 Sometimes you’ve got to make the audience uneasy. Here’s how.
Halloween is the one time each year when it’s appropriate to give your audience a good, safe scare. Right? Wrong. You can do it all year! Sure, it’s fun to get scared for fun at Halloween (and, as the old joke goes, to get scared for real a week later on Election Day), but there’s only so much business you can build around, well, a pumpkin. In this article, we’re going to explore numerous ways to generate unease in your audience, using multiple techniques in various media. But first, let’s explore the important premise, namely: Why on earth would you ever want to scare your audience? Enter FUD A better question, arguably, is: Why on earth would you not want to scare your audience? Look at it this way: If your prospects are content to the point of being smug, what do they lack? What do they need? Answer: Nothing. First off, that’s unrealistic. No one has 100 percent of their needs met, 100 percent of the time; just ask Maslow. So that’s an audience of zero. When you’re looking to sell your goods or services, you want to focus in on the ones who are, well, suffering. The people whose lives just can’t wait to be improved by what you’re proposing to offer them. We learned a great acronym while working on projects in aerospace and defense. If you haven’t learned it before, you should. It’s called FUD. It stands for Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. Let’s say you’re a well-entrenched incumbent with a fat defense contract that’s due for a re-compete. And now all these “young upstarts” are trying their best to unseat you. What’s your defense? Well, you can do worse than to employ FUD in your proposal. Something like: “Would you really feel secure with a company that lacks our proven expertise? Can you imagine the catastrophic consequences of failure? Do you think they’ll really come through for you when the mission, national security, and lives are on the line?” That’s FUD in a nutshell. FUD. It applies to everything from insurance (“Are you covered?”) to professional services (“Are you sure you’re getting the best settlement?”) to consumer packaged goods (“Do you want anything less for your children?”). You think those are only sold at Halloween? What is spooky? This is one of those questions that’s easier to answer when posed in reverse. What’s the opposite of spooky? Peaceful. Tranquil. Serene. How do those sensations translate to creative media? Pretty obviously: Without our even telling you, we know you’re picturing bright light, pastel colors, and airy fonts. You’re hearing sweet music played on a harp, acoustic guitar, or piano, perhaps with an angelic choir behind it. You’re picturing people glowingly illuminated by high-key lighting, with everything clear and in focus. And the people are, of course, smiling. Now let’s “evil twin” all that; this should be fun. You’re picturing darkness. Things are obscure and blurry. The music is dissonant. The expressions are nervous and worried. It’s a world of unease. More to the point, you’re seeing heavier fonts. You’re hearing minor chord progressions and dissonant strings. You’re seeing broken rules of composition (see our entire article about breaking creative rules), with the “breathing room” choked off. That is all good. But it can be misleading. Never forget contrast and context. If you render something all black, it’s meaningless. You can’t have shadow without light; those minor chords don’t sound spooky unless they’ve transitioned from major ones. It’s a matter of balance. And finding and striking that balance may well be what we could call “the art of FUD.” And don’t forget the power of what you don’t reveal. Just as the scariest movies don’t show the monster (think of the first half of Jaws, or Val Lewton classics like Cat People or The Leopard Man), but rather leave its awful presence to your imagination, the mere suggestion of something lurking, something just out of sight or reach, can be truly unnerving. This can be accomplished in images, via video editing, and even in copy. If you’re using it to well-planned effect, the results can be memorable and powerful. We recently worked on a piece which used, very simply, images of busy, modern offices… all devoid of people. The images, which we sourced from stock libraries, weren’t hard to find. But taken together, one after another, one huge empty office with desks that appear to have been occupied just minutes ago, all totally empty, reinforced with copy about the prospect’s “missing workforce,” was wholly unnerving. It had a Twilight Zone-like quality to it. You see a busy modern office; you expect to see it teeming with people. You see it empty: it’s unsettling. The execution couldn’t have been simpler. The budget couldn’t have been lower. But the effect was priceless. Need help with that next creative challenge, whether it’s a spooky one or not? Contact us. We’d be delighted to scare up some good results for you.
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