BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Thank you for downloading this episode of the Bottom Line podcast.

Lots of extra content here that we couldn't squeeze into the broadcast radio version.

If you like it, you might want to check out other episodes we've made.

One of them is about humour in advertising, and it's called Does Funny Sell. It went to

air in July last year. Now, I want you to imagine you're in the business of selling, say,

car insurance. You're designing an advertising campaign and think about the pitch that you might

make. Option A, how good the car insurance is, how safe the driver feels,

a positive message perhaps, illustrated with a car driving without incident on a safe road.

Option A. Alternatively, you could have option B. You take the more negative approach.

You illustrate how horrible it is when you need car insurance.

You could depict an accident, a driver in shock. Better make sure you're covered.

Well, advertising is obviously often about depicting the upside of a product to make us feel we want it,

but it can also be designed to inspire fear, to show us the downside

of not having the product. So today we want to think about how advertising works and the degree

to which the fear factor is a way to sell a product. Does advertising like to play to

add insecurities? Does it create some of these insecurities?

Now, in his great book, a history of American advertising called Advertising the American Dream,

Roland Marshall talks about the rise of scarecopy in the 1920s, the negative appeal,

adds, quote, enacting dramatic episodes of social failure

and accusing judgments. Jobs were lost, romances cut short, marriages threatened, germs attacked,

cars skidded out of control, neighbors cast disapproving glances." End quote.

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