A $1,600 suitcase sold out in 16 seconds. A sweet treat that created two-hour lines in Brazil — with someone offering R$50 just to skip the line. A cookie menu that refreshes every week and has people checking their phones every Sunday night waiting for the reveal. What do they have in common? None of them sell on their attributes. They sell on the fear of being left out.
Welcome to FOMO marketing — the fear of missing out — the oldest strategy in the world, which found its most powerful version yet in the digital age.
What is FOMO and why does it work so well?
The term was coined in 2004 by Patrick McGinnis while he was a student at Harvard, and it describes the anxiety of feeling that we’re missing out on something valuable — which pushes us toward fast, often impulsive decisions. [1]
Marketing turned it into a system built on three psychological levers: scarcity (“only 2 units left”), urgency (“offer valid for 10 minutes”), and social proof (“1,000 people bought this today”). When all three fire at once, the brain switches into fast-decision mode. [2]
And the numbers confirm it works: 69% of people experience FOMO regularly, and more than 60% of millennials make an impulse purchase within 24 hours of feeling like they’re missing out on something. [3]
Not just for expensive products: democratic FOMO
There’s an important myth to bust here: FOMO isn’t exclusive territory for luxury goods or high-priced limited editions. It’s just as effective — sometimes more so — with everyday products.
The clearest case from the past year was morango do amor in Brazil: a strawberry coated in white brigadeiro and a crunchy layer of red caramel, a reinterpretation of the classic candied apple from the Festa Junina celebrations. The treat went viral in July 2025 on TikTok and Instagram, and within days two-hour lines were forming at confectioneries across the country. One customer even offered R$50 just to skip the line. [4]
The numbers behind the phenomenon are striking: searches for the term grew 1,333% on Google in a single week, and orders on iFood jumped from 11,000 in June to more than 275,000 in July — a 2,300% increase. The viral surge was so intense that it even influenced the wholesale price of strawberries. [5]
The psychological mechanism was exactly the same one that drives a luxury collection: the sense that if you don’t act now, the opportunity disappears. The difference is that this product cost less than R$20. FOMO doesn’t discriminate by price — it discriminates by desire and visibility.
Three out of five Gen Z consumers give in to impulse purchases — and this behavior shows up especially with products they already know and love, regardless of price range. [6]
When FOMO becomes a ritual: the Crumbl case
If there’s one example that illustrates how FOMO can build an entire business model, it’s Crumbl Cookies in the United States. The chain created a weekly flavor rotation: every Sunday night it reveals six new cookie flavors on social media, available for only seven days. [8]
The result was that eating a cookie became only half the experience — posting about it on social media was the other half. TikTok filled up weekly with review videos, hauls, and reactions, generating millions of views of organic content. [9]
The model took Crumbl past 1,000 locations and close to $1.5 billion in annual sales by 2024. But it also illustrates the dark side of using FOMO as a core strategy: when novelty becomes the only reason to come back, fatigue sets in. Sales per location fell, and customer satisfaction dropped from 4.2 to 3.7 out of 5 between 2022 and mid-2025. [8]
The golden rule: real scarcity, not manufactured
FOMO works when it’s authentic. The morango do amor lines were real. Crumbl’s flavors really did disappear. The Ghostface popcorn bucket really did sell out. In every one of these cases, the urgency wasn’t a visual effect — it was the reality of the product.
In a market where young consumers are increasingly savvy and quick to spot a trick, the difference between a FOMO campaign that builds community and one that destroys it comes down to exactly that: if the scarcity is real, the desire is real too.
The fear of missing out will keep moving carts. The question for brands is whether what they’re offering truly deserves that fear — or whether they’re just shouting “last chance!” in a market that has already learned to ignore false alarms.
Sources
[1] Soy.Marketing — El poder del FOMO: cómo aprovechar el miedo a perderse algo — https://soy.marketing/el-poder-del-fomo-como-aprovechar-el-miedo-a-perderse-algo-para-aumentar-las-ventas/
[2] Mailpro — Dominando el Marketing FOMO: Una Guía Paso a Paso — https://es.mailpro.com/blog/marketing-fomo
[3] SocialPubli — Cómo el FOMO Marketing revoluciona la estrategia de consumo — https://socialpubli.com/es/blog/fomo-marketing/
[4] Exame — Morango do amor: hype do TikTok turbina as vendas — https://exame.com/negocios/morango-do-amor-tiktok-produto-viral-vendendo-quanto/
[5] Exame / Bússola — Por que o morango do amor viralizou e como surfar essa onda — https://exame.com/bussola/por-que-o-morango-do-amor-viralizou-e-como-surfar-essa-onda/
[6] Americas Market Intelligence — 7 tendencias de consumo entre la Generación Z de América Latina — https://americasmi.com/insights/tendencias-consumidor-z-america-latina/
[7] Puro Marketing — Compras impulsivas: Millennials y Gen Z se arrepienten de las compras en redes sociales — https://www.puromarketing.com/16/212609/compras-impulsivas-millennials-generacion-arrepienten-cosas-compraron-influenciados-redes-sociales
[8] Food Drink Life — How the cookie crumbles: The rise and fall of Crumbl Cookies — https://fooddrinklife.com/rise-and-fall-of-crumbl-cookies/
[9] Medium / Shi Qi Ooi — Crumbl’s Genius, Terrible Business Model: How FOMO Fuels a Cookie Empire — https://medium.com/@shiqiooi/crumbls-genius-terrible-business-model-how-fomo-fuels-a-cookie-empire-77fcad198e7d