Fear Appeals In Advertising

Media, something so pervasive in our daily modern life is so essential that as an individual or society as a whole that it is inevitable to be effected one way or another. Whether it is natural disasters, health epidemic, new product launch or viral videos on the internet, mass media has allowed information to be conveyed to countries all around the world within a blink of an eye. Government bodies utilise mass media to communicate to citizens all over the country promoting health awareness campaigns to educate individuals of the consequences that some problematic behaviours incur. However, it is questionable as to whether these mass mediums have any impact on how individuals see themselves and are fear appeals effective enough to bring about
Hastings, Stead & Webb believe fear appeals need to be communicated to the public in a strategic and ethical way. Strategic concerns such as long-term effects of fear appeals and outcomes that impact on relationships are discussed in detail within the study. Hastings et al (2004), state there are four long term effects as to how fear campaigns show some sort of influence on behaviour. First, it is unlikely that response to a fear appeal remains static, according to Weinreich (1999) shock ads are initially extremely effective but after prolonged exposure they simply stop working. Repeated messages may lead the audience to find campaigns to be ineffective, predictable and boring (Cohn, 1998; Hastings & MacFayden, 2002). Second, habituation, annoyance and increased tendency for individuals to not gather attention may be caused due to repetition of fear appeals. Pre-existing fear campaigns could potentially allow individuals to develop defensive avoidance strategies to lessen the power of advertising tactics extended by social marketers to persuade them. Third, consumers may begin to recognise fear appeals as the only way to address issues to the public. For example, the use of colourful visuals to evoke the individual’s response when advertising for antismoking, speeding or skin cancer may be what consumers are expecting the campaigns to be and could possibly reject any other campaigns that seek a different approach to the issue (Eadie & Stead, 1998). Fourth, extended lengths of time that advertisements use fear messages, individuals may link the source with negative opinions such as threatening. If consumers have negative opinions about the source, relationships between the two parties will most likely be