The Book Sex Sells!

1464 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Dolce and gabbana advertisement

Sex sells a common phrase which turns out to be very truthful and also the title of Rodger Streitmatter's book, Sex Sells! The Medias Journey from Repression to Obsession. It seems like no other human act drives "buying behavior" as much as sex appeal does. Therefore advertisers manipulate this human drive and than offer their products as a path of love, beauty and desirability which is their main purpose of advertising. In other words the main purpose of advertising is to sell products and what advertisers must do to get people to buy these products is to make products desirable to the chosen target consumers. The pioneering of bringing prurience to advertising was Calvin Klein, starting with women's jeans going then to men's underwear and ending up with perfume for both sexes at the end. Perfume advertising is a large contributor to sex appeal. In both ads for Opium and Dolce & Gabbana perfumes advertisers use sexual seduction and influence to sell their product. They use sex appeal to grab our attention and play with our fears and desires and they manipulate us by fulfilling our erotic fantasies and dreams.

Advertisers use whatever they can to attract the reader. From a sexual appealing look to a word. One of the most helpful approaches is sex of course which can capture anyone's attention. The ad for Opium perfume depicts a young brunet that has nicely shaped body and wears nothing but golden slippers, necklace and bracelet. Model is laying down seeming like she is enjoying herself and maybe experiencing orgasm. Again in Dolce & Gabbana ad, we see man and woman having passionate foreplay; with one hand he is pulling her bra strap down while with other touching her breast … and she is taking her panties off. In this ad, the naked female body and idea of sex is used to get the image of their product into the reader's memory. "Newsweek…wrote: The strategy is that, while the consumer studies the picture, the designer's name melts into the brain. And a big part of the message that was melting in was sexual." (Streitmatter, pp. 123) Anyhow, both ads use sexual attention to grab reader's attention. This is exactly what Calvin Klein had intended he wanted to "make sure, first and foremost, that anyone who was thumbing through the pages of a magazine would stop and look at the ads.

Show More
Related

  • Jean Killbourne Two Ways A Woman Can Get Hurt Summary

    875 Words  | 2 Pages

    This thought has been held on for far too long. In a consumer-driven society, advertisements invade the minds of every person who owns any piece of technology that can connect to the internet. Killbourne observes that “sex in advertising is pornographic because it dehumanizes and objectifies people, especially women,” (271). Advertising takes the societal ideology of women and stereotypes most kids grow up learning and play on the nerves of everyone trying to evoke a reaction out of potential customers, one that results in them buying products.

    Read More

  • Comparing Advertisements for Caress and Secret

    890 Words  | 2 Pages

    Have you ever wondered where the saying, ‘a picture says a thousand words’, come from? Well, I do not know who came up with this fantastic phrase, but nonetheless, I will be describing and analyzing two different magazine advertisements, trying to put in words what I think the advertisers wanted consumers to receive when those potential buyers viewed their ads. The two advertisements that I chose, Caress and Secret, try to encourage female consumers of all ages to purchase their hygiene products. Although both ads, Caress and Secret, appeal to the same gender with hygiene goods, they differ in design, text, and message. They attempt to please the female buyer with color, texture, and sexuality. This makes it prevalent, that the agents must grab the attention of possible buyers in order to sell their product. The advertisers must choose a variety of marketing strategies to the reach their targeted consumers.

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis of an Advertisement

    1072 Words  | 3 Pages

    Advertisements are all over the place. Whether they are on TV, radio, or in a magazine, there is no way that you can escape them. They all have their target audience who they have specifically designed the ad for. And of course they are selling their product. This is a multi billion dollar industry and the advertiser’s study all the ways that they can attract the person’s attention. One way that is used the most and is in some ways very controversial is use of sex to sell products. For me to analyze this advertisement I used the rhetorical triangle, as well as ethos, pathos, and logos.

    Read More

  • Controversy: The Perfect Body Campaign

    748 Words  | 2 Pages

    By applying persuasive techniques such as appeal and cause and effect, the ad stands out to women who hold the desire to look good. In a subtle sense, it's as if the ad was attempting to unconsciously convince targeted consumers that if they were to purchase Victoria's Secret lingerie, they too could have the perfect body. Unfortunately, neither purchasing nor wearing the advertised lingerie would result in obtaining such ideal image. There are a variety of factors left out of the equation, and therefore unadvertised because of the directed focal point. The persuasive techniques used are explicitly for the sole purpose of selling the advertised item, as the ad doesn't take its dishonest messages into consideration.

    Read More

  • Sex Sells, But At What Cost: American Apparel

    1139 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Jean Kilbourne's documentary “Killing Us Softly 4”, she gives multiple detailed examples of advertisers making women a sexual object which leads to society dehumanizing the female species. As well as this, they are finding younger and thinner women to use, even photo-shopping their models to unrealistic body shapes; warping the average women's view of what she should look like. American Apparel's founder and CEO Dov Charney himself stated that he had worked hard to acquire the provocative image they have today and that he purposefully created ads that were “soaked in youth and sex” (Chauduri). The company insists that they are simply “open about sexuality” and should not be persecuted for it (Chauduri). While sex is more prominent and less taboo than it has been in society, there is a definite line between more “open” about sexuality, and abusing the sexual side of men and women. By “open about sexuality” Dov Charney and American Apparel actually mean that they are going use extremely young women in promiscuous positions to sell their clothing, despite the fact that the...

    Read More

  • Elitism In The American Dream

    1206 Words  | 3 Pages

    Watching television growing up, half of the time spent watching was filled with advertisements. Most of the time, the ad would include a beautiful woman, barely dressed, doing something sexually suggestive. The whole advertisement would consist of this, while most people have no idea what the product being sold is. Then at the very end, they provide a brief description of the product. This is an example of using sex to sell products. It is no secret that advertisers have been using sex to sell their products for years. These tools are used in all types of advertisements. However, this is not just selling sex, it is selling elitism. It is selling the status of “hey, if you can get our product, you can get these types of girls”. Elitism is

    Read More

  • The Decline of Self-image in Women

    1002 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Sex sells” is an aphorism closely adhered to by both the film and print advertising industries. For over a century, magazines, newspapers, film, and other advertising mediums have utilized women and sexuality to persuasively market their products to consumers (Reichert, 2003). By representing an assortment of consumer products surrounded by women who exemplify a “desired” body type, marketing specialists quickly discovered the direct correlation between sexuality and consumer buying. So why is using beauty and sexuality as a marketing gimmick so harmful? With women being the primary audience of both general interest and consumer product magazines there is constant exposure to the idealistic body image that advertisers and mass media believe women should adhere to.

    Read More

  • Rise Of The Image Culture Analysis

    1062 Words  | 3 Pages

    Have you ever seen an advertisement for a product and could immediately relate to the subject or the product in that advertisement? Companies that sell products are always trying to find new and interesting ways to get buyers and get people’s attention. It has become a part of our society today to always have products being shown to them. As claimed in Elizabeth Thoman’s essay Rise of the Image Culture: Re-Imagining the American Dream, “…advertising offered instructions on how to dress, how to behave, how to appear to others in order to gain approval and avoid rejection”. This statement is true because most of the time buyers are persuaded by ads for certain products.

    Read More

  • Impact of Sexual Appeals on Attention Getting and Memory

    1560 Words  | 4 Pages

    Various studies evaluate, for both managerial and educational motives, the effectiveness of nudity advertising in attracting audience’s attention. Particularly because lots of advertisers resort to this medium in order to overcome the tough competition and pierce the buyer’s perception. The advertisers’ practices have evolved in all the fields and the exposure to ads comprising sexual appeals increased due to the amplified number of adverts bombarding the audience every day. At first, an attractive woman was associated with a product targeting men only to attract their attention. The impact of these ads on attention getting and brand awareness was measured through male resp...

    Read More

  • Sex in Advertising

    1350 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...three major effects of sex in advertisement: an attention getter, identification, and perfect models. People have often their eyes gotten by sexy images. Also, some sexy images may give cool concept on brands. Lastly, sexy male or female models in ads have perfect coolness or beauty and customers come to want to become like them by using the products in the ads.

    Read More

  • Sex in Advertising

    1443 Words  | 3 Pages

    There are many companies that use sex appeal in their ads today. For instance Victoria Secrets is one of the top sellers in lingerie. They show skin in every one of their ads. All of their models put on the sex appeal for all commercials and magazines. That is what helps them sell. Women look at those ads and see those girls floating on clouds like angels and feel they could feel the same if they wore that purple bra or red underwear. By showing these girls constantly looking sexy in their ads make women feel sexy just wearing them. That is the whole point of using sex in your ads. It?s amazing what a little skin can do. "In advertising, sex sells. But only if you're selling sex (Richards).

    Read More

  • Gender Stereotypes In Television Commercials And Magazines

    841 Words  | 2 Pages

    Women are defined to be, the homemakers, or gorgeous models, and are often to be seen as seductive. A homemaker, is someone who maintains the home, by cleaning or cooking. For a grocery store item commercial, like the Rice Krispies or Pillsbury commercial, they are not going to place a mother in inappropriate clothing in their commercial because it is will be seen as not being appropriate for different audiences. For a product like Cover girl or Victoria Secret, the companies will place famous actresses and models who any woman would dream to resemble in their commercials, and they do not have issues with placing a little sexual appeal within their commercials because the product is mainly for adult women who want to get those celebrity looks. Magazine companies like Cosmopolitan and Esquire, put the sexual appeal by placing these female celebrities on the front page wearing something too revealing or some of the cases wearing nothing at all.

    Read More

  • Persuasion Model Vs Old Spice

    297 Words  | 1 Pages

    For example, in both images below a consumer buys a brand because the model is good looking, rather than if the brands is good quality or not. The consumer might just focus their attention on the physical appearance of the model in the Old Spice ad campaign. Of course, Old Spice wants you to buy their products, they will do anything to persuade you to buy their products, even succumbing to the use of sex to sell. In the second image we can see Kate Upton who is an attractive model eating a hamburger (Carl’s Jr burger), which isn’t normally classified as sexy. This type of advertising does not need a lot of thinking and it is successful in our society because sex sells these days. Peripheral processing is mainly to do with using the consumer’s emotion and

    Read More

  • The Portrayal of Women in Advertising

    2734 Words  | 6 Pages

    In many clothing advertisements, particularly jeans and lingerie ads, women are used as the main subjects to entice the viewer to notice the ad and most importantly, be excited about the product. In one photo, Calvin Klein Jeans promotes its clothing through what seems to be unwilling, reluctant sexual activity – rape. The advertisement displays the woman resisting the man with the palm of her right hand, and she is pulling her shirt down to cover her stomach with her left hand; yet he is still pursuing her and attempting to remove her top. Her body language and gaze – devoid of emotion – reveal that she is not interes...

    Read More

  • Weyenberg Advertisement Analysis

    848 Words  | 2 Pages

    Advertisements have been featuring sexual images to increase sales since the nineteenth century, and the phrase ‘sex sells’ is so popular even children know it. From cigarettes to soap to underwear to jeans, sex is used to sell everything, and the image of a naked women is one of the most popular examples of this. In the Weyenberg advertisement, the woman is topless and completely uncovered by anything but her own arm, despite the fact that she is selling a shoe. There is no correlation between the object being sold and nudity, they are actually direct opposites, but the company will still use it because they are more likely to sell shoes to men if the advertisement makes them think of sex. This image of women has not changed in the four decades since this advertisement was created, and it is so normalized that most people never stop to think about what is so inherently wrong with that. In 2013, just three years ago, Robin Thicke released a song encouraging rape that was able to sell astronomically well, and then he posted a music video featuring topless women being used as sexual objects that encouraged sales even more, and all because it features women and sex. Both the advertisement from 1974 and the music video from 2013 present women as sexual objects as a way to increase sales of the product, and since they

    Read More

More about The Book Sex Sells!

Open Document