Sex sells: The erotic content of media and marketing

Sexual content in advertising is used as a tool to gain the audience’s attention by evoking an emotional response. There are 5 dimensions of sexy ads such as functional, fantasy, symbolism, inappropriate and gender orientation which help to determine whether the sexual content is appropriate for the brand and product type. Sexual appeals come in the form of a visual element i.e. print ad, verbal element i.e. radio ad or in some cases both i.e. TV ads. Sexual attractiveness, sexual behaviour and sex esteem are the most common types of sexual content that is used in advertisements today. Ads can contain either one of the appeals or all, which depend on the product and media type because the ad has to match-up to the product.

Although women’s magazines use all appeals, sexual behaviour and esteem are most commonly used whereas with men’s magazines they prefer sexual behaviour appeals than any other appeal. Another important role for sex appeal in advertising is to persuade consumers. Sexual appeals are mainly used for low involvement products such as clothing; alcohol; beauty products etc. Their ads have peripheral cues that are relied on to motivate consumers to purchase the product. A study was conducted to determine what consumers find sexual in advertising, 66% felt the physical features of the model was sexual while 39% believed that it was the sexual behaviour. Between genders, men preferred sexual ads that contain only female models whereas their female counterparts preferred to see heterosexual couples. According to a content analysis studies, results showed that the sexual ads were more appealing and had a higher recognition than non-sexual ads of the same advertising campaign.

Between media type such as magazine and TV, magazines were more favourable for sexual content. In a study to determine which type of magazine is more likely to contain sexual ads, 55% of ads in women’s magazines were sexual therefore sexual ads are more likely to appear in women’s magazine than any other type. In every country there are regulations and standards that sexual content ads have to meet due to the fact the each country portrays sexual content differently as a result of their culture. For example European countries are more open to sexual content whereas Asian countries are more conservative and prefer the less suggestiveness form of sexual appeal advertising. Therefore the big question that advertisers need to ask in regards to international sex appeal advertising is whether to standardise or customise the advertising according to each of countries because what may work for one may or may not necessarily work for the other.