What Makes Sex For Advertising So Appealing?

In his 1982 article, “Advertising’s Fifteen Basic Appeals,” Jib Fowles informs readers of various psychological human needs, defined as appeals. These appeals are used in advertising, to persuade consumers to purchase a product. Due to the prevalence of advertisements in today’s society, consumers have learned to block out advertisements. By using any of the fifteen appeals such as the need for sex, or the need for affiliation, companies can get into consumers’ minds, with hopes of selling their products. In other words, by appealing to consumers desires, the chance of marketing success

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

Everyone has heard the phrase “sex sells.” It seems to be a major factor that drives people to buy. Advertisers manipulate this behavior by creating ads that showcase their products as a way to gain love, beauty, and desirability. Advertisers frequently use sex appeal with flirtatious images as an attention grabbing device to play with the public’s emotions. Because the public is a diverse group of individuals, it is difficult to target the masses by focusing on hobbies, sports, or flaws. Because of this, advertisers target sexuality, something everyone can relate to. In the February, 2016 issue of Cosmopolitan Magazine, they overtly demonstrate this. In an ad for Kinky Vodka, they represent multiple sexual innuendoes such as provocative body posing, stereotypical feminine colors, and seductive wording.

An important controversial issue that America faces today is the debate of sex in advertising. Edward A. McCabe and John Carroll are two authors that present opposing arguments about this issue. McCabe persuades the reader into thinking that sex in advertising is no big deal, while Carroll explains why this is a major problem in America. Sex ads are defined as any type of advertising that shows pictures of partial nudity with wording that relates to the body in a sexual way, usually portraying women. Sex in advertising has been around for a long time but has the industry become too sexually explicit?

Newspapers, Magazines, Television, Online… advertising is everywhere. Within the myriad of advertisements displayed in front of viewers every day, there are appeals. Society neglects and overlooks these marketing strategies that toy with their minds, resulting in skyrocketing purchases after the release of an advertisement. In “Advertising’s Fifteen Basic Appeals,” Jib Fowles identifies the appeals he believes are implemented in advertisements. These appeals include sexual innuendos, powerful images, or comforting displays which draw the audience into the desired product. After analyzing the ads within the Vogue January 2018 edition, an extremely popular fashion and lifestyle magazine, the demographics can be determined as a market with expensive taste. The graphics are extremely feminine and contain Fowles’s previously mentioned appeals, like the “need for prominence.” Although not all of the fifteen appeals apply to these advertisements, Fowles’s list is still valid and does not need revisions as the readership of Vogue magazine is just a small sample of the population. Through the appeals of each advertisement, this clear readership is developed, rather than using all of the Fowles’s appeals and not addressing the correct audience.

Advertisements today are everywhere. The average consumer is bombarded with some sort of ad at every blink of an eye. In the beginning, advertisements were only seen on the television or heard on the radio, but now advertising is leaking into the consumer’s phone, in virtually every application. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, the list goes on. Advertisements are made to grab the consumer’s attention swaying them to purchase whatever it might be the producer is try to sell.

Sexual imagery has become a trend in the business of advertisement, which has become extremely efficient. Tom Reichert in “The Prevalence of Sexual Imagery in Ads Target to Young Adults,” states in his journal, “To determine if advertisers use sexual imagery to appeal to youth, 2,863 ads in magazines read by young and mature adults were compared. Results indicate that ads targeted to young adults were 65% more likely to contain provocatively dressed models and 128% more likely to contain sexual behavior than those for mature adults. In the ads young adults, female models were 3.7 times more likely to be portrayed sexually than were male models. The findings suggest that advertisers use sexual imagery, primarily by means of female modes, to appeal to young audiences.”

Objectification of women is on the rise in society today. The underlying message is that women are living in a sexually gratified atmosphere. From advertisements to television and magazines etc. Woman are exploited as sexual objects while men believe depicting images of women in a sexual manner is funny or sexy but why not offensive or degrading? Therefore, advertisements influence the core of the sexualization of culture.

“Will the sexualization of women in advertising campaigns affect the young generation of 21st century”

The use of sex in advertising as mentioned earlier is said to have boasted a lot company’s revenues, but it also has its negative side which has caused a lot of problems in societies around the world. The idea of using sex in advertising is a very smart way that advertisers use to gain attention of consumers, but it has it's negative effects like depicting women as sex objects, forcing sexual innuendos on children, causing body dissatisfaction among youths even adults and it also attracts negative backlash on the companies that use it. It can attract the wrong kind of attention and sometimes it won't lead to the company becoming a bigger and better brand.

Introduction- On average, a person sees “5,000 ads per day” (Johnson, 2006). This means that there are 5,000 pieces of unsolicited information maneuvering its way into our unconscious and often conscious mind at every turn. From billboards, to ads on Google and television commercials, such ads are unavoidable. This poses the question of, how exactly do these pieces of information shape us, and how prominently do they effect us? More specifically, what are the pros and cons for the sexual content that these advertisements often include? Throughout my speech I will examine these inquiries

The use of sex in advertising may create unrealistic ideals for men regarding women, however, it is a powerful tool for selling products. Through the years advertisers have shown through their advertisements that sex does sell products. Especially when selling to the male viewers. Sex is the second strongest of the psychological appeals, right behind self-preservation, and its strength is biological and instinctive, the genetic imperative of reproduction (Taflinger). Sexual desire is an instinctive reaction in animals, and a person?s perception of a suitable mate is the basis (Taflinger). That perception is usually a set of criteria that the opposite sex must meet, and those that meet and exceed those criteria will provide the chance for

Sex is everywhere you turn. Victoria’s Secret is notorious for their ads that plaster billboards and the sides of buildings, featuring scantily-clad women suggesting an obvious sexual air. The bags you receive at Abercrombie feature half-dressed models, often two of which may be kissing or touching one another. These sexual images are far too present in the every day lives of young children, much younger than what used to be acceptable. Aside from this moral questionability, ads such as these often contain images of unrealistic body types, which exploit insecurity to make consumers use their product, the result of which can be dangerous to mental and physical health. Finally, when I see ads like the one to the right, and rack my brain

Sex sells. Content providers have taken this idea to heart, and this is why today’s society is able to easily access a constant stream of provocative content, regularly provided to the public on a daily basis. From music videos, to television shows, to movies, western culture tends to over-sexualize content exposed to the public, because sexuality has the ability to draw in audiences and hold their attention. This leaves things such as advertisements exposed to the elements, and allow creators to give advertisements lewd and unnecessary twist. Even if the product in the advert isn’t explicitly “sexy”, the use of innuendos and rhetoric devices such as zeugma emphasize the sexual appeal of the product being sold. This in turn creates a society that is constantly growing numb to this distressing content. In order to resolve this desensitization, content consumers should be able to identify the rhetorical devices

Advertising is an important form of communication between products and customers. How to get viewers’ attention is first thing need to consider for advertising. Sexual appeal is become very useful tool in advertising, and it use is increasing. The sex appeal has a very long history, the first sex appeal advertising was introduced in 1911 by Woodbury’s Facial Soap (Campaign,2014). Once this advertising is released it has caused an enormous controversy, it is considered so risqué and inappropriate by several readers, even their cancelled their subscriptions to the magazine immediately (O’Barr,2011) . However, by today’s sexually liberated standards, this advertising already is positively chaste. During the next 93 years, sex is become a