using a fear-based approach? And as we talked about already, that works well when you need action immediately because fear will drive people to act quickly.
When would hope-based marketing work better? Well, as we just discussed, hope-based marketing is great for building that long-term loyalty. It's very aspirational. So it creates a different sense inside the consumer. And again, we want to be looking at from a marketing perspective, what are the specific objectives we're looking to accomplish here? Another factor that we could look at is the impact, the emotional impact. As we've already talked about, fear-based marketing often creates feelings around anxiety and urgency. While hope-based marketing is inspirational and motivational. So again, what are our objectives? What are we trying to accomplish here?
And then we can also look in general at some industries that tend to use more fear-based versus hope-based. So the industries that tend to use more fear-based marketing are healthcare, which is, we talked about the ads for pharmaceuticals, security, we talked about LifeLock, insurance. Actually a lot of political ads as well tend to focus on the negative. Whereas, we look at some industries like lifestyle, wellness, sports, education, many ads we see at universities talk about changing your life, transforming your life, and that works well inside the hope-based approach. So Greg, do you have any final thoughts on this?
Greg Marshall:
Well, Mark, I think this issue is something that all of us as marketers really need to pay quite a bit of attention to because as Mark was just mentioning some of those pros and cons. Execution is in the end how your marketing campaigns and how your marketing messaging are executed really are what makes the day or loses the day for you. And honestly, both fear-based and hope-based marketing can be highly effective when they're used strategically and they're used under the right circumstances. The key is understanding your audience's motivations and how they respond to emotional triggers. So if your goal is immediate action, then in some instances, depending upon how sensitive the situation is, fear-based tactics might be golden where you're laying out, here's the downside, here's what happens if you do or don't do whatever it is that we're messaging you about and now here's your choice.
That's perfectly reasonable. And in fact, Mark and I are not advocating for one of these being better than the other. It's just that the utilization of them, when each of these has the highest likelihood of success with your customer, that's where the win comes or the loss. And another point I might make is if you want to build long-term brand affinity, then I think pretty much any marketer would say, if you can go to the hope-based messaging as your first choice, because over the longer run when negativity begins to seep in and be connected to a brand, it can be very, very difficult to pull out of that. So I think most of our tendencies as humans are probably to think hope-based first. But as you've seen from this podcast and the conversation, there are times when you would want to use fear-based. Ultimately, the most powerful marketing message is don't just scare or inspire.
That is just a part of our goal of creating and providing a clear, actionable path forward for the customer. We choose the modality as marketers, but the goal is to give the customer something that improves their lives and improves their own situation as consumers. So would you rather motivate with fear or inspire with hope? The answer really depends on your brand, your audience, and the story that you want to tell. A few questions that marketing managers might ask, this is a good one. What visuals, language, and storytelling techniques best convey fear-based versus hope-based messaging? I would want to dig into that through some research. And secondly, can user generated content or testimonials enhance the effectiveness of either approach? In other words, put some real folks on and then let their story support your positioning and your messaging. So with that, I want to thank you for being with us today on this podcast. I'm Greg Marshall.
Mark Johnston:
And I'm Mark Johnston.
Greg Marshall:
And we look forward to connecting with you another time in the future. Thank you.
