Sex in advertising 101

My answer to this young marketing student, who was battling with an assignment on sex in advertising, was very simply that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

Sex in advertising gets the attention of the rampant hormone brigade and up the noses of the Mother Grundies. It is not something I would recommend because there are far better ways of getting the attention of everybody.

Challenge

That's the big marketing challenge today. Not to throw up one's hands and say, "Well, we are bound to upset somebody because we can't please everybody." But, rather, to work hard towards trying to be all things to all men and women without compromise or being boring.

Yet the subject of sex and advertising is critically important because this dodgy combination, along with that of sex and violence, can cost marketers a fortune in wasted budgets.

A few years ago, a fascinating study by Iowa State University psychology professor Brad Bushman showed that watching movies or TV programmes with strong sexual references and violence interfered with the viewer's ability to remember ads that were flighted before, during and even after the show.

Sex forgets

Which suggests that the popular notion - of more sex and violence in shows meaning more viewers and therefore more advertising exposure - is flawed.

According to the study, the most telling impact on sex and violence inducing advertising memory loss was in the 18-25 age group.

Overall, the study showed that audiences exposed to explicit sex and violence in movies and on TV remembered 67% fewer products advertised.

All of which goes to show that the most critical part of advertising is not the advertisement itself but where it is placed. Just sticking it in the middle of a whole lot of sex and violence probably just reduces advertising to what George Orwell described as the "rattling of a stick in a swill bucket..."

Won't disappear

Now, while this suggests that marketers should be looking beyond the sheer numbers and profiles of viewers of movies and TV shows when placing ads, it doesn't necessarily follow that sex and violence on our screens will disappear.

Because, as the former dean of the University of Pennsylvania's Communications Department, George Gerbner, pointed out, "In this global economy of ours the movies and TV programmes that sell best all over the world are those that need no translation, have no subtlety of plot and require no understanding of culture."

Precisely.