It seems that companies these days love to use sex to sell products. Sexual innuendo, whether cleverly subdued or downright in-your-face, seems ubiquitous. Many ads pertaining to such subject matter also seem to totally go against the concepts of positioning, showing neither a product’s similarities nor its differences in respect to the competition. They feature scantily clad men and women taking up huge chunks of space, with the actual product relegated somewhere in the corner. They imply that the products will get you laid.
Two questions arise from this issue. 1) Is it morally risqué? and 2) Is it effective? While I’m no expert on such matters, I think the ads are acceptable, though not necessarily appropriate. Many companies are faced with few other alternatives than using sex to divert customers’ attention from the merits of the product itself, because they cannot differentiate their products from others’ and that other companies are using sex as a tool as well. To not join the bandwagon would spell certain death unless companies develop novel alternatives. As to the efficacy of the ads, I would have to assume that many consumers are indeed swayed by the sizzling images, otherwise most companies would have given up with the sex already.