Sex sells. Communications media-the advertising industry in particular-long have heralded its value as an attention-getter. But the question in the United States in the 1990s remains: How much sex-in-advertising equals sophistication and how much equals exploitation?
There was a time when a shaving cream commercial urging men to ”take it off, take it aaaahhll off” was considered racy. But in some of today`s advertisements that slogan is far more than suggestion. Conservative groups complain about a blatant appeal by the media to consumers` base instincts. The totally uninhibited can`t understand what the fuss is about.
It`s true that today ads use far more titillating siren songs to lure consumers to particular products; nudity and explicitly sexual themes and images are cropping up more than ever before. For example, last year Sensations dinner napkins print advertisements featured the product strategically draped across the lap of a nude man at a breakfast table. Several publications-USA Today, McCall`s, Family Circle and Woman`s Day among them, declined to run the ad.
And commercials selling Bugle Boy jeans on cable television`s MTV paired classic cheesecake shots of voluptuous women with captions that scrolled across the bottom of the screen. One read: ”This is a commercial for Bugle Boy`s new Color Denims. They wanted to show a bunch of male models. But we said showing nothing but beautiful women would work better.” The spot concluded with, ”We know what guys like.”
The perception of sexism-rather than sexiness-has landed at least one company in a lawsuit.
Old Milwaukee Beer commercials highlighting the ”Swedish Bikini Team”
parachuting into the midst of delighted beer-drinking buddies, for example, has become part of a sexual harassment suit against Old Milwaukee`s brewer, Detroit-based Stroh Brewery Co. In their sexual harassment suit, eight female employees at Stroh`s St. Paul, Minn., plant asked that the company drop sexist advertising.
That case is expected to go to court next spring. Lori Peterson, attorney for the employees, says of the advertisements, ”We said, `Look, it`s a statement by this company about what women are for. We want to show this company is saturated with sexism from top to bottom and that the employees are just following the employer`s lead.” (The company denies the allegations. The bikini team ads have been dropped.)
Is sex-oriented advertising amusing, is it art, or is it the next thing to porn? Does it actually enhance the product`s image or merely perpetuate the unattainable ideal of physical perfection? Is it an escape into vicarious unrestrained sexual fantasy in the face of AIDS` reality? Reactions often depend on who`s discussing it. And often it depends on how it`s presented.
In the jeans category, Calvin Klein had people gawking last fall at his company`s 116-page textless ”outsert” supplement to accompany the October issue of Vanity Fair magazine. The Bruce Weber photo essay about an imaginary rock band and its groupies was a raw blend of naked bodies, motorcycles and electric guitars. The glossy piece was daring, even by Calvin Klein standards- the image that seemed to top the shock meter for many was that of a fellow in the shower fondling his just-barely-covered groin with a pair of wet jeans. But for all its steaminess, the campaign did not substantially increase product sales. Klein shrugged off the ads` ineffectiveness in an interview with Advertising Age, a trade publication, saying the ads engendered valuable free publicity.
More successful has been the recent Lever 2000 soap campaign, ”2000 Body Parts,” which exposes a good deal of skin in its ads-body parts of various members of a family-but in a way which has proved inoffensive and sales-enhancing. The campaign, designed by the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, won an EFFIE award for measurable results from the American Marketing Association.
Carol Bishop, product manager for Lever Bros., says that since the national campaign began last August, the soap has become the No. 2 deodorant soap on the market. The ads` skin exposure has been accepted, she says, because it depicts ”wholesome family intimacy, which appeals to the consumer.”
Judith Langer, a market researcher in New York, says the Lever 2000 ads expose body parts, indeed, but ”in a light and wholesome way and nobody objects to it. They did it with lightness and humor and fun and they get away with it. There`s an attitude that comes through that`s not leering.”
Selling an attitude-and fantasy-are the stuff of advertising, says Eckart Guthe, vice president of research at Conde Nast, publisher of such magazines as Vogue, Vanity Fair, Glamour, Self, Allure, GQ and Details. ”They`re selling a lifestyle, a mood,” he says, that-if sufficiently clever-accrues to the product.
By and large the theory works in practice, says Dr. Sidney Levy, chairman of the marketing department at Northwestern University`s Kellogg School of Management. Calvin Klein`s ads don`t just shock, he says, they sell. ”You might look at them and say, `Oh, wow, that`s the most naked people we`ve seen in an ad,”` Levy says. ”But what he does is create distinctive imagery, which suggests an enhancing product. There`s a sense of `Why not?` It shows initiative, daring, the verve to lead the way. So he benefits from that.”
Experts point to several reasons for the relaxation of standards in recent years. One factor is the health craze spawned in the `80s, says Judith Langer, a market researcher in New York.
”There was so much emphasis on developing the beautiful body, looking at bodies,” she says. ”Both men and women became more concerned about looking attractive.” A natural outgrowth of that was seeing more of those sculpted, nurtured bodies in ads, she says.
Levy believes provocative ads do provide an abstract, read ”safe,”
outlet for fantasy in the AIDS era.
”A lot of people are feeling some reserve and anxiety about sexuality,” he says. ”You could suppose that requires some sublimation into fantasy. If we can`t have sex as readily, at least we can have sexual imagery.”
Magazine executive Guthe says it is not advertising but video that is setting the torridly explicit tone. ”Watch MTV for a while and look at what they allow,” he notes. ”That sets the standards these days. They`re the ones pushing the limits-I don`t think there are any left. Right now the action is in that area, and people who do advertising are simply following behind what they see there.”
There are consumers, however, who remain resolutely conservative and take offense at the relentless sex-sell in mainstream advertising.
”Sometimes the objections come from the right, sometimes the left,”
Langer says. ”There are a lot of confusing dividing lines.”
The gratuitous use of sex by advertisers turns off many consumers, she says. ”When it`s so obviously extraneous and tacked on-that`s what they used to do with the woman bending over the car. I mean, give me a break.”
Another sin is portraying women as passive and submissive rather than as sexual equals of men, Langer says. ”The sore point with the bikini team thing was showing women as bimbos,” she says, referring to the Old Milwaukee ads.
”Unless the woman is in on the joke, you really get people mad.”
On the other hand, she says, a certain segment of the population is more concerned with traditional moral standards than feminism. ”There are still a lot of women who object to the showing of feminine hygiene products on TV,”
Langer says. ”They get embarrassed when there`s a man in the room.”
Overall, Guthe says, advertisers have become more vigilant about images of women that could be considered humiliating or degrading stereotypes.
”They`re very concerned about that, which they very well should be,” he says.
Creative directors Rick Carpenter and Mark Montero of DDB Needham Worldwide, Los Angeles, designed the Bugle Boy jeans campaign with colleague Jaci Sisson. They say the point of the campaign was to poke fun at themselves, to play up cliched images in an effort to appeal to the humor-OK, and the hormones-of the young, male and oh-so-cynical MTV viewer.
”And hey, this was pretty tame compared to the rest of the programming on there,” Montero says.
Working in advertisers` favor, Langer says, is the `90s woman`s attitude about her appearance: Change your look to suit your mood.
”Women manipulate their images now,” Langer says. ”One moment they`re the serious career woman, the next they`re girls-who-just-wanna-h ave-fun. But that doesn`t mean they`re bimbos; they`re just lightening up.”
It has become apparent to advertising planners and purchasers that a lot of women like sexy advertising, Langer says. ”Depending on the ad, they can really enjoy it, see it as a celebration of women`s sensuality and identify with it.” A sensual feeling of love and romance in an ad typically appeals to women, she says, as does a portrayal of the sexy woman as every bit as smart and powerful as a man.
It`s possible that sex-oriented advertisements simply live up to their attention-getting billing to the nines, because, Levy says, ”We`re actually talking about a sort of narrow range, considering the amount of advertising out there. People complain about everything getting so sexy, but you still find relatively few examples.”
Those offended by American advertising, Guthe says, should compare it with the European version-which often includes frontal nudity of both sexes.
Some say the U.S. is too prudish. ”Contrary to the way it sometimes appears, I think there are a lot of people who think sex is actually a good thing, and that there`s no reason to shove it in a closet,” says Montero. ”I don`t think that point of view gets expressed enough.”
”I mean, without sex,” he concludes philosophically, ”there`d be nobody around to complain about it.”
