Sex Sells, But Who’s Buying?
Sex sells: that’s the old adage anyway, but people are starting to question whether sex really does sell, and if does, is it any good at its job. Researchers don’t seem to be able to agree, so here’s a quick guide so you can decide for yourself…
We’ve always known it, haven’t we?
Women have been relegated to a role of the weak and helpless being that needs a real man to help them… open a ketchup bottle. Yep — you heard right. A ketchup bottle. You’d think that, by the 21st century, we’d have moved beyond that, but the use of sexual images is actually rising. A recent study of full-page ads in publications as diverse as Playboy (I know that’s a bit obvious), Newsweek, Cosmopolitan and Time (slightly less obvious) showed that beautiful people in various states of (un)dress and levels of (intimate) contact were present in 15% of the 3000+ ads they reviewed. That was in 1983. We’d all like to think society has moved on, after all, we’re in the third or fourth wave of feminism, or even post-feminism (no-one seems to be able to agree), so you’d think we’d have evolved by now, wouldn’t you? Twenty years later, at the beginning of a bright new millennium, the proportion of ads appealing to our basic instincts had almost doubled. 2003 and 27% of adverts used sex. OK, the adverts were most likely to be peddling alcohol, entertainment and beauty products, which may indicate a link to impulse buying and an instinctual drive linked to sex, procreation and the survival of the species, or greater leisure time and disposable income, or maybe it’s just a reflection of the way sex, and women, are still viewed in society
More (clothes) can’t mean more sales, can it?
Having sexier models and more risqué situations doesn’t convert to higher sales, especially if the ad misses the emotional target and is offensive rather than alluring. Whilst it’s true that there is a lot more flesh on show in the world today, that could just be reflecting social norms — cleavage isn’t just relegated to 18-rated films anymore, it can be seen during a quick walk down most High Streets. We live in a world where information is increasingly absorbed through multiple senses. Fifty years ago it wasn’t unusual for an advert to have several paragraphs of text, but nowadays you may only get the brand and the product name. Campaigns are coordinated between print, TV, internet and social media and the complexity of these delivery systems can make it a minefield for advertisers as advertisers demand more for less. We’ve also become more aware of the semiotics of advertising — the little women is no longer seen as a slightly patronising way of referring to “the wife” but a way of declaring the superiority of men over women, of reinforcing the idea that a woman’s place is in the kitchen or in the bed and not in a position of power or authority.
Even when a woman is shown in authority, there are signs that she cannot be there without the aid of the right cosmetics, the high-heeled shoes or the figure-hugging suit, often worn without a top underneath it. It’s hard to imagine the reverse — a man having to wear a suit with no shirt or being expected to use the “right” hair product to be successful. This is what adverts are telling us we should aspire to.
The aim of an advert is to make people remember the brand and the product in a good way, but how to achieve it? Brand recall is one of the holy grails of advertising Brand recall may be triggered by more than a sexy image; many people only need to hear the opening notes of Dvorak’s New World Symphony before memories of small boys pushing their bikes up steep cobbled hills to deliver their loaf of Hovis bread in the rain come flooding back. In fact, according to Adwatch, the public’s best-recalled brands, best-liked ads, and most memorable individual ads had a distinct lack of sex appeal in their content.
That was an ad to remember…
Whilst it’s true that some of the more controversial ads can make a bigger impact on the news (beach-ready bodies anyone?), that’s not going to put money in the till if no-one can remember what the product, or even the brand, was. Science has shown that the more you engage with information the more likely it is to be embedded in your long-term memory. This could be why adverts that tell a story catch the viewers’ interest that little bit longer; who’ll forget the epic rivalry between Colin the builder and Dave the office worker (#Epicdanceoff) for Moneysupermarket.com in a hurry? You could argue that even this campaign used sex to a degree, with high heels and suggestive dancing, but by turning stereotypes and social norms on their head, they’ve almost given it an anti-sexism edge and in doing so, created the UK’s most memorable advert of 2016.
On the flip side, it was also one of the most complained about adverts of that year, thanks to the suggestive dancing. They seem to have gone some way to addressing these concerns with the next round of adverts which were just as memorable (if you’re a child of the 80s) thanks to He-Man and Skeletor’s dirty dancing.
And the conclusion?
They say cats and pornography kept the internet going in the early days.
Perhaps it’s time for advertisers to realise that it’s still cats and sex, but maybe, just maybe, the most effective kittens in advertising have four legs.
