Lea Dunn, Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, joins Americus on this special Halloween edition of Marketing Matters to talk about how fear can help build an emotional attachment to a brand.
Lea kicks off the segment by discussing a successful marketing campaign from Doritos that focused around their release of a horror video game Hotel 626. It was an immersive horror experience that she remarks wasn’t extensively branded. This was definitely on purpose, as Lea notes that brands need to be sure that they aren’t an integral part of the horror experience, the cause of you being afraid.
Lea goes further to discuss her research, digging into incidental (I’m feeling fear during this current situation) vs. integral (experience itself is causing fear) emotional exposure and how brands can play a part in this. Her study involves exposing subjects to movie or TV clips that evoke emotions of happiness, excitement, sadness or fear.
At the same time they were introduced to a unfamiliar food brand and then later asked a series of questions measuring attitude and emotional attachment about the brand.
The results showed that those subjected to the fear movie clips had a higher attachment to the brand, with most identifying with statement similar to “ I feel like the brand was with me during the experience”. She noted an interesting conclusion that fear didn’t necessarily enhance the attitude toward the brand which she believes can be explained by this being the subject’s first experience with the brand.
Lea concludes that when utilizing this research, marketers need to be sure that the brand stands to be there to help consumers cope with their fear and not be the cause of the fear.
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