Tone Down The Sex Machine

Brass Balls Wallpaper

The Sex Question

How much sex is to much sex when you are trying sell something.

In the book, Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy, author Martin Lindstrom suggests that sex doesn’t sell. All that erotically charged imagery actually overwhelms the brain, which can’t recall the product. For more details on the concepts, click here.

What does work, it turns out, is is sex with emotion, particularly sex with controversy. It requires that you create an intrigue to hook them into your offer.

Studies show “it takes as little as 2.5 seconds to make a purchasing decision.” Companies today know they have less than 2 seconds to catch your eye, lure you in and start a dialog. So you need to engage the prospect with the words, sounds, smells and visual imagery quickly.

From The Female Perspective

Research has shown that the average woman responds negatively to ads with explicit or gratuitous sexual content. It also looks like women are less offended by these ads if sexual imagery is viewed in the context of a committed relationship. A recent study, published in Journal of Consumer Research, finds that women respond more favorably to sexual ads when the item in the ad is described as a gift from a man to a woman. In addition, women have high positive responses to sexual ads that depict a committed and loving man — but not for those depicting a committed and loving woman.

Further results indicate that when viewing the sexual ads, women responded more favorably to the ad with the gift. However, men preferred the sexual ad without the gift.

The Latest Sex Sells Campaign

According to CEO Bob Parsons’ Go Daddy blog:

Our Web site has never been busier! Before the Super Bowl game was over, we received right at 1.5 million visits to our Web site. We had a whopping 2 million visitors for the day. This compares to last year when we had less than 1/2 million visitors.

A Lot Less Money Was Spent This Year

During last year’s Super Bowl, Go Daddy purchased and ran 3 spots – two spots during the game and one during the post-game. This year they purchased only 1 ad, which aired in the 2nd quarter. So for a fraction of the cost they generated 4 times the action.

Go Daddy Campaign Feedback

More than 160,000 customers took a survey after viewing the ad on GoDaddy.com’s Web site. 75% were male and 17% were female. The vast majorities of viewers liked “Exposure.” But here’s the surprise, 17.1% of males and 16.5% of females disliked the commercial – there was virtually no difference between the sexes!

Danica Patrick Working It

The Surge in Traffic Continues

Traffic to the GoDaddy Web site is up over 4 times normal levels. The real test concerning any ad’s effectiveness is simply this: did it generate sales?
In Go Daddy’s case, the answer is a resounding, “Yes. Sex sells.”

Sexual content in advertising must be appropriate to the product category and have a proper underlying message.

For example, In 2000 Heineken launched the “It’s All About the Beer” campaign. One spot, called “The Premature Pour,” shows a beautiful seductive woman pouring Heineken into a glass. When a guy across the bar responds by pouring his own, he nervously pours too fast and spills foam all over the table and himself.

The sexual content is implicit, yet direct. The sexual reference in this and other spots in the campaign worked, causing sales to rise 13% in the first two quarters of 2002. However, Steve Davis (VP of marketing in Heineken USA), claims that, “Provocative is a very good place to be, as long as we’re not inflammatory. But the spots also work for a different reason. From the tag line to the plot, they are about a desire for Heineken. Our ads make the beer the hero.”

A Little Sex History

Sex has been employed in advertising since the beginning of advertising. At the beginning, wood carvings and illustrations of attractive women (often unclothed from the waist up) adorned posters, signs, and ads for saloons, tonics, and tobacco. In several notable cases, sex in advertising has been claimed as the reason for increased consumer interest and sales.

In 1885, W. Duke & Sons inserted trading cards into cigarette packs that featured sexually provocative starlets. Duke grew to become the leading cigarette brand by 1890 (Porter, 1971). Woodbury’s Facial Soap, a woman’s beauty bar, was almost discontinued in 1910. The soap’s sales decline was reversed, however, with ads containing images of romantic couples and promises of love and intimacy for those using the brand (Account Histories, 1926).

Jovan Musk Oil, introduced in 1971, was promoted with sexual entendre and descriptions of the fragrance’s sexual attraction properties. As a result, Jovan, Inc.’s revenue grew from $1.5 million in 1971 to $77 million by 1978 (Sloan & Millman, 1979).

In contemporary mainstream consumer advertising (e.g., magazines, network and cable television), sex is present in promotional messages for a wide range of branded goods. Ads feature provocative images of well-defined women (and men) in revealing outfits and postures selling clothing, alcohol, beauty products, and fragrances. Advertisers such as Calvin Klein, Victoria’s Secret, and Pepsi use these images to cultivate a ubiquitous sex-tinged media presence. Also, sexual information is used to promote mainstream products not traditionally associated with sex. For example, the Dallas Opera recent reversal of declining ticket sales has been attributed to the marketing of the more lascivious parts of its performance.

Over the past two decades, the use of increasingly explicit sexual imagery in consumer-oriented print advertising has become almost commonplace. Sexuality is considered one of the most powerful tools of marketing and particularly advertising. Post-advertising sales response studies have shown it can be very effective for: