This post is in response to our Marketing fellow Alex Meisner’s Using Sex to Sell.

I do agree what the author said, that many advertisements are using sex to sell their products, in which women are portrayed as “things” of sexual desire. These ads are extremely unethically to me as well. At the end of the blog, the author leaves a question, “do we really need sex to sell?” From my perspective, everything happened with reasons. I am pretty sure that they know that it is unethical, nevertheless, why do companies use sex in advertising still? In my own opinion, sex is an effective selling tool, and that is one of the reasons why marketers keep using sex in the advertising in spite of the ethical issue. To some extent, the ads adopting sexual concept would bring higher profit to the company compared to using art or music in the ad.

A feature of sex in adverting is that the imagery used, such as that of a pretty woman, typically has no connection to the product being advertised (Sex in advertising, Wikipedia). Obviously, the image of sex used in advertising aims at attracting attention. Some people argue that a funny picture, an eye-catchy art or even just a creative caption can easily grab audience’s attention. Stepping further from just to grab audience’s attention at first sight, generating controversies probably is what the marketers want. As a result, to create the familiarity of the product. When an ad becomes controversial, it is easily to find that many people around you are talking about the ad, many comments or arguments about the ad in social media. When you finally realized that you are surrounding by the information about the product sold in that controversial ad, the product has been placed into your mind. In my point of view, also from a consumer perspective, people are likely to buy something they are familiar with or they’ve often heard of. And consumers are unlikely to take ad in to account when they are considering which product should they buy, while other factors, such as functions, are not that much different. Therefore, the sex in advertising may help generate more profit by instilling the image of the product to consumers.