Odds Against Tomorrow

Odds Against Tomorrow paints a dark picture of American business as prioritizing profit and power above all else, including the safety of company employees. Alec Charnoble, for example, is so concerned with the success of FutureWorld that he insists his employees stay in New York City during a hurricane even as he safely evacuates. However, the novel reserves its central critique for The Business of Fear: the way in which FutureWorld exploits clients’ fears to sell them its services.

While businesses have long relied on emotional appeals to market their products, the development of new technologies across the centuries has made it much easier for companies to gather data on customers and tailor pitches to them. One turning point came in the late 19th century when a businessman named Thomas J. Barrat found he could increase sales of Pears soap by associating the product with images of domestic contentment. It has since become commonplace for advertisements to target customers’ emotions, which multiple studies have confirmed are a main driver of consumer decision-making.

Such marketing does not necessarily limit itself to positive emotions; negative emotions like loneliness, envy, and sadness also powerfully influence human behavior and can therefore generate profit for companies that understand how to leverage them. As Odds Against Tomorrow demonstrates, fear is one such emotion, and the pitch typically works by evoking a particular threat and then framing the company’s product or service as the solution. Indeed, appeals to fear have proven less effective when the target audience does not perceive the solution as useful or actionable, suggesting that such practices also appeal to The Illusion of Control: The intention in frightening a customer is to make them feel that they can do something to avoid danger, which is to buy the advertised product (Allen, Mike and Kim Witte. “A Meta-Analysis of Fear Appeals: Implications for Effective Public Health Campaigns.” Health Education & Behavior, vol. 27, no. 5, 2000, pp. 591-615).

The first ads for Listerine were an early example of this phenomenon, seeking to make customers anxious about the possibility that they had unrecognized bad breath. More recently, companies like General Motors capitalized on post–9/11 anxiety to market cars that resembled military vehicles; without explicitly drawing the parallel, advertisements framed Hummers and SUVs as fortress-like structures affording the driver greater security (Peretti, Jacques. “SUVs, Handwash and FOMO: How the Advertising Industry Embraced Fear.” The Guardian, 2014). Social media companies have exploited consumer fears to different ends, manipulating algorithms to favor negative content that fuels engagement—and thus profit—for the company.

If corporate appeals to emotion broadly are controversial, appeals to fear spark particular criticism. Beyond the obvious fact that such appeals intentionally inflict emotional distress—often in populations predisposed to anxiety—they can have far-reaching negative consequences. The Lancet, for example, has argued that baby formula manufacturers prey on the worries of new parents, framing normal infant behavior as problems—or even symptoms—that formula can resolve (“Unveiling the Predatory Tactics of the Formula Milk Industry.” Editorial. The Lancet, vol. 401, no. 10375, 11 Feb. 2023, p. 409). Such marketing leads to needless spending, but by pushing parents away from breastfeeding, it can also deprive babies of potential health benefits—exactly the outcome the parents were trying to avert.

In its later chapters especially, Odds Against Tomorrow questions whether fear-based marketing tactics can ever be ethical. After Hurricane Tammy strikes, Jane argues that her and Mitchell’s sales pitch did save lives, and she decides to form her own company, Future Days, which will take what was good from FutureWorld and jettison the bad. The very similarity of the names, however, implies that her motives and actions may become as questionable as Charnoble’s, because she’s ultimately still seeking to profit. Moreover, Mitchell’s refusal to join in the project suggests that in a world where environmental catastrophe is an ever-present threat, the best approach is to embrace uncertainty rather than buy and sell promises of stability.