Sex sells. This popular precept has been the guiding direction towards which entrepreneurship has been heading towards over the last decade. However, this method, as effective as it may be is having a detrimental effect on the society today. According to Statistics Canada, while the teenage pregnancy rate originally had been dropping in the last decade, the pregnancy rate has been going up recently. I believe that this positively correlates with the increasing number of advertisements on billboards, television, newspapers, and the internet that use sex in order to market products.
Specifically, Axe has been using TV commercials with a very sexual theme. Most of these commercials follow a similar script – a dork uses an Axe product and is suddenly blessed with ridiculous sex appeal. Ignoring the obvious gap in logic, this advertisement is a good measure of how prominent the concept of sex is in our community. Simply owing to the fact that these commercials yields results is a good indicator on how much value our society places on sex. All these notions pressure both guys and girls to engage in sexual activity earlier than they would have liked. This not only has a detrimental impact by increasing unwanted pregnancies indirectly, but also through the blatant increase in sexual harassment crimes.
While advertisements targeted towards younger adults using sex is definitely effective, I personally believe that it is morally unscrupulous. I don’t believe anyone has the right to judge under-aged aged sex; however, I do believe that children shouldn’t be exposed to sexual content until they are old enough not to be easily manipulated by things that they watch on TV and on the internet. Ultimately, a trade-off must be made for the profits reaped by using sexual advertising with the harmful effects imposed by this growing trend.
Sources:
2) http://www.charlatan.ca/2012/09/a-long-hard-look-at-the-porn-industry/Axe Commercial
Video Link: Axe Commercial