The article I linked to in my last post is really bugging me. You see, I’m of the reasoned, seasoned opinion that any argument based on the blanket theory “sex sells” is questionable, at best (and flimsy bullshit at worst). Sex does indeed get attention and boobies pull people in, no argument there. But if the entire world could be bought and sold with a porn star or an episode of Baywatch, then — as I argued in my column Web Celebs and My Rainbow-Flag Bikini — why wasn’t the algorithmically generated Forbes Web Celeb 25 filled with web porn stars? Things have changed in the world of sex and media, and it’s changing with every click of *your* mouse. It’s worth thinking about, and worth questioning whenever anyone says that someone (or a newspaper) is using sex to sell something. I think people are much more sexually sophisticated than these tired old arguments are giving them (us) credit for. At least, that’s the truism I follow. A pair of tits (or some lurid prose) won’t save newspapers, but having a real relationship with its readers — and providing a thoughtful respite and accurate cultural reflection about sex — will. It’s just stupid to build business models without including sex culture (human nature) in them anymore. Old media minds see sex as bad and the last bastion of the desperate. Think forward, and you see that nothing is further from the truth.
Anyway, check out this interesting article in The Economist, The big turn off, about the failure of sex to sell products in a recent study:
SEXUAL allure is often hinted as being the prize for buying this or that. Yet advertising wares during commercial breaks in programmes with an erotic theme can be tricky: the minds of viewers tend to be preoccupied with what they have just seen and the advertisement is ignored. New research now suggests that even if the commercial is made sexually enticing, people still fail to remember it.
Ellie Parker and Adrian Furnham of University College London devised an experiment to test three ideas. The first was to confirm that men and women alike would struggle to remember the brand of a product that was advertised during a break in a programme that contained sex. The second was that commercials that had an erotic element would be recalled more readily than those that did not. Finally they wanted to know whether people would remember the advertisement more easily if its theme contrasted with the programme into which it had been inserted.
Link.
