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Have you ever bought something not because you wanted it, but because you were afraid of what might happen if you didn’t? Maybe you worried about looking older, falling behind at work or simply not fitting in.

While marketing often promises an aspirational lifestyle, some of the most effective campaigns work in the opposite direction: making you feel bad about your current reality, then presenting a product as the solution.

This is the , and emotions are central to its efficiency.

Emotional content in advertising can be . When advertisers choose to frame it negatively, they aim to show that not using their product could lead to negative experiences, often illustrated by the characters’ negative emotions in the ad.

How pain-point advertising works

Companies that develop goods and services need to establish a presence in the market, stimulate consumer demand and generate profits. Advertising uses a range of strategies to achieve those goals, but emotional content remains a staple across the industry.

Research in cognitive and behavioural science suggests that , and that emotions play an important role.

One reason may be the way our brains make sense of the world. that constantly uses past experiences to anticipate what will happen next.

Throughout our lives, we accumulate experiences that help us form increasingly accurate expectations and make better decisions. When our experiences confirm those expectations, . We can continue relying on what we already know.

But when reality contradicts what we expected, the mismatch can trigger a negative emotional response. The discrepancy signals that something about our expectations or behaviour may need to change.

This is the very mechanism that pain-point advertising exploits. For instance, an advertisement might draw attention to a gap between how we see ourselves, and how we believe we should look. The advertised product is then presented as a way to close that gap.

Advertising shapes out expectations

But where do those expectations come from? Much of the knowledge and information we use to form our assumptions . We learn from family, friends, institutions, media and the broader culture around us.

We live in a hyper-competitive society shaped in part by the . Resources, like money and job positions, are limited, and to invest in solutions that will help them succeed.

Health, education, appearance, careers and personal fulfilment can all be framed as problems that have a purchasable solution. Social validation . When we make what appears to be the right choice, approval from others strengthens our assumptions and makes the behaviour more likely to continue.

by defining and sharing social standards of success that consumers can use as a baseline for judging themselves and making purchase decisions.

Consider in order to conform to unattainable physical standards. When brands use pain-point advertising, they reinforce the social standards consumers are expected to meet and link their achievements to purchasing their goods.

Pain-point advertising can expose consumers to the risk of social pain. If they do not purchase the advertised product, they may fear experiencing negative emotions such as shame, embarrassment or rejection by their social group.

Our brain . Negative emotional experiences are physically felt; this is one of the reasons why pain-point advertising is so effective.

How you can resist

The good news is that not every advertisement has the same power over us. Our brain pays attention to what is relevant to our mental model of reality. A car advertisement has little chance of gaining the attention of a non-driver.

The challenge is greater when an advertisement speaks directly to our goals, fears and expectations. Resisting these messages requires us to build and continually revise our mental models using sources beyond the products being marketed to us.

Developing critical-thinking skills, considering alternatives and learning from other people’s experiences can all help you deal with pain point marketing.

So can , which can give us different ways of understanding what is normal, desirable or necessary.

In other words, we can make mainstream standards less desirable so the brain no longer pays attention to these triggers. The goal is to recognize when an advertisement is fabricating a problem for us before offering to sell us the solution.

The power of repetition

A single advertisement may make us feel insecure for a few seconds. We can ignore it, scroll past it or decide that the product is not for us. The larger concern is what happens when these messages are repeated.

We experience two types of emotions: . Esthetic emotions are experienced vicariously or at a distance, such as when watching a movie, and do not normally trigger an immediate response in us. In contrast, utilitarian emotions arise in response to immediate threats and motivate us to take action.

Pain-point advertising is unlikely to trigger utilitarian emotions or an immediate response. The emotional experience remains at a distance, and the gap between seeing an advertisement and making a purchase may be long enough for the initial emotional response to fade.

However, , including assumptions about how we should look, behave and live, and what a good life is supposed to be.

, Associate Professor in Marketing,