Does sex still sell?
- Page 2
|
|
As the Gossard example illustrated, sexy stop-you-dead-in-the-street ads can make a tangible mark on your sales and bottom line.
Club 18-30 was more than happy to be typecast, running with lines such as ‘Beaver Espana’, ‘Laying more than bricks’ and ‘Wake up at the Crack of Dawn’ for its salivating target market. Its adverts were hugely successful at the time, but director of creative ad agency Cuba, which specialises in campaigns for small and mid-size businesses, says 10 years on its not been able to shake its cheap image in a more sophisticated travel arena.
Pot Noodle is another that sailed close to the wind but ultimately got the results, successfully combining humour with sex. It achieved notoriety for some outrageous, but ironic, advertising campaigns, acknowledging through association with grubby sex that consumers feel ‘dirty’ for spurning traditional food for something manufactured and artificial, but ultimately irresistible.
Its ‘Slag of All Snacks’ campaign prompted complaints, but the Advertising Standards Authority ruled that it would not cause serious or widespread offence.
Viral marketing, where humour, sex or violence – or all three – are almost prerequisites, is somewhat easier to measure. “We gauge success on the number of people it gets passed on to,” says Louis Halpern, CEO of digital marketing agency Halpern Cowell. “A campaign that’s good will have a viral factor of three. A great one will be 27.”
Agent Provocateur’s founder Alex Rees sanctioned a viral campaign using Kylie Minogue riding a bucking bronco wearing the company’s underwear. Having completed her show, she asked all the men in the audience to stand, before delivering the mocking closing line, ‘thought not’.
It was one of the most successful viral campaigns ever and added millions to the bottom line.
Halpern’s agency was recently behind a viral campaign for hotel chain Malmaison, www.areyoucorruptenough.com, which features a smart-yet-buxom dominatrix behind a desk provocatively asking questions about the viewer’s sexual proclivities.
Of the 20,000 emails sent to a group with high disposable incomes it’s now been opened by more than 200,000. As a brand awareness exercise it has undeniably worked. How many are converted into customers will be the acid test.
Halpern estimates that sex is an element of 60-70% of campaigns for clients. “It’s not because we sit there with dirty minds; it’s because it works.”
But for every business it works for there is at least another where it’s flopped. Perls worked on a direct mail campaign for an AIM-listed computer back-up company targeting IT managers.
The managing director had opted to produce cards featuring a naked woman pictured from behind with the slogan ‘have you backed-up?’. A picture of the woman from the front ran with a strip across her breasts reading ‘are you protecting your assets?’.
The rather unimaginative concept was compounded by the MD’s decision to use a family friend to model and a poor photographer. “The whole thing was unattractive,” says Perls. Nevertheless the MD went with it, produced it and printed 10,000 of the cards.
It was at that point MC2 became involved. “We forbade the company from sending them out. Not only was it poorly produced, but it was entirely inappropriate.” His argument was the target market are technical by nature. “Some people read visually, but our thought was they were dominant introverts who react to facts and figures.”
The messages here are if you decide to go for it, get it done properly, and know your audience and how they respond before you get as far as producing a campaign.
Another business, in the insurance trade, wanted to draw attention at an industry conference. Creatively, it decided to offer head massages. But to publicise the fact it sent a horde of ‘promo girls’ with t-shirts adorned with the query ‘can we give you head?’ with the missing word ‘massages’ on the back for the disbelieving delegates who couldn’t take their eyes from the spectacle as the girls sauntered by.
As if that wasn’t sufficient, the ‘girls’ dispensed condoms with the company’s logo on cases and a witty line about ‘protecting your health’.
“I’ve never found a client more delighted with themselves,”says a marketing agency director who worked on subsequent campaigns for the company and chose to remain anonymous.
“They assessed its effectiveness from the footfall of people visiting the stand – which was significantly up from the previous year. Personally, though, I think it cheapened the brand.” It also had only the slightest link to insurance.
Weener agrees: “If it’s not relevant then it’s completely unacceptable.” She too had come across a finance company using women in a derogatory way, which was slammed by everyone who attended for inappropriate behaviour and received considerable negative PR, including coverage in a newspaper. “In the long run that will have had a negative effect on the business.”
And don’t think that just because you increase sales it’s worked. Weener’s Intelligent Marketing managed to increase sales by around 4% for one client by targeting a female audience, but she regrets the campaign.
“In hindsight it was irresponsible and we pushed it too far with the sexual wording. We could have achieved the same effect with more effective wording.”
So before you devise a sexy plan ask yourself whether it’ll cheapen your product or service, whether it’ll turn off as many customers as turn on, and how to avoid the obvious.
