Sex in ads does not sell
MediaAnalyzer just released the results of a survey where they looked at the impact of sexual ads on brand recall (here - via Brand Autopsy).
While almost half of the man said that they liked sexual ads, less than 10% of those that were exposed to the sexual ads could recall the brand that was advertised (compared to 19.8% for non-sexual ads). MediaAnalyzer calls that the “vampire effect” - with the sexual object sucking up all the attention. On the women side, 28% of them said there were too many sexual ads, and while they tend to avoid the sexual imagery when looking at sexual ads, their brand recall with sexual ads was less than half that of non-sexual ads (10.8% vs. 22.3%). The study hypothesizes that this might be attributable to a general numbing effect that sexual stimuli has on the brain.
…general numbing effect?
[Technorati Tags: sexual ads brand recall advertising]
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October 26th, 2005 at 7:48 pm
Yep. Check this out:
Erotic and violent images may actually cloud viewers’ ability to focus on the actual object of the ad.
“We observed that people fail to detect visual images that appeared one-fifth of a second after emotional images, whereas they can detect those images with little problem after viewing neutral images,” says Vanderbilt University psychologist David Zald.
The effect is known as attentional rubbernecking.
“We think that there is essentially a bottleneck for information processing and if a certain type of stimulus captures attention, it can basically jam up that bottleneck so subsequent information can’t get through,” says Zald.
In other words, although a provocative or visually loud ad is likely to grab your attention, it also hinders your ability to focus on the brand or product it promotes.
November 1st, 2005 at 9:49 am
Hi Francois,
I tend to agree with the “numbing effect” idea.
Case in point: walking down the street in Northampton, MA I noticed how many of the college-age girls were walking around in outfits that would have been considered appropriate for hookers about 15 or 20 years ago. I realized that my perspective on these outfits was colored by the fact that I’m outside the 18-34 age demographic that pop culture is aimed at. So, I wondered about the young men…and how they thought about it…and they really didn’t think what I thought–that the girls looked like hookers.
So, in a media saturated with sexual imagery, my conclusion, anecdotally, is that it effects those who are older (or very young) moreso than those it is directly aimed at.
talk about missing the mark.
But in blog searches, my sense (from what I’ve gleaned from my stats on two very different blogs) is that sex is still a major curiosity and is probably the most searched term than anything having to do with non-sexually oriented Information. So, bloggers may be into Information, but the *kind* of information they’re interested in, is, well, would spurious be too harsh a term?
T.
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