Tim's Blog

Fear is a very good advocate, either in the home, school, or workplace. This idea of fear being an encouraging factor has been in advertisements for as long as I can remember, from television, to radio, and billboards. The first place you think about fear advertising through fear is in cigarette advertisements, the fear of copious amounts of health issues scared off huge amounts of potential users. But is fear an ethical form of persuasion in advertisement? For example in the picture above by WWF, it shows a man that has become deformed because of global warming. It is trying to propose the idea that climate change will inevitably change us humans into fish people, which is of course unbelievable and misleading, to say the least. To the more naïve or childish individual, this could scare them in to being more climate conscious. But should fear advertising be allowed? Fear motivation is not very successful in the workforce or in the home, why then is it allowed to be an advertising technique? I believe that fear advertisement should not be allowed. For example in political campaigns constituents sometimes are struck into fear to vote one way or the other, instead people should vote on the leader says not what other people say of him/her. It would be very difficult to make a law to prohibit fear advertisements, but some sort of guideline should be implemented. Fear is a very swaying factor, but peoples decisions should not be based on idea of fear but ones own personal opinion.