Psychology
Negativity bias
Threats, losses and bad news grab our attention faster and stay with us longer than good news, so a shocking image is hard to ignore.
All ads
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2019Back-to-School Essentials
Each cheerful purchase turns grim, a skateboard to barricade a door, socks for a tourniquet, and the mounting horror is impossible to look away from.
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2014Eyes on the Road
The crash arrives at the exact moment heads go down, a jolt of danger far harder to forget than any warning.
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2013Telekinetic Coffee Shop Surprise
Films real customers recoiling as tables slide and books fly at a young woman's apparent command, and genuine fright on strangers' faces is hard to stop watching.
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2009COW ("Only Stwpd Cowz Txt N Drive")
Holds the camera on the carnage, down to a baby's blank stare in another car, and horror that graphic seizes young viewers and is hard to shake off.
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2005Not Even Once ("Just Once")
Fills its spots with graphic scenes of young lives wrecked by meth, imagery grim enough to grab teenagers who tuned out preachy adults.
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2000Body Bags
Heaps 1,200 body bags on the street outside a tobacco headquarters, and that much death in one place grabs attention as no figure on a page could.
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New Labour, New DangerThe Conservative Party (UK)1996
New Labour, New Danger ("Demon Eyes")
Glowing demonic eyes peering from behind red curtains made a menacing picture people could not look away from, credited with some £5 million of free publicity.
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United Colors of Benetton.United Colors of Benetton1991
New Born Baby ("Giusy")
A baby seconds old, smeared with blood and the cord uncut, was a sight passers-by could not ignore, and it drew 800 complaints to the UK regulator.
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1989Girlfriend ("If You Drink, Then Drive, You're a Bloody Idiot")
Lets real trauma unfold in a working emergency ward with a real medical crew, raw enough that drink drivers could not look away.
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1987Hitler
The reveal that the praised leader is Hitler lands as a chill, and the shock of having been led along makes the lesson about selective truth unforgettable.
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1987The Grim Reaper
Shows a hooded Death bowling down men, women and children like pins, an image so grim it pushed an epidemic the media had ignored onto front pages.
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1987This Is Your Brain on Drugs ("Fried Egg")
The sight and sound of a brain frying like an egg is an unsettling image of damage, and the threat sticks long after the ten seconds are over.
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1986Don't Die of Ignorance ("Monolith")
Puts an exploding cliff face and a chiselled granite tombstone on television, images of doom too stark for a nation to switch off.
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1964Daisy ("Peace, Little Girl")
A nuclear blast swallowing a child's eye was an image viewers could not shake, and the uproar it caused carried one paid airing onto the news.
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1942Someone Talked!
Shows only a drowning sailor's head and outstretched arm above black water, a grim sight that grips viewers before they have read a single word.
Negativity bias: where it comes from
A wide review of psychology research concluded that bad events, feelings and information affect us more strongly than good ones of the same size (Baumeister and colleagues, 2001).
In ads it shows up as shock, threat and grim images that are hard to look away from, most often in public-service and road-safety campaigns.