Are brands guilty of tapping into our self-remorse?

As the dust is beginning to settle on the Just Stop Oil protests that disrupted the M25 last week, we can start to muse on the strategy behind it. Were the organisers trying to make the public feel helpless? Angry? (If so, they certainly succeeded at causing nationwide outrage.) Or maybe they were going for an emotion we try so hard to avoid… guilt?

?If the goal of the disruption was to expose how deeply complicit we are in the country’s dependence on oil and gas, it wouldn’t be the first time a non-profit organisation wielded guilt as a campaign tool. Governments and charities have long used guilt to make us pay attention to issues we try our best to ignore, and shock us into taking action.

?In the world of mass-produced peer pressure on social media and beyond, guilt may be taking a bigger seat at the table of brand and marketing. From body negativity to parental shame, brands have plenty of customer insecurities to take advantage of and capture our attention. But should they?

?Guilt-tripping for a good cause

?Governments have a long agenda of health and social causes to promote – from combating drunk driving to gambling prevention – but they often fall short of making a real impact. In an attempt to resonate, more and more campaigns are trying to flip the script. ‘Smoking pot may not kill you, but it will kill your mother,’ ‘When you drink, who's in charge?’, ‘Smoking. Don't keep it in the family’. Slogans like these take the spotlight off the target audience and put it on the people they hold close. In doing so, they switch the emotional response from fear (of lung cancer, addiction, job loss) to the gut-wrenching feeling of failing a loved one. They seem to be saying: this is no longer just about you, it’s about them too.

?Does this mean that guilt is more effective in changing behaviour than fear? In this case, it may well be. Everyone has the inherent need to think of themselves as fundamentally good. Guilt challenges this narrative. In this sense, it goes deeper than fear – it cuts to the very sense of one’s identity. Confronting the consequences of our actions begs the question: can I continue doing this and still consider myself a good person? Perhaps governmental campaigners are on to something here by letting people answer this question for themselves. After all, we’re our own worst critics.

?This feels personal

?From Children in Need fundraiser videos to attention-grabbing Greenpeace campaigns, charities and non-profit organisations have become experts at harnessing guilt to move their audiences to action. ‘Looking for you’, says the billboard with an adorable dog, encouraging passers-by to adopt from the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home. ‘He’s starving. We’re not’, reads the magazine spread by UNICEF. These campaigns are so persuasive because they don’t simply highlight a problem, they make it personal. The message is clear: when you buy a dog from a breeder, another dog misses out on a loving home; when you don’t donate money, a child in a war-torn country goes hungry. In other words, you may not have caused the harm to start with — but your inactivity makes you complicit.

?For many causes, location is a powerful extra dimension to dial up the guilt. Period poverty stickers on the back of toilet cubicle doors, and food bank collections at the end of supermarket checkouts, bring the message closer to home. When the audiences are in a place where they’re enjoying the luxuries that others are deprived of, guilt-led messaging resonates even more strongly. We now see this trend expanding into online spaces, with airlines prompting customers to offset their flight’s carbon emission after they buy a ticket – landing the message right as buyers are feeling most guilty about not taking the train instead. Place is a big player in guilt.

?The pressure is on

?Arguably, governmental and charity campaigns use guilt for the greater good. But we don’t need to look far to find brands engaging in the darker side of self-reproach. Foods marketed as ‘guilt-free’ imply that eating anything that contains sugar, fat, or nutritional value should make people feel bad – dangerously perpetuating diet culture. Back-to-school marketing, on the other hand, opens a Pandora's box of parental guilt by bombarding customers with an ever-growing list of purchases that will set their children up for a ‘bright future’. The specifics differ, but the underlying message is consistent: if your child doesn’t snack on organic quinoa crisps or have the best tennis racket, you are failing them.

?And finally, there are the ultimate masters of guilt – placemakers as much as brand guardians – the gym. From motivational quotes on the walls and blow-up photos of sports models, to the café exclusively serving ‘healthy food’ and protein shakes, the conventional place design of gyms sells a black-and-white idea of health and productivity. ‘No pain, no gain,’ ‘Don’t quit,’ even the Gym Group’s playful yet somehow guilt-laden mantra in toilet cubicles: ‘Every squat counts’. Follow these simple formulas and you’ll earn a feeling of self-worth. Fail to do so, and you’ll be resigned to shame, guilt, and embarrassment.

?Difficult to land, impossible to ignore

?Guilt has the power to move people and change behaviours. But it can quickly take consumers to some very dark places. Go too far and you risk your brand being associated with feelings of shame and reproach. Worse yet, you may anger your audience and hurt your cause. But if one thing is certain, it’s that guilt is an emotion we can’t ignore.

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Welcome to Brand Feel, Hunter's series where we'll be unlocking the emotions that power brands and places. Check out our website to find out more about our work and expertise in consumer-led branding.