Recently, Matt Franowicz, EVP and head of planning at Havas Health Plus, sent this query to Havas Medical Anthropology: “Why shouldn’t we use fear as a basis for advertising?”

It’s a great question, and one that comes up often enough that our friends at Havas Medical Anthropology (HMA) developed an insightful reply in the form of a deck called “Why not fear: Why scaring people is an ineffective long-term behavior change strategy.”

From that, we’ve cherrypicked some of the best insights from Havas Health & You social scientists Brad Davidson PhD and Sonika Garcia to share with you. Part of our network, HMA is focused on ensuring that the social and behavioral sciences are well represented in our work.

When it comes to healthcare marketing, we often see campaigns that focus on scaring patients and providers to encourage behavior change. However, what we’ve come to find with this method is that there’s no sense of lasting change. Sometimes, things even backfire.

As you read, consider these four reasons to leave behind fear-based marketing for an approach that brings lasting change to the lives of patients.

1. Fear isn’t sustainable

Fear is a primary emotion, bringing along with it secondary emotions that include anxiety, apprehension, nervousness, dread, fright and panic. These secondary emotions are what bring on measurable stress to the body. However, the physical stress felt by the body is not sustainable, establishing fear as a transient motivator; it works, but only for a short while.

The best time to scare people into behavior change is when their choices feel close to them — scaring someone the day before an election is an example. As is scaring someone into taking medications when they’re in the hospital recovering from a heart attack. However, these motivations fade quickly. Fear of crime subsides post-elections, and fear of repeat heart attacks doesn’t usually create lasting behavior change.

Overall, we cannot rely on fear to motivate long-term behavior.

2. Fear is an external motivator

The goal of behavior change is to create a situation in which the subject wants to change, and maintain change, of some habit or behavior — voting, getting vaccinated, using condoms, or stopping at red lights, for example.

When the motivation is from an external source, compliance to a behavior change is limited to the duration of time that a person is under an obligation to “behave.” Suggesting that so long as you’re under those expectations you will continue to act as told, but as soon as that external source is taken away those new learned behaviors will disappear.

However, when the behavior change is stemming from an internal source, such as personal motivation, then behavioral change is much more likely to last.

Bottom line: Rather than scaring patients into compliance, focus on improving patient outlook.

3. Fear is difficult to predict

It comes as no surprise that it’s very easy to go too far with fear. Even reasonable attempts to create concern can come back to bite you when using fear-based messaging.

Can you think of one or two brand campaigns that have faced scrutiny for their fear-based approach? When using messaging to quite literally scare up awareness, we run the risk of potentially harming specific communities and the challenges they may be facing.

An example is the organization Pancreatic Cancer Action and its attempt to raise awareness of pancreatic cancer. In its campaign, it attempted to create fear in viewers about the dangers of undiagnosed pancreatic cancer by using the phrase “I wish I had breast cancer,” ultimately offending those fighting against breast cancer.

4. Fear is a motivator, with consequences

 Anxiety and depression are now chronic — across age groups, and at all levels of education and socio-economic status. The pandemic exacerbated this trend, but a growing mental health crisis has been well underway even before 2020.

Part of the problem? The nonstop barrage of advertising. Even if labelled as “positive,” most advertising is ultimately designed to create a perceived need and to focus on encouraging behavior change. An inability to immediately fill that need creates a sense of stress and anxiety.

In other words, to paraphrase the Hippocratic Oath, “advertising should first seek to do no harm”. Or, to quote Havas Health and You’s global chief creative officer, Eric Weisberg, “Bring joy.”

When fear does work

When the choice is immediate, fear is an effective motivator of a specific choice. This is why political advertising turns negative right before an election, or when the car dealer is up-selling you on an anti-rust package for your new car, they’ll suggest, “it’ll rust if you don’t spend the extra money.”

The key here is that for fear-based messaging to work, the scare and the action must be closely connected in time. Salespeople know that once a potential customer asks for time to think about the anti-rust package, odds of a purchase get immediately smaller.

Fear must be felt almost immediately before the choice is being made — a fear-based advertisement the night before, for example, won’t work nearly as well as a fear-based message received moments before the decision.

When in doubt, pick joy

Using fear-based messaging in order to motivate people to change their behavior is a risky endeavor as its consequences are high and the success is low.

As health marketing continues to evolve, it’s best to move away from fear-based messages and contribute instead to an atmosphere that fosters personal growth and joy among patients.