🧠 Your pillow has more germs than a toilet

Hey there,

Welcome back to the 56th edition of Brandish,

Your guide to crafting an iconic brand.

No matter how often you wash your sheets, your bed is an insect breeding ground and that’s a fact. 

Teeming with thousands of hideous, crab-like dust mites that rapidly multiply, causing you and your family to suffer year-long allergy attacks. 

While you sleep, they wake up and start to crawl, feast on your skin flakes, and drink the moisture on your flesh.

But it gets worse.

Did you know that 10% of the weight of a two-year-old pillow is dead mites and their 💩?

This means that you and your family are sleeping in the equivalent of an insect’s toilet that’s covered in a mixture of both their living and dead bodies, and oceans of their number two…

I sincerely apologize for grossing you out.

I had to get your attention somehow…

But that isn’t the only thing I’ve done. 

Other than making you want to set every pillow in your house on fire.

You probably also want a new pillow, and maybe even an entirely new bed set to go with it…

Which means I just sold you on fear.

Which also happens to be the topic of today's newsletter.

So kick back,

Grab your Brez,

And let’s dive into it.

Get Inside Their Heads

The truth is…

Fear is a great way to sell.

It motivates.

It urges.

It moves people to action.

It drives them to spend money.

Social psychologists and consumer researchers have been studying its effects for more than 50 years.

Whether it’s selling a loaf of bread, which doesn’t seem scary at all… 

(Until you show people studies reporting that refined white flour may cause cancer)

Or painting a vivid picture of the silent threat of lethal, odorless carbon monoxide seeping through air conditioning vents and silently wiping out an innocent family (while they’re soundly asleep in a hotel on a business trip).

Set up the right way, fear can move people to spend.

But why does it work so well?

One word…

Stress

Fear causes stress.

And stress causes the desire to take action.

Missing out on a huge sale causes the stress of loss.

Choosing the right tires can cause the stress of concern for personal safety.

Not covering your brand new pair of $600 Apple headphones with AppleCare causes the stress of outrageously expensive repair costs and visions of accidental damage.

Fear suggests loss. 

Fear paints a picture of necessary response.

It tells your prospect that they will somehow be damaged.

This is a direct threat to the innate human desire for safety.

Therefore the threat of being damaged is extremely powerful.

Can you use it for your products?

Yes…

But only if your product offers a REAL solution for a fearful situation.

That leaves us with the only other question left to answer…

Is it ethical?

Facing The Ethics Problem

If you think that selling with fear is shady,

There’s not much I can tell you other than that certain products straight-up eliminate fears. 

And there’s nothing wrong with promoting and profiting from it.

No matter how you spin it…

The mere mention of brake pad replacement services, smoke detectors, and home security systems already makes me think about worst-case scenarios.

And if those saving-grace products present themselves via an advertiser who happens to be selling a product that can save my life, prevent pain, or get me out of an unpleasant situation.

I see no problem with that.

I don’t see anything wrong with being informed of the danger I’m potentially facing and becoming aware of the solution.

Do you?

What it comes down to is, if it’s possible to use fear to effectively sell a product, it means the product has the potential ability to erase people’s fears.

And if it doesn’t, no matter how much you “scare someone into buying”, it will end in an epic failure.

The Four Steps to → Fear

By now, you’ve determined that your product or service can genuinely eliminate a real fear-inducing problem and is a great fit for using the fear appeal.

In order to maximize your effectiveness, there’s a specific, four-step process you need to follow.

In their study, Age of Propaganda (2001), Pratkanis and Aronson make the argument that “the fear appeal is most effective when…

1. It scares the hell out of people.

2. It offers a specific recommendation for overcoming the fear-inducing threat

3. The recommended action is perceived as effective for reducing the threat.

4. The message recipient believes that he or she can perform the recommended action.”

The success or failure of this strategy relies on the existence of all four components.

Remove a single one of them and it’s like trying to start a car that has no engine.

It won’t work.

On top of that, if you create too much fear, you could actually scare someone to inaction, like a deer, staring frozen into the headlights of an oncoming vehicle.

Fear can paralyze.

And it will only motivate your prospect to act if they believe that they have the power to change the situation.

That means that if you want to really maximize your “fear selling” potential, your content must contain specific, believable recommendations for eliminating the threat that are both credible and achievable.

Let’s say you're selling in-home security cameras, and have already painted the picture of theft and crime into your prospect’s mind.

That’s only half the battle.

The fact is, you need to do more than simply present the numbers.

You must also convince your prospect that the system actually works. 

This can be through video testimonials or a free trial in this case.

If not, all you’ve managed to do is scare your prospect to death.

Wrapping Up

The lesson for today was fear.

But that doesn't mean that you have to be selling home security systems, self-defense products, or fire alarms.

There are levels to this and just the slightest drop of fear can do the trick.

That’s all I have for now, 

I hope you learned something new!

As always, thanks for reading!

And until next time, 

Ankit