Palms sweating? Heart tapping a little faster than normal? Can’t quite calm those racing thoughts? Odds are you’re an American in 2024.
Four years on from the start of the pandemic, we can still feel its aftershocks complicating our lives in countless ways. The U.S. and our world continue to be a noisy, demanding, and sometimes ugly place with no shortage of alarming headlines. So, as an agency hired to communicate and persuade in this cortisol-soaked environment—often on behalf of brands in what we call “peace of mind categories” (healthcare, insurance, banking, etc.)—we wanted to better understand a few things: how much are we all worrying, what are we worrying about most, and how does it impact us as marketers? This curiosity inspired us to survey 1,000 U.S. consumers on peace of mind’s mortal enemy: worry.
Beyond the obvious threads uniting age groups, ethnicities, and geographies—we are all pretty worried nowadays, go figure—we uncovered some interesting themes.
Our findings also show that brands in “peace of mind categories” have a major role to play in helping consumers reduce worry, and it’s in brands’ best interest to do so.
