Advertisements Using Sex to Sell

It is believed that an alarming number of advertising are using sex as a way of grasping the attention of the consumers and ultimately selling products that they are advertising for. A professor for the UGA Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, Tom Reichert, says that advertising are using sex in their advertisements because it has proven to be quite effective. He believes that sex is something that sells because when people see things that relate to sex in an advertisement, they actually pay attention to what they are seeing. It is something that attracts people and they give it the attention. It is hard to get people to pay attention to things but advertisements that feature sexual content often are noticed, whether it is a good type of notice or a negative.

Reichert points out that there are many gullible people who fall for the advertisements they see. For example, advertisements for the Axe body spay show women flocking to men, going crazy over men who wear the cologne spray. However, in reality, it is highly unlikely for that to occur to a man simply because he is wearing a type of cologne. Brand impressions also play an important role in advertising too. Certain brands that have been sexualized, such as Victoria’s Secret and Calvin Klein, are not very different from Hanes but people often have a better perception of those brands because they are sexualized, which makes people want them even more. They see Hanes as traditional and/or boring but they see Victoria’s Secret and Calvin Klein as hot, sexy and happening.

Researchers have found information that shows within the past few decades, dating all the way back to 1983 up until 2003, the sexual advertisements have continued to increase more and more. Sex has been used to sell just about anything a person can think of within these past few decades, ranging from alcohol to underwear and even bank services, which is surely far from sexy for most people. The increase in sexual advertisement continues to increase with each decade that passes by, showing that sexual imagery is now being used as main components in content advertisements as a way of gaining attention and getting people to buy the products that are being advertised. Three specific areas, the entertainment area, beauty area, and alcohol area all seemed to have the highest amount of sexualized advertisements in magazine. It is believed that sex can help to sell low-risk products but it will not always work for products that are considered high-risk. Categories such as alcohol, beauty and entertainment seem to do the best when it comes to sexualizing the advertisements and receiving a positive response from it.