Sex Sells (but a Commitment Can Help)

Haven't we all wondered whether sexy ads (whether Brooke Shields in those tight jeans, the Victoria Secret's TV ads, or even the six-pack Joe with a six pack biceps ) actually enhance top line sales?

Sure, there are little quants running around the advertising industry that will show reams of stats that either support or refute the impact of certain types of ads. For purposes of of my own opinion on the topic, I'll stay in Switzerland...but for lack of anything more newsworthy on the topic of advertising, I'll defer to today's G-rated NYT article courtesy of Alex Mindlin

"..Sex in advertising is generally thought to be more useful in selling to men than to women. But a study soon to be published in The Journal of Consumer Research finds that this effect is reversed when emotional intimacy justifies the sex.

In one experiment, the researchers found that women preferred a sexually explicit watch advertisement when the watch had a bow around it and was described as “a gift from a man to the special woman in his life.” But such positioning hurt the ad’s appeal to men. Drawing on previous research in sexual psychology, the authors note that women are more likely to “need the justification of relationship commitment for sexual behavior” and that men “typically felt quite uneasy about having to part with substantial pecuniary resources in a dating context.”

In another experiment, researchers had women proofread blocks of text (supposedly as part of a separate study), then rate a sexually explicit ad. Women who read about a loving, committed couple rated the ad more highly than did women who read about a couple in which the man was disloyal and philandering..."