Historical Overview

Sex Sells

Advertising is a form of communication that persuades people to buy a certain product. One study has found this statistic: 44% of readers notice an advertisement; in that 44%, 35% can identify the advertiser, and only 9% actually read half of what the ad says. Therefore, it is extremely important for companies to come up with advertisements that draw consumers’ attention to their products. Sexuality in advertising is using erotic or sexual images, words or phrases in advertising to make the products more appealing to consumers, therefore increasing the chance of the products being sold.
Sexuality has been used in advertising as early as the beginning of the advertising era. Even as early as the 1800s, physical attractiveness and sexuality began to have a great impact on society. The very first forms of advertising that used sexuality were wood carvings and illustrations of attractive women, which were often naked from the waist up. Soon after, these illustrations started appear on posters, signs, and ads for tobacco, saloons, and tonics. In 1885, W. Dukes & Sons Tobacco Company was the first tobacco company known for inserting trading cards featured attractive, provocative starlets into tobacco packages. Soon after, sales increased as the brand was wildly known, and W. Dukes & Sons Tobacco became the leading cigarette brand by the 1890s. In many cases, sexuality proves to be a powerful tool to reverse business revenue. One of the most striking advertisements of the early twentieth century that involves sexuality was that of Woodbury’s Facial Soap. In the early 1900s, the soap company was reportedly having a decline in sales. At this time, the company featured the doctor’s face on wrapper and in advertising of this product. The breakthrough for declining sales was when the company studied marketing problems that it faced. The company decided to insert romantic paintings of beautiful, young, appealing women to advertise for the soap. These images, along with the slogan “A Skin You Love to Touch”, were welcomed by young men. Sales of soap boosted up in the following decades. Many historians argued that the advertisement of “A Skin You Love to Touch” of Woodbury’s Facial Soap was the very first advertisement that used the attraction and appeal of sexy women in modern advertising.
Traditionally, women often appeared on print advertising as an attraction to sell the products. Over the past decades, men started to show their faces and bodies on ads as well. Sexuality has made a transformation across the centuries, and also depended on what products being sold (how much of the body is being revealed). Through investigations of the effect of sexuality in advertising, many researchers have found that sexy ads do attract more people comparing to nonsexual ads; however people may not remember the brand. Female characters are used very often in advertising with sexuality to sell the products (51% with female characters comparing to only 15% with male characters).
Sexuality in general is always a debated subject. The use of sexuality in print media advertising has stirred up many controversies in society over the decades. Most of print advertisements depict women as passive, subordinate to men, and often as sex objects. Many even strongly argue that these images lead to women become sex objects and victims of domestic violence in may cases. On the other hand, sexuality in print advertising persuades people that if they purchase the products, they can be just as beautiful and sexy as those male and female models the ads use to illustrate. However, supporters of sexuality used in advertising use the First Amendment, Freedom of Speech, to shield it from heated debates. Nonetheless, researches have found that images related to sexuality to be the most powerful attention-getting technique of many advertisements until today.



Time line

Late 1800s: Companies began to realize that adverting was the best way to promote their products and invested in it.
Illustrations of attractive women (sometimes were naked from the waist up) made of wood carvings started appear on posters, signs, and ads for tobacco, saloons, tonics.

1900s-1950s: Woodbury's Facial Soap's campaign of "A Skin You Love to Touch" marked the first time sexual appeal used in advertising.
The American Association of Advertising Agencies published the advertising code of ethics.

1960s-now: Print advertising's jumped to more realistic and provocative as Playboy magazine was born.



Works Cited

Brooks, D., Brown, S., Matthiae, C., McGill, L., Monk-Turner, E., Wren, K. 2008. Who is gazing at whom? A look at how sex is used in magazine advertisements.
Rosselli, F., Stankiewicz, J. 2008. Women as Sex Objects and Victims in Print Advertisements.
History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web. "Model Interpretation." http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/ads/model.html
Slick Tips. "Images In Print Advertising." http://webhome.idirect.com/k/koufis/slicktip_092903.htm
Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. "Sex in Advertising." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_in_advertising