Sex Sells: The Queen’s Urinary Catheter Bag
Sex sells products and pimps sell sex; there may be a significant difference between the two, but for business-minded individuals, there’s money to be had in the exploitation of sexuality. One of those examples is arguably less appropriate than the other, except for the anti-capitalists amongst us, who are probably more inclined to pay for a blowjob, than buy perfume advertised by Kiera Knightley’s cleavage.
Speaking of cleavage, perfume adverts are a perfect example of how influential sex can be within advertising. Take Gucci’s, Gucci Guilty, the New Chapter advertisement (Gucci. 2018) [1], for example. The advert involves the incredibly attractive Evan Rachel Wood driving a sportscar (thank goodness for feminism), towards the phenomenally handsome Chris Evans, straddling a motorbike (how masculine!). The two vehicles leave behind a fiery trail of sexual desire, leading right into fifteen seconds of artistically-shot coitus, before the pair drive away from each other, and the Gucci logo is revealed. There are a couple of problems with this advertisement. Firstly, it’s unclear as to how much perfume needs to be sprayed, in order to have sex with Chris Evans. If you under-apply, do you end up engaging in intimate relations with Steve Buscemi? What about on the other end of the spectrum? There are very few men more attractive than Chris Evans, and if Leonardo DiCaprio from the nineties is fully booked, Gucci could potentially face a lawsuit. Secondly, it’s infuriating that nobody has taught Evan Rachel Wood that she needs to pee-after-sex. Driving off into the sunset may be an incredibly Romantic gesture, but it’s also a yeast-infection waiting to happen, and there are very few people that would find anything sexy about Thrush.
Despite the unfortunately unrealistic nature of perfume adverts, people continue to pay ludicrous amounts of money, in order to smell slightly less like themselves for a short period of time. When looking at the alternative ways in which these products are promoted, it becomes increasingly apparent as to why televised, family-friendly pornography (I’m not sure any pornography is ‘family-friendly’), is the primary focus for the marketing teams behind every new fragrance. It’s difficult to entice customers into buying your product, when the product itself looks like it’s just come from Queen Elizabeth’s urinary catheter bag.
Unless you’re a sick bastard, it’s impossible to describe the taste of perfume, and being a liquid, it feels remarkably like overpriced bottled-water (just drink from the tap like everyone else, you Tories). Even putting into words how a scent smells has proven to be an impossible task. On their official website, Chanel describes one of their most popular perfumes as follows: “The floral aldehydic bouquet is enhanced with citrus notes and voluptuous vanilla” (Chanel №5) [2]. Following in a similar vein, The Perfume Shop state that Dolce & Gabbana’s Light Blue fragrance is, “A fruity floral scent that speaks of sun-drenched days and nights that linger long in memory” [3]. Both of these descriptions are slightly poetic and suggest that nobody knows what the hell either fragrance smells like; by adding alliteration and suggesting that their perfume smells like time-itself, perhaps these companies can fool enough people into purchasing their forty-five pound bottle of “voluptuous” piss.
Having established that it’s impossible to advertise perfume through words alone, it’s no surprise that television advertising is seen as the next, natural step. Whether these adverts need to be sexual or not, is a question easily answered. Pornhub, as the name suggests, is a hub, for pornography. In 2018 alone, Pornhub received thirty-three-and-a-half billion visitors to their site, averaging ninety-two million visitors a day (Pornhub Insight, 2018) [4].
Granted, the majority of these would have been repeat offenders, but these statistics prove that people certainly enjoy watching explicit content from the comfort of their own home. Unfortunately, not everyone can find time to watch porn, and so sexually provocative perfume adverts are a happy-compromise for the average, middle-aged woman, who gets to drool over the sight of Chris Hemsworth in a tight-fitting suit (Boss, 2017) [5], whilst their husband does his fair-share of the housework. Admittedly, the million people that searched for ‘Incredible Hulk’ pornography in 2018, may indeed be disappointed by the comparatively tame nature of perfume ads, but the more normal amongst us can remain satisfied at the mere glimpse of Hemsworth’s bare shoulder, whilst we wait for the next instalment of whichever monotonous (I’m a Celebrity) television programme we’re addicted to.
References
[1] Miller, Frank, director. Gucci Guilty, the New Chapter (Noir Edit) — Full Version. YouTube, uploaded by GUCCI, 20 Nov. 2014. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=56&v=GIUA6iFQ8so. (Accessed: 02 November 2019).
[2] “N°5 eau de parfum: The sensual N°5.” Chanel, Chanel. Available at: https://www.chanel.com/en_GB/fragrance-beauty/fragrance/c/n5/eau-de-parfum.html (Accessed: 03 November 2019).
[3] “Dolce & Gabbana: Light Blue.” The Perfume Shop. The Perfume Shop. Available at: https://www.theperfumeshop.com/dolce-gabbana/light-blue/eau-de-toilette-for-her/p/12650EDTJU (Accessed: 03 November 2019).
[4] Pornhub Insights Editors. 2018 Year in Review. Available at: https://www.pornhub.com/insights/2018-year-in-review (Accessed: 04 November 2019).
[5] Refn, Nicholas Winding, director. BOSS Bottled: Man of Today with Chris Hemsworth | BOSS. YouTube, uploaded by BOSS, 12 Jul. 2017. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuolDtCniKc. (Accessed: 04 November 2019).
