WHY?
So why do these advertisers use women and sex to sell their product? For the most part it's because the advertisements are created to conform to assumptions about the people who are purchasing the product or viewing the ad (whether it's on TV, in a magazine or on the radio.) Advertisers are also looking for the best way to get your attention.
But, back to why women and sex sell products, is because these ads are targetted toward men. If you were to put a commercial on TV of a man lounging on the couch with a remote control in his hand and popping open a Bud Light, not many men would find that appealing. But place a sexy woman on the couch with him, drooling over his wet Bud Light bottle and you've got a man ready to jump in the car to go get some beer! Why you ask? Because what the advertiser is selling is that if you go purchase Bud Light, somewhere in that scenario you're going to get a sexy woman.
An 1890s advertisement showing model Hilda Clark i...
"Get fat on Lorings Fat-ten-u and corpula foods"; ...
AdvertisingAll right, so men aren't that stupid. They know if they run into the local grocery store that they can't pick out their hot babe with their beer, right! But still, the more outlandish, the sexier, the more skin shown, the more that image will stick in somebody's mind. And their hopes are that the next time somebody goes to purchase a six-pack of beer, that image will still be imbedded somewhere and so that person will just naturally grab their brand of beer.
What Can Be Done?
So, is there anything that we can do about it? One reader, Amanda, says "I consistently write to companies telling them I am unhappy with their adverisements. I often get responses from people who...