Fear of dying, fear of flying, fear of getting old, fear of dementia, fear of getting it all wrong.
The Fear Of Loss is more powerful than the Hope Of Gain. we are more fearful of losing money than gaining it
Play on the fear and show the gain later.
In the food and pharma industry we are obsessed with quality accreditation. We are fearful of ingredients that are not up to quality and quality procedures. So we have to insist on suppliers and products coming up to a recognised accreditation before we can buy. This is all about giving the consumer confidence in our quality.
The supermarkets insist on so many quality procedures including BRC, Allergen Statements which have given rise to the voluminous quality registration documents that are all non standard and take ages to complete. However it did not stop horse meat getting into the food chain. The defence is that food criminals were responsible but if so how come all these quality procedures did not stop it happening? All the right boxes were ticked on the quality documents and so that was all right then?
In sports nutrition we now have the fear that professional athletes will take a banned substance inadvertantly and so it is best to get your products all tested and registered. So those who get it approved can allay the fears of banned substances ruining an athletes career. Informed Sport accreditation is now the key marketing fear. ill they test every batch ?. I assume they could at a price.
I was in Boots at the weekend and I had a look at the range of vitamin supplements for men, women, men 50+. Women 50+, women 70+..there was Boots own Brand, Wellman from Vitabiotics, Centrum . What struck me was that it played on our fears that we can only be fully healthy of we are taking these supplements and that we had better take the correct age one. So if you are 50 tomorrow you have to switch your vitamin or the fear of missing out is there. The message is that you cant just take any vitamin you have to make sure it is for the right sex and age. Oh I forgot there were children’s vitamins too.
I had a look at the ingredients and there were some variations but i would say not enough variation to make them that much different in results. In other words i thought it was a smart marketing ploy that played on our fears that we are missing out and only an age/sex properly engineered product will keep you healthy .
At £10.75 for 60 tablets they were not cheap either.
I am reminded of some old sayings “For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes”
So when you see adverts playing on your fears that you are missing out or you will get some debilitating illness it is maybe just hype .