Sexy Ads : Men Like Them, Women Don't
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Funny how men and women seem to almost willfully conform to the Mars and Venus stereotypes. Sad, really.
Some of the conclusions: Sexual ads have a strong, polarizing effect on the visual behavior of men and women. Men spend a high amount of attention on the sexual imagery (e.g., female breasts, legs, and exposed skin). While this does increase ad liking and product liking, and transfers to purchase intent, it draws men’s attention from other elements such as the brand logo —one of the reasons why their brand recall is worse than women’s. Women, on the other hand, avoided looking at sexual imagery or even exposed skin.
“You can increase purchase intent using sex when advertising to men. But you pay a price; brand recall suffers. That means using sex in ads only makes sense for companies with a well-established brand, or those where branding plays no role,” said Karsten Weide, President and CEO, MediaAnalyzer Inc.
The study also found that sexual ads polarize the sexes in general: While men like ads with sexual themes and do not think they have negative effects on society, women feel the opposite way. Most women believe there is too much sex in advertising (58%), and more than 40% of all women feel that sexual ads signify and promote a general deterioration of moral and social values, and pose a threat to the proper upbringing of children, respectively.
Sex in Ads Improves Men’s Purchase Intent