How Sex Sells
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What do advertisements really mean? Advertisements are everywhere, combining images and words to promote goods, services, and anything else advertisers want to publicize. Advertisements are becoming a major part of mass media, including magazines, to sell products. At times, society may view the ads positively, or other times society may ignore the ads. In order to attract an audience, advertisers use various techniques in the ads to make people aware of the products, services, or brands. Although the methods used by advertisers are used a lot, the advertisers have a common goal to persuade potential consumers to buy the products. Advertisers trick potential customers hoping to leave a deep impression using a particular technique, such as the sex sells approach.
One way advertisers try to trick potential customers is by using attractive models to draw sexual interest as a tool of persuasion to sell a product. For example, in the ad about a Jensen car stereo, the consumers are told the Jensen stereo has nice features. The statement nice features is suppose to refer to the car stereo, but in the ad the nice features are referring to the two attractive models. The models are standing half-naked around a pole. The ad describes the stereo by labeling parts of the body on the models. The advertisers label the outputs on the stereo as breasts of two women. There is no real correlation between breasts and a stereo, but the ad is using the sex sells approach to get the consumers attention. By catching the consumers attention, the use of sex tries to make the product sell big.
The sex sells approach used in advertisement makes consumers think the product in the ad is a product worth having. In a boots ad for Wolverine, the advertisers are telling consumers women wanted men wearing boxer shorts, but now the advertisers want consumers to think women want men wearing Wolverine boots. The ad has a woman with a pair of Wolverine boots hanging from her shoulder where only her back, arms, and head are showing as she appears to only be wearing a thong. Men will remember this product as a product worth having because the boots attract women. The men will not remember the product as being the most comfortable boot, as the ad states.
The boots are really representing a males body part and the woman is clinging to the boots, as if women need to cling to a mans body part. A visual association may be made between some product and the female form. The woman and the boots become equivalent and interchangeable, and both are promoted as a sex object. Advertisers use this type of sex object as a sex sells approach to sell products that are “worth having”.
The possession of material goods and wealth as a determinate of our status and self-worth is another way advertisers use a sex sell approach to trick consumers. The trick works by convincing consumers that the amount of money we have and the quality of the