Sex Sells. So what?

As everyone always knows, sex sells.  Showing some skin or posing provocatively to attract costumers is a common trend in advertisement but when does it become too much?  Are more and more people offended by the racy advertisements?

I personally am not offended with advertising that simulate sex or show an attractive man or woman representing a product.  As Sigmund Freud as taught us, we are sexual beings.  Companies use this to their advantage to get out attention to their product and I don't blame them!  We look to buy products that will be beneficial to our appearance all the time.  Men buy the body wash that will make them smell the best to women.  Women buy the makeup that will attract men.  A perfume company wouldn't use a puppy to sell their perfume.  If you saw a puppy holding a bottle of perfume on a billboard, you'd probably just look the other way.  But if you saw a racy perfume ad on a billboard, you would be more intrigued.  I understand people getting offended by seeing racy advertisements but thats not the intention behind the ad.  The motive for the ad is to get your attention (maybe negative or positively) so you remember their product. 

As much as it doesn't offend me, I do think there is a limit.  If a company was trying to sell a vacuum, the ad probably shouldn't look like this one below:

 

If the product to be sold is a razor then yes, showing a pair of women's legs in the ad is fine!  It grabs the female customer's attention.  The ad above is from Germany and maybe their have a different social norm with advertisements.  I think this ad is a little too much but not offensive.  The company just looks stupid and looks like they tried too hard to market their product as "sexy" even though it's a vacuum cleaner.  Many people say that women are more sexualized in ads than men are and this is probably true but it's not in a negative way.  Everyone knows the companies are just trying to get you to buy the product and not to offend anyone.

Do you think we use sex in advertisements too much?

In Response to Lia Moreggi's Post

"Even though parents have been through the difficulty of teen years as well, times do change and pressure seems different. I just need to ask, do the ads really help?"


I agree with what Lia had to say in her blog about the public awareness announcements.  I just had a class with a guest speaker from the Wellness center at Keene State.  She came to talk to us about Alcohol Education.  In hopes to relate to us better, her message was basically "it is okay to drink alcohol, even underage, as long as you do it safely."  I learned from her whole presentation that if i consume alcohol with a carbonated drink, I will get drunk faster.  It seems as though we try to make teens aware of the troubles with alcohol but we also tell them its okay to drink.  As Lia said, we don't describe the distributive behaviors that come with the abuse of alcohol or other drugs.  I think that these ads need to spread more throughout colleges.  Some ads about living above the influence can be annoying and unrelated to teenagers.  I think the media needs to do a better job at really reaching out to students about the behaviors that can lead from the abuse of drugs and alcohol.  Depression and suicide are two behaviors that can come form the abuse of alcohol and drugs.  I think schools are too scared to talk about depressing, suicide or other disruptive behaviors.  Our school in the past few weeks have gone through several incidents involving suicide.  I have seen people close to me be deeply affected from this.  The only sympathy they received from the school was an email saying they were "sorry" and they were providing counseling.  The second incident wasn't even  acknowledged.  Colleges need to do a better job reaching out to students and getting the information out their about living above the influence.