‘Tis The Season To Be Fearful

The Economy of the  American Limbic System: Viral Fear

Everyone knows that sex sells.  The Romans knew it, the Greeks knew it, snake-oil salesmen on the American frontier knew it and we thought we knew it. It’s been the American way since America’s had a way. Sex was the king of Madison Avenue, the number one guarantee at the cash box, the Great Motivator.

Until now.

Because the American best-seller is no longer sex. It’s fear.

It's the holiday season and what better time to be bombarded with rapid fire ads designed to make us worry and buy. And what do these purveyors want us to worry about? Everything – what we eat, when we eat, what we wear, when we wear it, who we touch and what we can catch.

And with a sagging economy and sales way down, the sooner we worry the better.

The "self-improvement" ads that ordinarily start making us hate our bodies after January 1^st now start around Thanksgiving. What better spirit to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s than the spirit of Panic Present?

The message is the same everywhere. Be afraid. Be very afraid. By the end of the day we've been slipped about a hundred different fear mickeys and we are almost entirely unconscious about it.

The Christmas season has a special sort of viral fear that gets added to the mix of the usual doomsday, global warming, code red, “It Could Happen Tomorrow” programming. At this special time of redemption and renewal we get to fear the flu, unsightly blemishes and weight gain, loneliness, collagen loss, not being invited to the big parties, alcoholism and early onset Alzheimer’s, not to mention fallen meringues, sagging breasts and cervical cancer if we don’t get the vaccine now. Anxious about how anxious you are? Great. They’re selling a pill for that, too.

Viral fear pops up on your home page, too. Look at the ads on the internet. Really look. Instead of glossing over them or clicking at the latest new-and-shiny, look at what they’re really selling.

The Study of Fear and the "C" Word

In her study on fear in advertising, Lynn Kennedy profiled a billboard of Sammy Davis Jr. that looked like a tombstone. Next to a withered, sunken likeness of him was his date of birth and date of death. The headline read: The tobacco industry made him history.

Nothing strikes fear in the hearts of Americans as much as cancer. Many can’t even say the word itself and instead call it “the big C.” Pharmaceutical companies, “natural” food suppliers, vitamin manufacturers and home improvement specialists (air purification systems, for instance) work that fear carefully so that we buy what they sell.

The virus can mutate: It's not just a fear that we'll get "the Big C" or that we won't be attractive. It's the fear the "something might happen."

The entire insurance industry is based on profiting from the terror of the unknown. Prudential has based its whole campaign on that simple idea. They batter us with a slide show of the gloomiest, most gut-wrenching imagery then whisper to us so paternalistically: "Don't wait till it's too late."

And it works. People buy things they don’t really need and walk around worried about all the things they can’t do anything about.

After 60 years of Viral Fear media, what are Americans afraid of today?

They’re afraid of terrorists, of course. They’re afraid of attack just like we were in 1954.  We’re also afraid of germs, of erectile dysfunction, of not being successful, of robbers, of child abduction, of Alzheimer’s, of not having enough, of not being enough, of too much intimacy, of too little, of AIDS, of failure, of sunspots and solar radiation, of global warming, of dishwasher spots on our glasses and e-coli on our spinach. And we’re always worried about sex. (It's not number one anymore, but it still works.)

The greatest danger as I see it is that even when we use sex and scandal to sell, we’re still using fear to close the deals. The American limbic system has been mutated so that now fear, violence and sex have been fused. (Anyone who has done any research in forensics knows the fusion of aggression and sexuality is actually what happens in serial sexual sadist killers.)

Viral fear has capitalized on our culture’s weakest point – our urgent need for the quick fix. Viral fear encourages irrational thinking, greed, conformity, while it undermines self-worth, independence, connectedness with others and, worst of all, faith in God and a higher meaning in life.

So what are we to do?

The Power of Awareness

This is what Edward A. Merlis said way back in 1975 when he worked with the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee and devoted much of his time to advertising legislation. “He [the American] is bombarded at every flip of the magazine page, at every turn of the TV dial. Can he be proud that we now export our form of mental gang rape to the people of other countries? Advertising is a science, designed to attack people's weak spots in order to sell a product. Wolfbane may have been the antidote for vampires and wolfmen, but it appears that only knowledge and awareness are the antidotes for our 20th-century monster, advertising.”

He was right, of course. Knowledge is power and awareness can be life-changing not only in terms of what you’re willing to buy, but what you’re willing to swallow. Many years ago in another life I worked in advertising. I started as an assistant, worked my way up to copywriter. It was fun so long as I was playing the game and didn’t confront the ethical anomalies. One day the account executive sat down the creative team to discuss a new account. We would be developing an advertising and promotional campaign for a diet aid. It was designed to expand in the stomach and give the illusion of fullness as well as provide some stimulant action. (Meaning they would have gas, abdominal distension and the trots as well as increased heart rate, racing thoughts and agitation. But at least they wouldn’t eat.) The target audience for our advertising was young women from 14 to 35. As the account executive expanded the market profile, it became clear to me that they were targeting anorectic girls and women with body dysmorphic disorders, meaning women with delusional images of themselves. I mentioned this to my creative director who told me to go to my office and stay away from the account team. So I wrote an ad that would eventually become one of my last. On the top of the page was a close-up of the diet pill and the headline was FAT CHANCE.

Needless to say, they didn’t like the ad. But I did. And I’ve never regretted it. Not once. Knowledge may not be absolute power but it sure as hell packs a punch.