Sexual images in advertising - Essay Example

Introduction. One of the most wide-spreaded kinds of appeals in BTL and ATL marketing campaigns is sex. Despite of the fact that some products such as perfume and cologne are pushed on the market almost exclusively through sex advertising, actually almost any product can be positioned through links with a winsome woman or a handsome man. The sexual appeal and allure, and even more, the general good mood engendered, and then appears to be a part of the day-to-day reality of that product for many clients. Sexuality is an important personal trait of a person that impacts his or her thoughts and behaviours, orientations toward members of society, and life in general. Freud may have overestimated his statement that all people do can be associated with sexual motivations, but his statement have had a great impact in the development of trends and research models about sexual images and consumption models, providing background for the studies about what people drive, what they wear, and what perfumes they use. Scholars from different research directions vary in terms of the levels of meaning they survey and the concerns they develop with regard to sex in advertising. For example, marketing managers are primarily interested with micro-level effects; they are eager to get additional information how sexual images provoke reactions within spectators, and how those reactions impact their behaviour. Important variables consist of the following elements: attention, feelings about the ad and about the brand, recollections, and intentions to buy the advertised product. In this sense, marketing study on sexual images is not only linked with understanding how sex influences processing and buying, but also with providing useful generalizations to support working professionals find decisions about using these appeals. Research in this field rarely reaches a point to estimate the implications of sexual images beyond negative reactions and damage to the brand's image and reputation. Sexual images were used by the ancient copywriters as long as epistolary genre existed. Ancient Greek comedies were often filled with sexual images, such as Aristophanes' "Lysistrata", an antiwar comedy about women who tried to use sex with their husbands to make them stop fighting wars. Medieval classics like Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" and Shakespeare "The Taming of the Shrew" are overwhelmed with sexual double meanings and overtly sexual images, some of which are omitted today because of the archaic language and the "strict" aura around such masterpieces. Since the appearance of electronic media and electronic advertising, sexual images started to appear on television and radio. Though standards for television commercials and radio spots are usually stricter in regard to sexual images use comparing to print advertising, because it is easier to keep sexually oriented print media from children than it is radio or TV. In spite of the variety of sexual images on TV, strong theoretical assumptions, and evidence of the power of physical attractiveness on communication outcomes, the influence of physically attractive persons on consumer desire to buy remains unclear (Joseph, 1982). Also, nudity and erotic images was found to increase consumer awareness to an ad, but not necessarily increase recall or positive attitudes to a brand . Additional evidence also reveals that, as the levels of nudity or erotism getting higher, the intended communication trends either turn negative or lose their strength at all. It turns that the effects of sexual images on cognitive behaviour cannot be estimated without considering certain outer consumer attributes such as gender, age, level of product involvement and emotional arousal. The sexual motivation is usually identified as one of eight common tools of emotional communication in television. The inconsistency between cognitive and affective results toward sexual images in advertising can be partially explained by differences in personal traits of every consumer. Sexual images in advertising provides not only comparatively high level of communicational effect for an advertiser, it also causes several effects that can be considered harmful for the society. These effects are: teaching new behaviour, disinhibition, increase of sex crimes. (LaTour, Pitts, & Snook-Luther, 1991) Teaching new behaviours is one of the main effects of advertising with sexual images. From the one point of view, sexual advertising may actually teach new behaviours. As part of sexual education, advertising with sexual images can provide necessary information for younger generation. New behaviours are not always so benign, however. Sometimes sexual advertising causes very aggressive behaviour. Disinhibition is another negative effect of sexual images in advertising. Sexual images may also disinhibit previously formed behaviour, as when the watching on TV advertising of condoms, for example, forms a viewer's inhibition against engaging in premarital sex. Watching a strip scene where a woman is portrayed as enjoying stripping or being stripped may disinhibit the constraint against some men's secret urge to commit such a sexual harassment. This is of particular concern given some evidence suggesting that a surprisingly large number of college men reported that they might commit rape if they were sure they would not be caught. One of the main problems about a behavioural influence of viewing sexual images is that such process may have a strong connection with sex crimes. There have been made a lot of studies as to the rates of crimes like rape, exhibitionism, and child molestation, relative to changes in the availability of sexual content materials in TV, radio, press, including advertising. It was revealed that there was in fact a correlation between availability of sexually explicit materials and certain sex crimes. We have outlined main pluses and minuses of sexual images in advertising, and will review all concerns about the matter in the body of this volume. Conclusion Advertising is a part of social institution, and it must operate within culturally defined and time margins. When cultural constraints vary and change as well as society, so must advertising, otherwise it will lose effectiveness or its freedom will be questioned. On the one hand, sexual images in advertising do help to promote brands and products and can be created not to offend legal audiences. On the other, they can form strong negative attitude to particular ads and to advertising in general, thereby losing their intended impact and making negative effect on the industry with lesser societal acceptance and more social controls. This research shows that both genders have potential ethical objections about the use of explicit and overt sexual appeals in advertising. These findings, however, should be evaluated taking into consideration the complexity of the issue. Though the ethical concerns have multifaceted nature about sexual appeals and thus influencing challenges facing advertisers. For example, whether or not the implementation of a sexual image is understood as "degrading" is a function of pre-existing confidence and awareness of the social norms surrounding such audience. (Soley, & Kurzbard, 1986) Actually, advertising operates in accordance with the rules set in a society. As the norms and ethical rules of society change with the flow of time then advertising should also go through appropriate changes and transformations. The influence and impact of "moral idealism" change over time. It is therefore advisable to continually revise the assumptions on which advertising strategies are grounded. Advertisers before using of sexual images are to assess all potential social pitfalls at stake. Advertising executives should take into account not only the undesirable consequences of using such tools, but also the established morality of doing so. The dilemma of using or not using a sexual image has no simple solution. An important issue of making decision about sexual images in advertising is the need for advertisers to understand the moral and ethical issues which appear in the use of strong and evident sexual images and to implement that understanding within their creative thought. And what is the main point, advertisers must especially be accurate in representing assumptions about the effectiveness of sexual appeals for legal audience as well as the social effect, the influence on other persons who are not targeted by such advertising. References Joseph, W. B (1982). The credibility of physically attractive communicators: A review. Journal of Advertising, 11, 15-24. LaTour, M. S., Pitts, R. E., & Snook-Luther, D. C. (1991). Female nudity, arousal, and ad response: An experimental investigation. Journal of Advertising, 19, 51-62. Soley, L. C., & Kurzbard, G. (1986). Sex in advertising: A comparison of 1964 and 1984 magazine advertisements. Journal of Advertising, 15, 46-54, 64. Read More