The Better Mousetrap

Curve, Contour & Come-On: How persuasive is sexual persuasion?

 

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 8^th, 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. 

 

 

Irrational Reasoning, Magpie Desire & the Watch from Outer Space

 

 

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)

 

“The marketers decided it is dangerous to assume that people can be trusted to behave in a rational way… If people couldn’t discriminate reasonably, marketers reasoned, they should be assisted in discriminating ‘unreasonably’, in some easy, warm, emotional way.” 

Vance Packard, The Hidden Persuaders, 1957

 

Or as my granny, Marjorie, used to say, “Tha’s now’t so queer as folk”.

 

A common expression in the North of England, and a Statement of Truth, albeit from the mouths of those likely born sometime around the beginning of the last century, and unlikely to still be with us. Of course, it’s a statement of truth that still applies, however thick or thin the accent involved. And while queer may now assume rather different connotations, few would be wise to challenge Marjorie’s meaning. There’s nothing odder, nothing stranger, than folk.

 

We are a Curious & Compelling pick ‘n’ mix of Issues & Motivations, a never-ending riddle, constantly surprising, so often unpredictable.  

 

And I love that. It’s one of the reasons I work in advertising.

 

Why do we do what we do? Why do we behave the way we behave? What motivates us? Drives us? What issues lie beneath?

 

Fine questions, all of them.

 

People are a mystery... and yet... they are also not.

 

Given the right triggers, the right stimulus, people can be quite predictable. With the exception of Impulse Behaviours born of clinical madness, all behaviour is with reason.

 

Every reason provides a guilty tell into the inner workings of the human heart or mind. What’s so compelling is that only occasionally is human reason anchored in straight, neatly tram-tracked logic. Human beings we are, Vulcans we are not – meaning, there’s method to almost all our apparent madness, but Mr. Spock would have a hard time joining the dots.

 

Whenever research investigates people’s media habits, it always reveals a massive over-claim in the declared reading of the more cerebral and high-brow titles. The Economist, The Times, Business Week, all are examples that would punch double their circulation if everyone who said they read them actually did. 

 

 

The Economist: one of the many brilliant print executions by AMV.

 

We’re not good at admitting our guilty pleasures, but white lies that portray us as wider-read and better-informed come easy. We reason, why should a modest thing like honesty get in the way of a more impressive self-image?

 

Veblen Goods

 

The first time I came across Veblen goods, I had to marvel at how it so succinctly illustrates “irrational reasoning”.

 

Veblen goods, aka. “I WANT to pay more! The MORE expensive it is, the MORE I LIKE it!”

 

“Veblen goods are a group of commodities for which people's preference for buying them increases as a direct function of their price, as greater price confers greater status.”

Source: Wikipedia

 

Wanting to pay more is, at face value, Absurdly Irrational – but face value and Snob Value are very different beasts. With Veblen goods, the notion of value is re-interpreted, is no longer literal, meaning Snob Value is simply a different kind of ROI.

 

What does the purchase of luxury goods afford? Potentially a concise and consciously indiscrete badge, screaming, “I’m a success, have money, can afford this! Acknowledge me!”

 

Our Conspicuous Consumption is now so evolved, so beyond blushing, that it can even afford to be ironic and still maintain the ticket price. Consider Bling... H20. $40 bottled water decorated in Swarovski crystals.

 

 

 

We can all be (“thieving”) magpies in our fancy for shiny trinkets, in our lust for jewellery and gems and all things bling. And if “bling banditry” is a touch vulgar for our particular strand of materialistic snobbery, alternatives remain to still tone-down AND over-indulge. We may walk the line signed stealth wealth, of discrete luxury and inferred “high quality”, so displaying our Impeccable Taste, as to be similarly appreciated by a “Good Taste Set” of fellow lux goods in-the-know-ers who are  just like us.

 

 

Louis Vuitton, print ad, May 2010: “The seamstress... A needle, linen thread, beeswax, and infinite patience protect each over-stitch from humidity and the passage of time.”

 

Following complaints to the ASA, the above Louis Vuitton ad was pulled for being misleading. Louis Vuitton handbags are in fact machine stitched. 

 

Stella Artois

 

Placing Economic Theory in the hands of a copy writer, Stella Artois’ UK strap-line (from 1982 to 2007) was a sharp, snappy salute to Veblen.

 

“Reassuringly expensive” was a brilliant piece of copy-writing, but the real genius lay in the fact it was referring to a lager, AND in that it needed to slight-of-hand drinkers into happily paying more because of the greater Duty placed on higher ABV beverages.

 

Feel reassured by the expense. Enjoy paying more! What an awesome head-space for any brand to occupy. On trade, at the bar, Stella Artois became the gold-standard for what it was to be a “Premium” lager.

 

 

Stella Artois print campaign, “Reassuringly expensive”, by Lowe Lintas. Two fine examples, from 2000.

 

Crisply ironic and largely unappreciated, off-trade, up-and-down the supermarket aisles of Britain, Stella Artois (in bottle and can) ran on close to 52-week-a-year promotional discount. “Reassuringly Expensive”... and “Always on Offer”.

 

For a good while, Stella Artois got to have it both ways, with their off-trade discounting seen by shoppers as an opportunistic “deal” rather than a contradictory pricing strategy that devalued brand perception. It was all very clever stuff, with Stella Artois ‘Marketing’ showing all the wiles of a seen-it-and-sold-it-all rug trader in a dusty souk.

 

Patek Philippe

 

Patek Philippe’s advertising also makes its pitch to offer the best of both worlds. It’s all treat, no guilt, for the high-income family man who wants to feel selfless about indulging more than £10k on a wristwatch.

 

 

Patek Philippe print ad, May 2011: “You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation."

 

I once worked with a Creative Director who had a borderline physical reaction every time he saw this campaign. And no, it wasn’t a positive physical reaction, more Big Red Welts of Contempt – but like Stella Artois, here too, there is a blend of genius at work.

 

Diametrically opposing a world of Fast Consumerism, of layer-upon-layer of Consumer Landfill made ever deeper by so much disposable flat-pack Swedish furniture, we have Patek Philippe. We have quality, craftsmanship; we have a sense of true timelessness.

 

A wildly self-indulgent luxury good becomes “an heirloom”. For your son, where selfishness is flipped as familial benevolence, materialism as a mortality dampener.

 

The “social sciences” may just text-book this up as “over-justification”, but it’s quite brilliantly effective. No one likes to be in conflict (cognitive dissonance is no fun), and no one has to be with this kind of easy, multi-levelled justification from the knowing pen of Tim Delaney (of Leagas Delaney).

 

Surely any advertising that manages such a blatant and effective guilt-appeasing hustle, and sugars the purchase by implying a small shot at remembrance and immortality has to nail a few jury votes?

 

Halda

 

Authenticity & Rarity are of course among the more rational high-price-point justifiers.

 

A friend of mine who runs an ad agency (the seriously hot and seriously cool, Forsman & Bodenfors) also side-lines in the watch business. Hans worked on a watch prototype that he then sent into space, aboard Discovery, decorating the wrist of Swedish astronaut Christer Fuglesang.

 

“The Halda Concept” is a 128 piece-only wristwatch that comes with two inter-changeable “modules”, one mechanical, the other digital, the former for planet Earth, the latter for those moments spent journeying The Final Frontier.

 

 

 

Made from NASA certified “TECAMAX”, it’s very lightweight, resistant to extreme “space-like” temperatures, and the Vertu-like Digital module also measures G-Force. All in all, it’s all rather James Bond.

 

The primary target group for a “Space Tested” Halda wristwatch? The 5000 people who’ve made a down-payment on a $200k ticket to travel by “the world’s first commercial spaceline”, Virgin Galactic. And the secondary target, as Hans put it best, “someone who wants a hilariously expensive bragging piece on their arm.”

 

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Headlining Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Wikipedia runs with:

 

“Human beings have wants and desires which influence their behaviour. Only unsatisfied needs influence behaviour, satisfied needs do not.”

 

I say the Human Condition is a Constantly Unsatisfied one. This is not a bad thing. This is not a cynical statement. We are all in a permanent state of desire, of wanting, for one thing or another. “Desire” exists to address a deficiency, whether for food to appease hunger, or a luxury handbag, to imbue social standing. Both desires are for a “return to balance”, where a current imbalance exists.

 

Advertising is The Business of Selling. To do this well, it must appreciate what people are really buying.

 

Typically, they’re buying gestures, gestures that Contribute & Compensate, that return balance. They’re potentially buying Social Status & Self-esteem, Recognition & Respect, Belonging via “Clique Approval”. They’re buying Individualism, or maybe the short-term “Feel Good” of Accumulation.

 

All advertising is an Appeal to Act, so behind the appeal is a clarion call to our most rooted human desires.

 

Does advertising create desire, or does it merely play to those perennial needs that exist within us? Is effective advertising the Sinister Science of Hidden Persuasion, or simply an empathetic mirroring of the human condition?

 

Advertising that works knows its audience all too well. Advertising makes most sense when it has the clearest sense of its audience, however irrational, conflicted or seemingly queer that audience may be.

SP.

"Sell it to me" - The Consigliore Positioning

 

Far as I’m concerned, everyone in advertising is “A Suit”. Everyone’s accountable. Everyone’s in Sales. The client pays the bill, you get your salary. No client, no gig, no money for smarties. Just long lonely contemplative walks in the park. Without any smarties to munch on.

 

Good agency planners are only as good as their ability to sell their thinking, agency creatives their words and pictures. McCann-Erickson headlines what they do with Ideas Well Told. That’s their mantra. I think “Ideas Well Sold” is pointedly even closer to the mark, and I see little wrong with that. Have a great idea; selling it should be easy, but still make sure you do it well.

 

Of course, “sales”, “selling”, “salesman”, these are dirty words. They come with ugly baggage. The salesman is desperate, is dishonest. Self-interest is his eternal ulterior motive.

 

 

Alec Baldwin doing what Alec Baldwin does best. Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

 

I say there’s selling... and then there’s selling. The great thing about the ad industry is, when it’s done well, you’re selling and your client’s buying, and there’s not some tug-of-war across a Ravine of Suspicion. The agency work is produced for them, based on what you believe they need and believe will work.

 

With hope, you want to sell your client a Ferrari, that’s really reliable, with great mileage, cheap parts, and the kind of roll cage that goes in a Volvo. “Sales” is never ugly or ulterior if you’re selling an idea you truly believe in.

 

In the best Client-Agency relationships, there is no Them-and-Us. You don’t sit across a table from one another, opposing, brokering a cease fire or resolving a trade union dispute. You occupy the same side of the table as your client. You trouble and preoccupy about the same issues. You go to bed and worry the same worries – and if you’re good at what you do, you wake up in the morning with a few ideas. That’s your value. That’s your contribution to the relationship. Your role is that of consigliore.

 

 

The Consigliore Positioning.

 

Agency Planners and Creatives who roll-up their sleeves, sell well and make it happen, who get the job done - they’re worth their salt (and their smarties).

 

Because these are Our Times; life within a Capitalist structure; post-Industrial, mostly light industry, light on manufacturing. It pretty much leaves us with Our Ideas, our conviction, and our ability to bring our thinking to the table and hypnotically to life.

 

Audacious Ideas, Genuine Innovation, So-Sharp-It-Might-Cut Creativity. That’s The Ad Industry Well Told, and that’s no bad thing. In fact, it’s the complete opposite. It’s all good and as it should be.

 

So go sell it.

SP.