SENTINEL WATCH June 17, 2002 Issue

The marketing of fear

Channing Walker

WHEN a magazine ad promotes a gasmask or handgun, the strands of fear woven through the copy hardly come as a surprise. But what about humdrum products like cell phones and sunglasses, non-fat margarine and nolick mailers? Do ads for products like these ever amount to a marketing of fear?

A recent cell phone ad sketched a foreboding scene: a lone woman in a stalled car on an isolated road at dusk. Then, just as the consumer starts panicking—voila! Cell phone to the rescue (assuming that isolated roadway isn't outside the calling area).

The point here is not to devalue the role of common sense in what to buy and how to travel. In fact, given the recent spate of nonspecific terrorist warnings, common sense is suddenly at a premium. A kind of intuitive judgment comes into play, one that helps us sort through what's needlessly alarmist, and what we really should heed.