http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGCv7RzEwR8&safe=active

The commercial starts with a mother in the park with her two children. One is a little boy named Kevin and the other is a baby in a stroller. When the mother takes her eyes off of her son for just a few seconds he vanishes from sight, temporarily she has lost her child. In a panic the woman yells for Kevin as she frantically searches the park. She eventually grabs her purse and takes out a child locator device that leads the mother to find her son walking through a field with a smile on his face and a balloon in his hand. My problem with this commercial isn’t that it uses our natural human fears and hopes to sell something; my problem is what it’s selling. I don’t have a problem with using fear in advertising necessarily, but I think it has to be for an appropriate cause or it just seems manipulative. If we’re trying to tell teens not to do drugs this kind of fear and shock value may not only be appropriate but necessary. In order to create a sense of urgency in certain groups these scare tactics must be used. Or if we’re using fear to alert people of the dangers of drunk driving or driving while texting or not having an emergency plan than I understand that too, but not all fear based advertising is used for such causes.

This commercial taps into our natural instinct to protect our children. It uses both our fear that something might happen to our loved ones and our hope that we will be able to protect our loved ones from danger in order to sell something.  Now if this commercial were for a child safety alert system I would understand the use of fear to advertise the product, but that’s not what’s being advertised. The commercial is for Duracell, a battery company. This commercial which starts as every mother’s worst nightmare is a pretty dramatic attempt to get you to buy batteries. The sad thing is that these scare tactics work on consumers, and as long as they do advertisers will continue to use them. As long as people keep buying, the ads will keep coming. Like I said, if we’re using fear to alert people of the dangers of drunk driving or driving while texting or not having an emergency plan than I understand, but when we’re using fear to advertise batteries I think that’s a problem. The bible speaks often on the topic of fear, in fact one of the most common commands throughout the bible is “do not fear”. But I think the use of fear in advertising often taps into something much more superficial than the welfare of those we love, it taps into what we consider our identity. Because of our lack of identity we are often susceptible to fear in advertising. And the bible is clear on this as well, telling us that we should find our identity in Christ rather than in status symbols or material goods.