Friday, November 03, 2006

Sex and More Sex

OK, let’s be honest. We like to think the world is politically correct, that integrity is paramount, and that buying decisions are made purely on intelligence. Surveying advertising blogs this week, I was quickly reminded that’s not so. Sex sells.

For example, look at this beautiful Asian woman’s naked back pushing ink for Office Max of all places. I’m serious. We’re talking Office Max here.

How about this absolutely shameless use of cleavage to sell bowling? Compliments of Bowlmor lanes. Media Orchard says cleavage will sell anything, including landscaping. How about Jewish social networking ads with a scantily-clad, 007-esque spy gal, including cleavage in rubber?

There are many, even more shameless examples. Hey, it’s not all (mostly, but not all) about using women and their bodies. Yes, for my lady readers, here’s an ad selling tech with naked guys.

Thanks to adrants for my brief research (a good distraction from proposal writing). Not quite sure how to conclude this one, other than this type of advertising is probably here to stay. It’s obviously working, why else would so many agencies keep churning it out? I’m interested in your thoughts, so feel free to post.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I suppose one rationale for this type of advertising is that it registers in a primitive part of our brains. By using flesh and curves (or, alternatively, fear and paranoia), something is activated in the deep recesses and hopefully the product name can hitch along for the ride. Pandering to the lowest common denominator in all of us works and it's easy. (Darth Bush teaches Marketing 101.) We can accept as consumers, our basest of emotions and drives to be exploited to sell anything from a hamburger to office supplies. But in a society so inundated with tits and ass, I can only hope the messages that play to our higher senses (hope, humor or enlightenment, eg.) are the messages that break through. I think the important question here is to what extent are we creating members of society that view sexuality purely in terms of commercialism and exploitation? In this light, can we really freak about a couple of gay dudes getting married?

2:21 PM  

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