Does Death Sell?
by Krishna Andavolu
MARCH 13, 2009 TAGS:
David St. Hubbins: Well, I think it looks like death...it looks like mourning. I mean it looks...
Ian Faith: David, David, every, every movie, in every cinema is about death; death sells!
- This is Spinal Tap
Ever since Freud reasoned that there are two great motivational drives behind human actions, sex and death, the latter has always gotten the short shrift, especially in marketing. We all know that sex sells. But what about death?
A recent study by University of Wisconsin and University of Virginia consumer researchers seeks to address this question. But the study, conducted jointly by Arik Rindfleisch, James E. Burroughs and Nancy Wong, which will be published in the Journal of Consumer Research, takes a slightly different tack.
Instead of asking “does death sell,” the researchers examined how individuals relate to objects they have purchased when they think about death. The result, strikingly, is that thinking about one’s demise motivates people to form a strong connection to their material possessions, specifically to the brands that they have purchased. In the face of the great unknown, people develop, “strong brand identity,” a melding of their personalities and their possessions.
The researchers are careful to point out that not everyone has this reaction, but before we delve any deeper into Rindfleisch et. al., let’s go over a little background theory.
First of all, Freud does not constitute the foundational principles for this research. There is a scene in AMC’s series “Mad Men,” where Don Draper, the creative director of the early-1960s advertising firm that the show follows, emphatically tosses a report on Freud’s death drive into the trash. Just as Freud’s ideas of humanity’s latent desire to die had no place in that world of advertising, it has no place in ours.
Rather, a school of experimental psychology called, frighteningly, Terror Management Theory (TMT) informs this study.
Simply put, we are not talking about the subconscious desire for death, as Freud suggests, but rather the way humans attempt to avoid death entirely, to cope with its imminence. TMT piggybacks off of the work of the University of California anthropologist and psychologist, Ernest Becker who wrote the 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Denial Death (Woody Allen gives this book to Diane Keaton during their courtship in Annie Hall).
Becker contends that all of human civilization, writ large, is an elaborate, symbolic defense mechanism against the knowledge of our own mortality. It is a premise as simple as it is audacious--a double-fist of fatalism and nihilism.
According to Rindfleisch, this idea took hold in the experimental psychology community and, increasingly, has been applied in the field of consumer research. There have been hundreds of studies since the 1980s that show that existential anxiety, or our fear of dying, trumps any other anxiety, whether it is personal, social or economic.
Our cultural edifices--religion, patriotism and materialism--become buttresses that prop up our consciousnesses above the abyss of our own mortality. Depressed yet?
Well, it’s not entirely doom and gloom here, because our beliefs, as the study shows, increase our self-esteem.
The subjects of Rindfliesch’s experiments were asked to write an essay imagining their own demise, so as to increase their “mortality salience,” (how prominent the idea of death is in their consciousness). They were then asked to list the brands of four objects they owned: cars, microwaves, jeans and watches.
The findings, essentially, were that those subjects measured to be materialistic by nature formed stronger brand connections to the things they owned when faced with “existential anxiety” than those who were not measured as materialistic.
What’s surprising is how one’s reaction to a “heightened mortality salience” coheres to one’s individuality. Death is usually thought of as the great equalizer, but it actually does well to expose our individual belief structures or idiosyncratic coping mechanisms, the pillars of our personalities.
So someone who believes that they are virtuous will more likely give money to charity when they think of death and dying. Or someone who is patriotic will think of sacrifice to the country. And someone who is materialistic will form stronger brand identities.
TMT and Becker draw their roots to early existentialism, thinkers like Soren Kierkegaard, Otto Rank, Jean-Paul Sartre and Friedrich Nietszche. Sartre contended that man is the sum of his actions. It’s not too far of a stretch to think that if a man’s actions are mostly consumer in nature, that a man is the sum of his purchases.
Individuals often find solace from death through communities. According to Becker, religion and patriotism are chief examples. The same holds true with brands. Harley Davidson owners, Saab owners and Jeep owners often wave at each other while driving. You might find an affinity to someone using the same NPR totebag, or wearing the same North Face parka.
Death is lonely. Could the loyalty to your own personality and purchases be a way to carry yourself over, to reify your being in the face of oblivion? Perhaps.
To the question, “Does Death Sell?” The answer seems to be: Death sells us on what we already have.
So if you are reading this article, your “mortality salience” is probably high. And if you saw an ad for a brand you might already own, you could be interested in re-upping. To, you know, stave off death.
--
Full Text of the article, The Safety of Objects, Materialism, Existential Anxiety, and Brand Connection can be read HERE
Krishna Andavolu is managing editor of Obit.
Ian Faith: David, David, every, every movie, in every cinema is about death; death sells!
- This is Spinal Tap
Ever since Freud reasoned that there are two great motivational drives behind human actions, sex and death, the latter has always gotten the short shrift, especially in marketing. We all know that sex sells. But what about death?
A recent study by University of Wisconsin and University of Virginia consumer researchers seeks to address this question. But the study, conducted jointly by Arik Rindfleisch, James E. Burroughs and Nancy Wong, which will be published in the Journal of Consumer Research, takes a slightly different tack.
Instead of asking “does death sell,” the researchers examined how individuals relate to objects they have purchased when they think about death. The result, strikingly, is that thinking about one’s demise motivates people to form a strong connection to their material possessions, specifically to the brands that they have purchased. In the face of the great unknown, people develop, “strong brand identity,” a melding of their personalities and their possessions.
The researchers are careful to point out that not everyone has this reaction, but before we delve any deeper into Rindfleisch et. al., let’s go over a little background theory.
First of all, Freud does not constitute the foundational principles for this research. There is a scene in AMC’s series “Mad Men,” where Don Draper, the creative director of the early-1960s advertising firm that the show follows, emphatically tosses a report on Freud’s death drive into the trash. Just as Freud’s ideas of humanity’s latent desire to die had no place in that world of advertising, it has no place in ours.
Rather, a school of experimental psychology called, frighteningly, Terror Management Theory (TMT) informs this study.
Simply put, we are not talking about the subconscious desire for death, as Freud suggests, but rather the way humans attempt to avoid death entirely, to cope with its imminence. TMT piggybacks off of the work of the University of California anthropologist and psychologist, Ernest Becker who wrote the 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Denial Death (Woody Allen gives this book to Diane Keaton during their courtship in Annie Hall).
Becker contends that all of human civilization, writ large, is an elaborate, symbolic defense mechanism against the knowledge of our own mortality. It is a premise as simple as it is audacious--a double-fist of fatalism and nihilism.According to Rindfleisch, this idea took hold in the experimental psychology community and, increasingly, has been applied in the field of consumer research. There have been hundreds of studies since the 1980s that show that existential anxiety, or our fear of dying, trumps any other anxiety, whether it is personal, social or economic.
Our cultural edifices--religion, patriotism and materialism--become buttresses that prop up our consciousnesses above the abyss of our own mortality. Depressed yet?
Well, it’s not entirely doom and gloom here, because our beliefs, as the study shows, increase our self-esteem.
The subjects of Rindfliesch’s experiments were asked to write an essay imagining their own demise, so as to increase their “mortality salience,” (how prominent the idea of death is in their consciousness). They were then asked to list the brands of four objects they owned: cars, microwaves, jeans and watches.
The findings, essentially, were that those subjects measured to be materialistic by nature formed stronger brand connections to the things they owned when faced with “existential anxiety” than those who were not measured as materialistic.
What’s surprising is how one’s reaction to a “heightened mortality salience” coheres to one’s individuality. Death is usually thought of as the great equalizer, but it actually does well to expose our individual belief structures or idiosyncratic coping mechanisms, the pillars of our personalities.
So someone who believes that they are virtuous will more likely give money to charity when they think of death and dying. Or someone who is patriotic will think of sacrifice to the country. And someone who is materialistic will form stronger brand identities.
TMT and Becker draw their roots to early existentialism, thinkers like Soren Kierkegaard, Otto Rank, Jean-Paul Sartre and Friedrich Nietszche. Sartre contended that man is the sum of his actions. It’s not too far of a stretch to think that if a man’s actions are mostly consumer in nature, that a man is the sum of his purchases.Individuals often find solace from death through communities. According to Becker, religion and patriotism are chief examples. The same holds true with brands. Harley Davidson owners, Saab owners and Jeep owners often wave at each other while driving. You might find an affinity to someone using the same NPR totebag, or wearing the same North Face parka.
Death is lonely. Could the loyalty to your own personality and purchases be a way to carry yourself over, to reify your being in the face of oblivion? Perhaps.
To the question, “Does Death Sell?” The answer seems to be: Death sells us on what we already have.
So if you are reading this article, your “mortality salience” is probably high. And if you saw an ad for a brand you might already own, you could be interested in re-upping. To, you know, stave off death.
--
Full Text of the article, The Safety of Objects, Materialism, Existential Anxiety, and Brand Connection can be read HERE
Krishna Andavolu is managing editor of Obit.
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