Fear Sells

There are a number of scary things in the world. Spiders, gun violence, anthrax, and some people at our family reunions are some of those things. In all actuality, the list is a lot bigger than that though, and we all know it.

This probably works out to the advantage of product marketers. We have all heard the saying, “sex sells.” I believe fear does too, despite the fact that “fear sells” isn’t a clever alliteration like the former saying.

When thinking of what to write about for this subject, knowing that the topic was “fear,” I tried coming up with some commercials that scared me. This kind of created a problem for me in that (1) I’m not much one to get “scared” from movies, television shows, commercials, etc., and (2) I’m not really one to watch movies, television – and along with them, commercials – anyways.

I do remember one commercial that kind of made me squirm when I saw it. From what I remembered of the commercial, it dealt with some kind of dysfunction with a toenail. Fungus, I was pretty sure. If that doesn’t automatically incite fear down in your soul, I don’t know what does.

I was able to find the commercial on YouTube through various Google searches using what I remembered. And when I saw it, I remember why it was this commercial had stuck in my mind.

It starts off when Fungus Creature Guy ‘s red (AKA, evil) eye is staring you down. (Is it a fungus? I think it’s a fungus.) This is only the first frame of the commercial – awesome start. Then it zooms out to the face of what is supposedly a dermatophyte. He’s hardly a cute little guy; he’s some kind of morph between an evil version of Toothless the dragon and some nature-define hairy amphibian, on which God decided to choose for its skin the least aesthetic yellow-brown on his color palette.

Then Fungus Creature Guy’s voice sinks in to you. It just sounds deceptive and cunning. You don’t even have to listen to what’s being said to know he’s up to no good.

Then (the worst part of the entire commercial) we see Fungus Creature Guy carelessly open the toenail of some poor, unsuspecting victim as if it is this demon’s doorway back into the fiery land of Hell. And then he just jumps right in, closing the door behind him.

Then he touches his victim effortlessly, transforming the very molecular structure of the skin under the toenail to some grotesque, desert-like landscape. To top it all off, he simply lays back, and a bunch of his demon fungus friends come out to play.

What in the mess is any of this supposed to mean? I highly doubt an infection works in this cartoonish of a way. And yet, not being a fungal expert, this is the only impression I’m left with. It’s evil in my hypothetical toenail.

I know that I can’t be the only one a little misled, through the same thing that freaked me out. It raises some ethical questions in regards to humanism for me. Why is this an okay thing to do – scaring people into thinking your pill (or other product) is the best thing to kill evil Fungus Creature Guy (or accomplish some other goal)? In other words, why can we stretch the truth to advance our own agenda? Whatever happened to honesty? I mean, simply explaining a toenail infection to me would have been sufficient.

I’m reminded through all of this of about 47 and a half Proverbs that mention integrity. A couple of them link being the poor man with walking with integrity. And we all know what Jesus (and for that matter, these very Proverbs) say about the poor man. Simply put: he’s a little more secured in his future than the man without integrity. I think that's an interesting thing to keep in mind if we are to ever compose media. (And, being one hoping to go into the field of Christian media, this is kind of really relevant.) Fear sells. But if something is really scary, we shouldn't need to overdramatize it.