SEX!
I’m betting that got your attention.
MONEY makes the world go round, but it’s not the only Irresistible Force. SEX gives more than a helping hand, populates the place as it turns. It’s why there’s So Much Sex in so much of our advertising.
The adage “Sex sells” is etched in the earliest-formed tablets of advertising theory to make their way down off Mount Madison... but the Perennial Doubters and New Order Thinkers remain justly entitled to ask, “But does it?”
Does sex persuade purchase?
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I can think of TWO very logical reasons for using sex in advertising as the preferred tool of persuasion.
Logical Reason 1: Taking advantage of what’s already Front-of-Mind.
Men think about sex every 7 seconds. That’s the popular myth, buoyed by all those rotating articles in Maxim and Cosmo.
Research carried out in 2010 scaled it back, “found the average male turns their thoughts to sexual intercourse 13 times a day – a total of 4,745 times every year. (In comparison, women think about sex just five times day – or 1,825 times a year.)” Source: The Telegraph, Jan 8th, 2010
Marketeers talk a lot about getting their brand Front-of-Mind. Given that we are sexual beings, prone to preoccupy, some even obsess about sex, it logically plays that a brand might as well give itself a head start and slipstream the preoccupation.
Logical Reason 2: Cutting-through the Commercial Din
Marketeers and their brands also face the daunting challenge of rising above The Noise. Depending on the study, researcher’s claim that the Average Urban Dweller is assaulted with between 2000 and 4000 commercial messages every day. The figure, of course, can be sliced and diced by compass point, maturity of urban environment, all number of variables, but the point is, even if the low-ball figure of 2000 stacks up, that’s A Lot of Noise. And how much of this is just White Noise & Wallpaper, messages that miss the mark, that are blanked by commuters on autopilot, by savvy and cynical consumers numb to a never-ending deluge of over-sell? Using sex in advertising should help a brand cut-through, leap-frog and rise above (the pun’s there if you want it) the commercial din.
Using sexual content is a simple and sure-fire ploy for attention; that against a backdrop of 2000 commercial messages or more, we’ll still halt in our tracks, crane our neck, hopefully give ourselves whiplash so we can (figuratively) check-out “the women in the red dress”.
“Are you listening to me... or are you looking at the women in the red dress?” (The Matrix, 1999)
For these 2 logical reasons, the following is true.
“One fifth of all advertising today uses overt sexual content to sell its products.”
Sex in Advertising: Perspectives on the Erotic Appeal (2005)
Then there’s the COUNTER ARGUMENT.
The one that says one fifth of all advertising today has got it... ALL WRONG.
In Buyology (2008), citing brand recall studies performed by MediaAnalyzer Software & Research, Martin Lindstrom proposes that ads with sexual content are HALF AS EFFECTIVE as non-sexual ads.
“9.8% of the Men who had viewed the ads with sexual content were able to remember the correct brand or product in question, compared to almost 20% of men who had seen the non-sexual ones.”
Consistently trending with female viewers too, the stats read 10.85% and 22.3% audience recall respectively.
It’s a pretty crotch-grabbing headline Lindstrom’s shooting for.
Guess what, Sex does NOT sell after all! One fifth of advertising is GROSSLY MISGUIDED. The more distracting the image, the more likely our cognitive abilities are also disarmed, leaving viewers unable to, as it were, process the main thrust of the ad, the actual “brand sell”.
I accept that sexy ads using distracting images... can distract. This is their very purpose. And I believe there's a strong counter to Lindstrom’s Counter Argument.
Fashion brand Sisley “doing a Wonderbra”, in 2007. Location: Hong Kong.
And that Wonderbra poster, by TBWA (1995). Market: UK
The Counter-Counter Argument
People aren’t typically exposed to ads (whether TV commercials or Big Posters) just once. Almost no ad campaign is designed to be seen once, and once only. Blink, gone. No, that's not how it is. Outdoor posters are posted in two week cycles. It’s common for some advertisers to buy certain poster locations on a long-term holding.
The Media Planners go to great pains to stress “effective frequency”, simply the optimal number of times an audience should be exposed to a commercial message so that it may “stick”, prompt “consideration”, serve as a “purchase-trigger”.
All the MediaAnalyzer study really suggests is that a higher Average Frequency (multiple exposure) needs to be set in order for audiences to “take in” Curve & Contour AND Word & Logo, thus connecting all the message dots.
Just in case you weren’t looking bottom right, this print ad is for Lynx shower gel.
There’s a second point too, beyond frequency of exposure, that’s far more interesting. What happens once Brand Attribution is established? How do audiences then feel about that brand? I’d argue they will be more passionately disposed (or disinclined) to an emotionally charged, heavily sexualised brand gesture.
How much do you enjoy the ad of the hot brunette in the skimpy tank-top winking at you? How much do you enjoy that image of the college hunk with the cubed abdominals blue-steeling into the breeze? Once you make the link that it’s American Apparel, or Abercrombie, or whomever, how do you then feel about that brand?
Because we do enjoy some of these ads, are aroused by them. We’re sexual creatures with button-pressing physiological responses.
No question, the use of semi-clad, half-naked and evocatively posed models is going to cause strong physiological and cognitive responses in any viewer with a heart-beat. A rise in skin temperature, pupil dilation, increased heart rate, all our quite likely and likely hoped for by those responsible for making the ad.
This flavour of advertising very consciously tries to put its viewer “in the frame”, creates a mental scenario and “implies outcome”. From adidas, the close-to-surface subtext, look what will happen to you when you wear our trainers...
The more suggestive, more explicit, more provocative, more indecent, the stronger the reaction, whether favourable or negative.
D&G had to be angling for Absolute Outrage with this 2006 print execution.
The equal to parading a Wife Beating Rules t-shirt at a Women’s Rights Rally, this “Gang Rape as Fashionista Fairy Tale” was later pulled.
A scandalous, sensationalist campaign can Wake the World Up, get the blogosphere spinning, the whispering classes whispering, the tabloids in a tizz. Create buzz, and you’ve got people actively looking for “that ad... with the guy... with the enormous...”
You get the idea.
People talking about and hunting out a campaign – so they too are In-the-Know, able to make their own minds up - that’s Brand Nirvana.
Tom Ford was clearly comfortable with the prospect of a little controversy when he signed off this “visually-arresting” print campaign for his Men’s fragrance launch in 2007.
More than a little obvious maybe, Ford went for visuals of the explicitly eye-popping variety.
Explicitly suggestive is an equally popular ploy. From nearly 40 years ago, National Airlines were only too happy suggesting how Men should feel and what they might like to do to their stewardesses.
From the same era of less reformed gender politics, Tripalet cigars proposed that female dotage and devotion was simply a matter of blowing (smoke) in her face.
One feels for all those suffragettes.
While it’s easy to Marvel & Appal at the social mores of decades-past, how many Leaps & Bounds have we truly made in the name of sexual equality?
From 2009, Burger King went the none-too-subtle route when suggesting what would happen when confronted with their new "Super Seven Incher”.
Burger King, 2009. Market: Singapore.
And maybe that’s the thing with sexual innuendo and suggestion. It doesn’t work if it’s too subtle. It can only be, by definition, Really Rather Obvious.
Moet & Chandon, 2011. Moet spokesperson Scarlett Johansson demonstrates her firm grip on the situation.
Fundamentals like “know your audience” clearly apply, clearly remain fundamental. Men and Women don’t of course respond to the same universal set of turn-on’s. One man’s “bit of healthy fun” can easily be another woman’s lifetime crusade for legislation-change. As Billy Crystal puts it far better, “Women need a reason to have sex. Men just need a place.”
One of the big fears is that a campaign will be a turn-off, or worse still, achieve public outcry and backlash... but I think the brands who operate in this space do so comfortably, happy to polarise, even keen to offend, intent on dividing audiences into Titillated Onlookers and Outraged Objectors.
Luxury brands, for example, aren’t mass brands. Indeed, they’re Snobbish Without Apology, more than implying, if you’re so easily offended, a prude, then you’re really not for us, not our sort of consumer. If you don’t “get it”, it’s proof you’re not really a “Tom Ford” kind of person, one of the Emanuel Ungaro In-Crowd, not fit to be seen in American Apparel.
Emanuel Ungaro, appealing to our Inner Voyeur.
American Apparel, showing or perhaps censoring the goods.
Take this press and poster work for travel brand Club 18-30, all visual innuendo and double-take.
Club 18-30, by Saatchi & Saatchi. Market: UK
When we first sat round a table and pitched this work to the Club 18-30 client, our line of argument was that it was cheeky, playful, really quite hilarious, and anyone who felt otherwise just “didn’t know funny” and was simply, painfully, without humour. The Club 18-30 Marketing Director of the time barely broke a smile. Not even a grin. Perhaps a slight facial suggestion of constipation, but it was hard to tell. We could have all been playing poker. The work was shelved, but not forgotten, file-tagged to fight another day. A few years past, a new marketing director, and an agency with a long memory scheduled a fresh meeting. The work was bought, and a new campaign created some shelf space in the agency.
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“I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1939 - 2005)
Hunter was keeping it personal, wasn’t of course referencing The World of Advertising, but he could have been. It’s not such a stretch.
Sex, certainly, does work in advertising. It works to Promote and deliberately Provoke in equal measure. The line from the movie Heathers (1988) applies, “the extreme always seems to make an impression”, and the advertising community knows this all too well.
Of course, the Question & Concern is how far is too far? When is close-too-the-wind unacceptably too-damn-close? Because each “latest extreme” raises the average, sets a New Normal, and up’s the stakes in order for a brand to trump its competition and achieve the same level of reaction next time round. The Advertising Community has a responsibility here. Material that’s “plastic-wrapped and on the top-shelf” shouldn’t translate to the side of a skyscraper. Even advertising isn’t immune to the observation of “everything in moderation.”
In the case of advertising, the headline holds firm.
Sex sells... so long as you do it well. Life and Advertising has many a parallel.
SP.
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