Today's media is filled with sex. Preying on hormones in men and women, big companies have started selling their product by spicing things up. But why should it sell? A product should be bought based on its own characteristics, not those of the people shown with the product.
Experts in the marketing field are able to make the most non-sexual product into something sexual. For instance, Dr. Pepper has various commercials aimed toward men including one set on a beach where an attractive woman is shown showering in Dr. Pepper. Something about a woman soaked in Dr. Pepper is supposed to make men want the product. Rather than associating Dr. Pepper with great taste, the target audience is seeing the product, thinking about the sex icon, and purchasing the product based on his or her thoughts toward the person.
It has been said that the human brain responds to certain primal urges including food and, of course, sex or reproduction. That pre-programmed disposition to respond to sexual imagery is so strong that companies have used it for over 100 years in advertising. One facial soap company in 1885 included trading cards which featured erotic images of famous women of the time. Although facial soap and sex have a very slim connection, men respond to sexual images. This fact has brought an increase of companies with a strong sexual connection including alcohol, fashion, perfume and car advertisements.
The fact is, sex is and will continue being as a constant aspect of advertisements. As rules around sex and consumers become more relaxed, we will definitely be seeing a rise in sexual content in consumer homes. Sex, pornography in particular, is a multi-billion dollar industry, and although pornography is not used in advertising per say, you can guarantee that sex will become a bigger part of the advertising landscape.
So how can we, the people, prevent such ads from influencing our perceptions of a product?
One was is to unplug, focus on the truly important things to minimize what is entering our minds. The average American watches 5 hours of television per day, almost an hour and a half of that on average can be just commercials. If the average commercial is thirty seconds long, that means the average person sees 180 commercials every day, and if the majority of those commercials include sexual content, well, you can imagine the subconscious thoughts we are having.
Other ways vary from person to person, maybe an increase in the romance of a relationship, finding other ways to fill your time other than TV, and just being wary of how you treat these products and how you act when faced with those ads.
