Even to its most successful practitioners, marketing can sometimes seem like a negative, manipulative process. It's common knowledge that you can achieve great results by finding a customer's pain point and pushing it relentlessly. Then there are the concepts of fear of missing out (FOMO) and scarcity marketing, not to mention trading on consumers' insecurities and vulnerabilities.
Viewed like this, it's surprising that so many marketers try to simultaneously generate warm and fuzzy brand associations on the one hand while doing their best to stir anxiety on the other.
However, it doesn't all have to be doom and gloom. The point of these anxiety-based tactics is to sell your product as a solution to a problem, and this can be done with a little more finesse and subtlety.
Instead of provoking fear only to resolve it, it can be just as effective to emphasize benefits in such a way as to imply the negatives. This gives all the selling benefits of anxiety without the bad karma for your brand.
Here are some examples.
All of these may seem typical ways of marketing a benefit, but the key is to introduce that element of doubt alongside the advantage without making it your main focus. Clever copywriting or imagery is important here, and the precise implementation depends on your product and niche.
But however you approach it, you don't have to scare people outright. Preaching the positives while hinting at the negatives will still do the subtle work of sparking anxiety, but without the risk to your brand image.