We all know it from the TV commercial. The car is rushing down the road, it’s dark, it’s raining. You can hardly see the road. The driver is looking intently at the road, then something flashes, the car goes off the road, but at the last moment it manages to return to safety.

This could be a scene in an advertisement for a tire company that aims to promote safe and durable tires that are able to prevent fatal accidents.

There are many ads that use fear tactics because fear is one of the basic human emotions and it is one of the best ways to convince customers to take action (for example, visit a website, dial a phone number, visit a store). Fear also stimulates high levels of brand attachment, and according to a recent study, people remember ads that evoke fear better than ads that evoke joy and happiness.

The old saying goes that sex sells, which may be true, but fear is better at it. In his book Buyology Truth Lies About Why We Buy, Mike Lindstrom discusses how fear taps into our primal concerns for survival, making us more likely to act, while sex-based ads often only distract us from the focus of the ad, reducing our desire to act and our attachment to the brand.

Can the phenomenon of the emotion of fear be used in outdoor advertising?

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