Matt FarnhamVery few categories arrive as emotionally loaded as money.
I’ve learned that fear is one of the least useful tools in our marketing kit. It might spike attention, but it rarely builds the kind of trust you need for someone to move their savings, unlock home equity, or commit to a 20‑year plan.
When you look at the evidence, positive emotion – relief, reassurance, hope, even a bit of humour – does a far better job. Not because people suddenly stop caring about risk, but because they finally feel safe enough to act.
Fear feels powerful, but it’s a blunt instrument
There’s a reason so many public‑health campaigns lean into fear. A major meta‑analysis of 127 fear‑appeal studies, covering more than 27,000 people, found that fear‑based messages do shift attitudes, intentions and behaviours¹. The effect was strongest when the threat looked serious, people felt personally at risk and the message offered a simple one‑off behaviour to fix it.¹
That’s perfect for “book the screening”, “wear a seatbelt”, “quit smoking”. One high‑impact message, one concrete action. Job done.
Financial decisions are rarely that neat. Choosing a retirement strategy, buying your first home, or downsizing for cost of living is not a single discrete act; it’s a long decision process, wrapped in complexity, regulation and ongoing relationship. Chronic fear in that context does something very different: it paralyses. People delay, avoid forms, stick with sub‑optimal products or simply shut down.
And when fear is overplayed it can actually have the opposite effect. Experimental work on fear‑based ads, found that high‑threat executions actually reduced attitudes towards both the ad and the product compared with non‑fear versions².
People remembered the message, but liked the brand less. That’s a terrible trade‑off in a high‑trust category.
Money is already scary – we don’t need to add more
Behavioural finance has quantified what most of us see anecdotally: losses really do loom larger than gains. Prospect theory work shows people typically need a potential gain about twice the size of a potential loss before they’ll even accept a fair gamble; a 50–50 chance to win 150 dollars versus lose 100 dollars is routinely rejected³.
Physiologically, when researchers track things like skin conductance, the stress response curve for losses is much steeper than for equivalent gains – the body literally “lights up” more in the negative domain.³
In practice, that means most of your customers already come to you hard‑wired for loss aversion:
- They’re more scared of losing what they have than excited by what they could gain.
- They overweight short‑term volatility and underweight long‑term compounding.
- They’d often rather do nothing than risk feeling stupid later.
So when your starting point is a customer sitting on a pile of anxiety, amplifying the fear rarely produces better decisions. It just confirms their worst suspicions: “see, this stuff is dangerous; better to leave it alone.” Advisory research backs that up: clients typically arrive apprehensive and leave more confident when their adviser explains options clearly and walks alongside them, shifting the dominant emotion from anxiety to relief and reassurance.
That’s not the job of fear. That’s the job of positive emotion.
Positive emotion is better at building memory and trust
Emotional content is more memorable than neutral content, full stop.⁴ Neuroscience work shows that negative events can be especially vivid in lab tasks – you can recall a financial crash in painful detail years later – but that doesn’t automatically translate into brand preference.⁴
Two things matter for financial brands:
- Do people remember you at all in key moments?
- If they do, how do they feel about you?
On both counts, positive emotion has the edge. Analysis of more than 1,000 cases in the IPA Effectiveness Databank found that campaigns built primarily on emotional appeal delivered around 31 per cent profitability gains, compared with about 16 per cent for campaigns relying mainly on rational messaging, with blended emotional‑plus‑rational work sitting in the middle at roughly 26 per cent⁵.
System1’s large‑scale testing across thousands of ads tells a similar story. In one collaboration with Undertone, high‑impact digital ads that scored strongly on positive emotion outperformed standard executions by more than 60 per cent on both the level and intensity of positive feeling, and 60 per cent of those high‑impact ads achieved a 4‑ or 5‑Star emotional score versus a 13 per cent base rate in their database⁶.
In financial services specifically, emotional connection is not a fluffy nice‑to‑have. Motista’s work with tens of thousands of customers shows that emotionally connected retail banking customers hold 20 per cent more products, have a 78 per cent lower attrition rate and produce nearly six times the lifetime revenue of “highly satisfied” customers; in credit cards, emotionally connected cardholders generate nearly eight times the lifetime spend⁷. Across categories, an emotionally connected customer delivers about 52 per cent more annual value than one who is just satisfied.⁷
There’s also age to consider. Studies on emotional memory show that while younger adults often recall negative material more, older adults flip: they show a “positivity effect” and remember positive objects and events better than negative ones⁸. If your target market is 55‑plus, that matters – the message that leaves them feeling quietly reassured is more likely to be recalled than the one that spikes their anxiety.
Mental availability: you want approach, not avoidance
If you follow Ehrenberg‑Bass, mental availability is the game: being easily thought of in as many buying situations – category entry points – as possible⁹. Jenni Romaniuk breaks it down into three simple metrics: mental penetration (the percentage of buyers who link your brand to at least one situation), mental market share (your share of all brand–situation links), and network size (how many distinct entry points you’re linked to).⁹
Layer that with B2B and advice behaviours. Data presented by the LinkedIn B2B Institute and System1 suggests around 80 per cent of buyers start with the brands that come to mind first, and roughly 90 per cent end up buying from that short list; emotional B2B campaigns show about seven times the business effects and twice the brand effects of rational ones, yet only around 1 per cent of B2B brands seriously lean into emotion¹⁰.
Fear can help with simple availability (“I remember that scary super ad”), but it often damages affect (“I don’t like how they talk to people like me”). Positive emotion – especially rooted in real‑life stories and distinctive brand assets – supports all three Ehrenberg‑Bass levers at once: you come to mind, you’re easy to recognise, and you feel like a good, safe choice.
So what does “positive emotion” actually look like in finance?
Positive emotion in our world isn’t shooting confetti over balance sheets (well maybe, depending on the creative brief). It’s usually much quieter. Think:
- A retired couple talking about how they stayed in the home they love, not because they “beat the market” but because they found a safe way to unlock equity.
- A single parent explaining the relief of having a plan for school fees and retirement, instead of lying awake at 3am.
- A challenger‑brand spot that uses warmth and a bit of humour to cut through a sea of beige pension ads – and lands in the top band on System1’s 1‑ to 5‑Star scale, the band linked to the strongest long‑term brand growth¹².
These ideas still acknowledge risk and trade‑offs. The difference is the emotional arc. You start from an honest tension – worry about the future, fear of losing independence – and move people towards agency: “I can do something about this, and I can see myself in that story.”
That is the territory where positive emotion beats fear, every time.
The takeaway for marketers
Fear is tempting because it feels powerful. It tests well in quick attention metrics. It looks bold. And the research does say it works a bit¹. But for most financial services brands, fear is a short‑term hit that undermines the very things you’re really selling: trust, partnership, stability and the chance to live life on your own terms.
Positive emotion isn’t about pretending risk doesn’t exist. It’s about meeting an already anxious audience and leaving them feeling calmer, clearer and more in control than when they arrived. The numbers – from prospect theory and loss aversion, to emotional memory, to the IPA databank, System1’s ad tests, Motista’s CLV work and Ehrenberg‑Bass on mental availability – all point the same way: if you want people to remember you, trust you and stay with you, lead with humanity, not horror.
That’s not just better marketing. In a category built on other people’s money, it’s the more responsible choice.
Matt Farnham is an award-winning senior marketing leader with more than a decade of experience in brand, communications and customer engagement. His work has focused on helping organisations build trust, strengthen customer relationships and drive sustainable growth, particularly in highly regulated industries. In 2024, he was named Future Leader of the Year at the Australian Marketing Institute Marketing Excellence Awards. He writes about brand strategy, marketing effectiveness and customer behaviour at mattfarnham.au.
- Fear Appeals meta‑analysis
- Prospect theory / loss aversion
- Emotional vs rational campaigns – IPA Databank
- Emotion in ad effectiveness (general)
- System1 x Undertone digital case
- Emotional connection & customer value in financial services
- Emotional connection & customer value (cross‑category)
- Age‑related positivity effect in emotional memory
- Ehrenberg‑Bass – mental availability & category entry points
- LinkedIn B2B Institute & System1 – emotion in B2B
- ASIC guidance on financial product advertising
- Client emotions in advice journeys (finance‑specific)
- Emotion in financial services marketing (context)
Tannenbaum, M.B., Hepler, J., Zimmerman, R.S., et al. (2015). Appealing to Fear: A Meta‑Analysis of Fear Appeal Effectiveness and Theories. Psychological Bulletin.
– 127 studies, >27,000 participants, average effect size around d=0.29d=0.29; conditions for fear to work (high severity, susceptibility, and strong efficacy information).
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk. Econometrica.
– Popular summaries of loss‑aversion ratio (losses weighted about twice as heavily as gains).
Binet, L., & Field, P. (2013). The Long and the Short of It: Balancing Short and Long‑Term Marketing Strategies. IPA Databank; plus later summaries.
– Emotional campaigns ~31% profitability lift vs ~16% for rational, ~26% for mixed emotional+rational.
Pringle, H., & Field, P. (2008). Brand Immortality: How Brands Can Live Long and Prosper.
– Emotional processing speed vs cognitive, and why “feel first, think later” matters for advertising.
Undertone & System1 (2017). Undertone & System1 Prove Emotion Drives Digital Profit (case study).
– High‑emotion creatives delivering >60% higher positive emotional response; 60% of “high impact” ads scoring 4–5 Stars vs 13% baseline.
Motista (2017). Making the Emotional Connection: How Financial Companies Are Harnessing Customer Emotions to Generate Growth. White paper.
– Retail banking: emotionally connected customers hold 20% more products, 78% lower attrition, nearly 6× lifetime revenue; credit cards: emotionally connected cardholders generate nearly 8× lifetime spend.
Motista (2018). Leveraging the Value of Emotional Connection for Retailers; plus Zorfas, A. “Emotional Connection and Profitability”, LinkedIn (2018).
– Emotionally connected customers have ~306% higher lifetime value and on average 52% more annual value than merely satisfied customers.
Keating, S., et al. (2022). Exploring the Effects of Valence across the Adult Life‑Span. University of Reading / CentAUR.
– Older adults show a reliable positivity bias, remembering positive stimuli better than negative.
Gorica, E., et al. (2024). Age‑related Positivity Effect in Emotional Memory Consolidation. University of York.
– Confirms positivity effect in memory consolidation in later life.
Romaniuk, J. (2023). Increasing Mental Market Share by Using Category Entry Points. Ehrenberg‑Bass Institute blog.
– Mental penetration, mental market share, CEP network size; evidence that most brands under‑utilise available entry points.
Ehrenberg‑Bass Institute (2024). Identifying and Prioritising Category Entry Points. Research summary.
System1 (2026). Get Emotional at Work. It Might Help. Blog.
– 80% of B2B buyers start with the brands that come to mind first; ~90% buy from that initial set; emotional B2B campaigns deliver ~7× larger business effects and ~2× brand effects vs rational.
ASIC Regulatory Guide 234: Advertising financial products and services (including credit).
– Clear, accurate, balanced ads; risk/benefit balance, past performance rules.
ASIC (2020). Advertising financial products and services: obligations and ASIC’s expectations.
– Warnings against misleading, exaggerated or sensational advertising.
VBP / ifa.com.au (2025). How Mapping Client Emotions Can Transform Apprehension into Trust.
– Mapping emotions from apprehension to relief and confidence across adviser interactions.
System1 (2024). Emotional Advertising in Financial Services: Driving Brand Growth.
– Benchmarks for financial services ads and emotional effectiveness.
The Financial Brand (2023). Building an Emotional Connection Creates Value in Financial Services.
– CLV and engagement benefits of emotional CX.
