rand, scantily clad women (or men) are not going to sustain it over the long haul, leaving the campaign limp and unfulfilled. No, as well as eye-catching images, you need substance. You need to get the real message across, before the attention span wanes. Sexual imagery is great in a short burst, but sooner or later you will want your audience to love your product, and not just have a brief affair I know that, of all my articles, this one will attract the most readers. Why? Well, because of its title, of course. I am also realistic to know that this is the sentence where most readers will stop reading, knowing there isn't any sex nor naked images to be seen. Judging by the feedback I get, I have some regular readers, and I hope you at least are still with me.

Sex sells: the most popular search terms for any search engine will always include a liberal smuttering - er, smattering - of phrases from people with only one thing on their minds. Every other tv or webcast ad will have scenes that appeal to our most basic of instincts, not to mention many print ads, posters and billboards.

Sometimes the link between the product and the carnal subject matter of the ads can be tenuous, to say the least. What the marketing people are doing, of course, is trying to grab attention. Take posters along a the wall besides a subway escalator. There you are, travelling at 6 miles per hour past these invitations to spend your money....

1. Flirtatious, seductive torso shot with beckoning finger: "come to the show!"... (6 seconds attention)
2. A rotund middle aged man with a beer belly: "The best....." (1 second attention)
3. Two bikini clad girls: "call us today".....(and there you are - if you are male - walking backwards down the up escalator....2 minutes and still counting...)

Of course, there is no reason to get all worked up about this. For single ads and short campaigns, attention grabbing is essential. However, if you are running a long campaign or building or sustaining a brand, scantily clad women (or men) are not going to sustain it over the long haul, leaving the campaign limp and unfulfilled. No, as well as eye-catching images, you need substance. You need to get the real message across, before the attention span wanes. Sexual imagery is great in a short burst, but sooner or later you will want your audience to love your product, and not just have a brief affair w

ar search terms for any search engine will always include a liberal smuttering - er, smattering - of phrases from people with only one thing on their minds. Every other tv or webcast ad will have scenes that appeal to our most basic of instincts, not to mention many print ads, posters and billboards.

Sometimes the link between the product and the carnal subject matter of the ads can be tenuous, to say the least. What the marketing people are doing, of course, is trying to grab attention. Take posters along a the wall besides a subway escalator. There you are, travelling at 6 miles per hour past these invitations to spend your money....

1. Flirtatious, seductive torso shot with beckoning finger: "come to the show!"... (6 seconds attention)
2. A rotund middle aged man with a beer belly: "The best....." (1 second attention)
3. Two bikini clad girls: "call us today".....(and there you are - if you are male - walking backwards down the up escalator....2 minutes and still counting...)

Of course, there is no reason to get all worked up about this. For single ads and short campaigns, attention grabbing is essential. However, if you are running a long campaign or building or sustaining a brand, scantily clad women (or men) are not going to sustain it over the long haul, leaving the campaign limp and unfulfilled. No, as well as eye-catching images, you need substance. You need to get the real message across, before the attention span wanes. Sexual imagery is great in a short burst, but sooner or later you will want your audience to love your product, and not just have a brief affair

y the least. What the marketing people are doing, of course, is trying to grab attention. Take posters along a the wall besides a subway escalator. There you are, travelling at 6 miles per hour past these invitations to spend your money....

1. Flirtatious, seductive torso shot with beckoning finger: "come to the show!"... (6 seconds attention)
2. A rotund middle aged man with a beer belly: "The best....." (1 second attention)
3. Two bikini clad girls: "call us today".....(and there you are - if you are male - walking backwards down the up escalator....2 minutes and still counting...)

Of course, there is no reason to get all worked up about this. For single ads and short campaigns, attention grabbing is essential. However, if you are running a long campaign or building or sustaining a brand, scantily clad women (or men) are not going to sustain it over the long haul, leaving the campaign limp and unfulfilled. No, as well as eye-catching images, you need substance. You need to get the real message across, before the attention span wanes. Sexual imagery is great in a short burst, but sooner or later you will want your audience to love your product, and not just have a brief affair

best....." (1 second attention)
3. Two bikini clad girls: "call us today".....(and there you are - if you are male - walking backwards down the up escalator....2 minutes and still counting...)

Of course, there is no reason to get all worked up about this. For single ads and short campaigns, attention grabbing is essential. However, if you are running a long campaign or building or sustaining a brand, scantily clad women (or men) are not going to sustain it over the long haul, leaving the campaign limp and unfulfilled. No, as well as eye-catching images, you need substance. You need to get the real message across, before the attention span wanes. Sexual imagery is great in a short burst, but sooner or later you will want your audience to love your product, and not just have a brief affair

rand, scantily clad women (or men) are not going to sustain it over the long haul, leaving the campaign limp and unfulfilled. No, as well as eye-catching images, you need substance. You need to get the real message across, before the attention span wanes. Sexual imagery is great in a short burst, but sooner or later you will want your audience to love your product, and not just have a brief affair with it.

Some may even go as far as to say that using titillating images and innuendo is a cheap trick, betraying a lack of imagination by the ad agency and marketing guys. Surely, this depends on how you weave the images into the message: if you are selling photocopiers, for example, having a tv ad with a half naked model standing by the machine, with the tag line: "Buy our photocopiers" is crude, gratuitous and tacky (and a rubbish tag line). However, having a naked couple in bed together with a photocopier and with the tag line: "Great reproduction" may be risqu? but would not be crude by any measure (hey, this is my best effort for free - I can normally do better when I'm being paid!). It could also be controversial enough to start a valuable debate, possible in the media, about the ad itself, thus bringing in valuable free copy and air time).

Remember: a marketing campaign with pretty girls and no real intelligence would soon go limp and leave a client unfulfilled. This kind of crude campaign would not challenge your audience to think about your product and chew over an intelligent message or some clever humour. By draping pretty girls over your product, with no connection between the two, you are just saying: "hey, buy this product!". This blatant disregard for your audience strips your campaign down to its bare essentials. This is naked selling, indeed.

Sexual imagery is hard to avoid in ads and in life in general. Some parents take offence to this. This is not through over-prudishness. This is because their young children are simply not equipped to understand the real reasons for