The Marketing of Fear

The concept of marketing fear, at first glance, may seem, to most onlookers, reprehensible. The idea of selling a concept, product, or idea by instilling any degree of alarm, whether real or imagined, simply for personal gain can carry with it many ethical, if not legal, consequences. However, applying the simple “chicken or egg” principle allows just a singular conclusion: nothing is successfully marketed without first having a market for it.
From something as simple as “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” as a means of increasing sales for fruit vendors, to unnerving commercials detailing home damage and even physical attacks following a potential break in to boost alarm sales; fear has long been a successful marketing ploy. The goal of most marketing is to manipulate instincts as opposed to reasoned decision making, and nothing does this more than fear. The advertising firm’s greatest nightmare is a reasoning, methodical consumer. Salesmen have mastered the “one meeting” close, so much so that most states have enacted a version of the “Right of Recision” law, enabling homeowners that were manipulated by fear to cancel a quickly signed contract. But while money is often at stake in marketing campaigns, the marketing of fear extends even more into the concept market. And nowhere is this more evident than the current war in Iraq.
It is interesting to look back on exactly how this war was marketed. On March 17, 2003, President Bush, while addressing the nation and laying out his reasons for attacking Iraq, emphatically stated the following:

“Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. This regime has already used weapons of mass destruction against Iraq's neighbors and against Iraq's people.”

Following this, he gave the then president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, 48 hours to either surrender or be invaded. This power had been granted by both the House of Representatives, where 77 of 100 voted for the war, and the Senate, in which 296 of 429 members agreed to giving the President this power. It goes without saying that those vote totals would be different if taken today.
But while hindsight is 20/20 looking back on a specific moment, the market of fear continues. Imagine for a moment if the American public and its representatives were not susceptible to such deceptive tactics. What if we as a nation had taken some time to confirm the statements we had heard? Support for the war swelled after Colin Powell a speech to the U.N. detailing firsthand accounts of Hussein developing biological weaponry and WMD’s. But where did this come from?
Accounts point, oddly enough, to a single source, codenamed “Curveball.” His real name, as we now know, is Rafid Alwan, an Iraqi national now living in Germany. Powell referred to him in that same speech to the U.N., as slides flashed behind him of satellite photos depicting the supposed locations of the weaponry. “The source is an eyewitness, an Iraqi chemical engineer, who supervised one of these facilities,” Powell stated to an enraptured audience. This speech, combined with a few nations vehement dissent (remember freedom fries?) polarized the nation, drawing it closer as a united voice behind the war. We failed to acknowledge the small voices in the crowd telling us to slow down and take a better look, and forged straight ahead into an insane conflict with no end in sight.
“Curveball,” however, was a fluke. In his book “Curveball: Lies, Spies, and a Con Man Who Caused a War,” Bob Drogin calls this “arguably the biggest intelligence failure in history.” Not only had much of the account been fabricated, but it was obtained by the U.S. through German intelligence, and not once had an American intelligence officer so much as even interviewed Alwan. All of the locations shown by Powell at that U.N. speech were ultimately inspected and turned up nothing. It all turned out to be an utter fraud. “After 9/11,” Drogin concludes, “what we heard from the authorities was that they had failed to connect the dots that led to that scandal. In this case, they made up the dots.”
Thus the question remains, who really is to blame? Is it really those that duped us, or did we allow it happen, perhaps even welcome it? What excuse can we as a nation possibly have for not asking questions? Put simply, fear. Fear causes simple logic, and even the most basic of queries, to be ignored. We were asked to ignore common sense, and willingly complied. And every business, organization, and politician will continue to do so, as long as we continue to welcome it.

And now for the snorting beer labels story

Usually I use this forum to discuss, rant, yell about, issues in the news that are just sitting there weighing on my mind. This may not quite fit in that category, but I just don’t get it….When did the fact that something is cold become a selling point for anything other than a ski resort? Driving along Route 95 today I notice an ad for Bud Light featuring beer bottles turned upside down with the caption ”Flipping Cold”. Not “It tastes good”, or “You’ll get hot chicks in bikini’s” or even “Bud……Weis….eeeeeeer” with some weird-ass talking frogs on a log. Isn’t the fact that beer is cold a lot more dependant on the temperature of your refridgerator? So I get home and turn on some reality show about a tennis player picking a girl from a group of 20 year-olds and 40 year olds competing against each other (it’s a really odd phenomenon on this show. All of these attractive women, but there is something quirky about every one of their faces. Like a nose pointing too far upwards, or too much teeth, or they are just a bitch) and I grab a beer. And thank God I checked the label, for the mountains had turned blue!, assuring me that my beer was, in fact, cold. Whew. That was close. So as I sat down I wondered “If the label turns blue when it’s cold, is it scratch n’ sniff as well?” So I spent the rest of the evening looking as if I was snorting crack off a beer bottle watching tennis players chase hotties thinking of the next Maytag commercial that tells me how good the fridge tastes. I can’t believe I just snorted a beer label. I think it went to my head.

And now for something completely different......

I just spent the last hour reading literally hundreds of submissions to the editors of a new website that should, hopefully, be up and running soon. Many were intelligent, funny and generally engaging; some were just brutal. In any event, I have come to one conclusion: It is far easier to respond to another’s opinion than to develop your own. In my years of writing, I have come to see, although begrudgingly, that there is more than one right answer to everything. No one starts off knowing this. As a child, everything our parents say is fact, until we realize how we were lied to about the whole Santa Clause debacle (yeah, finding out when your 7 years old from the 4 year old next door that Santa doesn’t exist really sucked. Thanks, mom. I just lived that down yesterday). It’s not until years later that we see, not only that there is more than one way to think about a topic, but that more than one is correct. But so often instead of doing the research, gathering facts, and coming to a logical conclusion on one’s own, we look for the first opinion we see and decide whether we agree or disagree with that opinion. So is an opinionated person one that has an opinion about a topic, or someone that has an opinion about another opinion? (I know that just set some record for the use of the word opinion, a fact of which I will get about a million editors reminding me.) It is far easier to critique a conclusion arrived at by another, which usually takes a matter of seconds to do, than to develop a good, valid opinion on our own. The opinions I respect don’t begin with “I think….” but, rather, the words “I have concluded….” presumably after much thought and research. (By the way, for the purposes of this blog, I am my own editor. I know I suck at it, and that is why in my other life I have a professional handling it. We have heard from a few volunteers for the position, and you may be getting a call soon, but not that so-called editor that called me an “ass-clown.” What’s that about? Ass.) Perhaps this explains the popularity of a Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh. We enjoy either loving or hating them and the opinions they spew, but would never take the time or, perhaps, even care enough to think of our own. I think this might also explain the popularity of religion. How many, in the search for the answers to all the great questions of life, have even read the bible? Wouldn’t we just rather pick whatever opinion of the book we like best and sign up? How different would are life be if we stopped asking what others thought until after we considered the issue ourselves? What would we believe if there was no religion, but just the bible, prayer, and are own conclusions? And so I come back to reading all of these submissions. Try making me think. Not about how ridiculous or stupid or uninformed my opinion is, but give me something worth replacing my opinions with. I don’t need to be told how stupid I am. You write something worth reading, and I’ll come to that conclusion on my own.

Place your ad here!

I must say I am amazed at the replies to some of my posts, but glad to see so many opinions out there. But regards the media and what is aired, lets make one thing perfectly clear: The audience ALWAYS decides what is broadcast. What is aired has nothing to do with decisions made by editors, producers or authors. Why are there Paris Hilton stories all over the place? Because we will watch. How is that known? Because just 3 months earlier, we watched the Anna Nicole Smith story every waking moment. Television stations are run by advertisers, no one else. In order to get an advertiser to buy time, a station needs ratings. To get ratings, they will use whatever tried and true means necessary. The ones that try something new are either called geniuses or are fired, depending on the outcome. What makes the steroid issue so interesting is that it DOES NOT PULL IN RATINGS. ESPN in the past has aired more than one 30 minute special on the topic; NOBODY WATCHED. News organizations can air Hilton and Lohan clips endlessly because it is well known they will get ratings. To say someone cares about a topic denotes that it moves them to a particular action. In the case of these no-talent tabloid stars, people are moved to watch, as indicated by the increase in ratings. With the steroids issue, no one is moved to watch, no one has stopped watching baseball, no one has stopped buying tickets. When the subject is broached on a radio talk show, it lasts for about a minute because no calls come in on the topic. Steroids in one of the few issues I can recall that is forced fed to us, slipped in between items we do care about (sports scores or Hilton stories), and provides the perfect time to get that second cup of coffee in the morning. While a normal reply to “I am sick of_________” is to turn the channel, steroids is the exception to that response. Show me the advertiser that wants his commercial to run during the “performance enhancing drugs” special, and I’ll change my opinion.

Thank you all!

I want to take a moment to thank all that have replied to the posts either here on the blog or through email. We are working to get the new site up and running and all of your articles will be read as we search for the best talent out there. Just remember that we are not necessarily looking for a reply to one of my posts but rather a completely different look at the topic. Try to write as though you never read my original posting, and put a spin on it that is unique, and, most importantly, convincing. We have been amazed at the amount of replies, and we look forward to finding that work that will stand out for the website. Thank you!

Just shove the needle in my a** already

This never ending issue of steroids in sports has been shoved down my throat now for at least the last 2 years. Every major news network runs almost hourly stories on it and ESPN is running this nonsense like a stock ticker. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with the media reporting the news, even if it is as insignificant as say, a Paris Hilton story. But there is one huge difference between the steroids “scandal” and the Hilton joke; people care about the Hilton story. Every network ran, not only the story of her prison sentence, arrest, release, re-arrest, re-release, and mother-daughter hug; but also editorials on the internal debate to run those stories at all. The fact is they HAD to run this garbage. Why? Because we CARED. Why? I have no idea. All I know is that everyone I know was talking about it, and not just women and the gay community. On the golf course you hear “What do you think of the Paris arrest?” and at the gym “Do you think they over did it with the sentence?”. Everybody cared. There is no rhyme or reason to it, we just all love a train wreck, and this was it. The problem with the steroids thing is this: NOBODY CARES. Have you watched a major league game recently? The stadiums are packed. TV ratings are not just up, but WAY up. Barry Bonds was voted a starter by the fans in the All-Star game. While the media keeps gagging us on this steroid nonsense, we are busy changing the channel to watch Lindsay Lohan drive into trees. If these player want to keep sticking a needle in their arm and watch their heads blow up to the size of watermelons and their balls looking like M & M’s (the plain ones, cause those peanut ones are huge. Have you noticed that? When did they get so big?), fine. I don’t care. Just keep hitting balls out of the park, and I’ll keep watching and buying tickets. But to all those media outlets that want to keep running this crap the fact that I could care less won’t stop them. But eventually this will: No one else cares either.

The Supreme court ruling

I have no choice after reading the ruling and many of the facts surrounding it to be puzzled. The Supreme Court voted this week to ban so-called (named so by it’s opponents) partial-birth abortions, despite the fact that abortions, though remaining a controversial topic, are legal. In this country, it is estimated 1.3 million abortions take place annually, while only a small portion of these are “partial-birth”. However, the details of this procedure are particularly gruesome. It entails a fetus being removed from its’ mother until only its’ head remains inside, then a hole is made in the head of the fetus, followed by a suction device which is inserted to suck out the brain, causing it’s head to collapse. No, really. It took me about 20 minutes to type that sentence, and I am not sure when I will be able to sleep again. That being said, it is still difficult to comprehend the decision, especially when one looks at the procedure of a more conventional abortion, which involves the entire fetus being suctioned out of the mother, thus suffocating. Both of these are so horrific that one wonders how many involved in this debate actually know and understand the details of either of these procedures. However, if one is legal, how can the other not be? Granted, typical abortions happen on or about the ninth week, while “partial–birth” ones are much later. But if we have already played the role of God and decided that a fetus having not been born is not yet worth being considered a “human” (and thus making it’s death murder), how can we decide one is so wrong while the other is perfectly acceptable? Both of these procedures are cringe-inducing nightmares, but now we are deciding between the lesser of two evils? Interestingly, the decision included 2 pages on the prospect of an abortion patient realizing later the details of this “partial-birth” procedure and feeling regret. So why is disclosure not the bigger issue here as opposed to prohibition? I have never been a proponent of abortion, and would never be in favor of having one if included in any decicion making process. However, the conclusions that others make is their business, and is to be taken up with their conscience. But now we have decision handed down that takes the authority out of the hands of God or an individual and puts it squarely in the hands of 9 people I have never met and hardly know. If abortion is legal, then it’s legal. If it’s not, it’s not. We can debate that issue all day. But don’t split hairs, especially when the way they are split are not based on any laws but rather political affiliations. If the conservatives believe it is wrong, based for the most part on religious reasons, should they not leave it up to God to judge our decisions? What is it about religious people that they feel so compelled to make, not only personal decisions, but to shove those decisions down everyone else’s throat as well? The decisions we make should have nothing to do with government so long as the health and safety of others is not impacted. So go worry about a war, handle the taxes, and pave the roads. No one needs you to make up their mind for them. In the off chance we want your opinion, we’ll ask.