Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - S1E16 - Sex In Advertising

Episode Date: April 21, 2012

The advertising industry has a long history of using sex to sell products. Woodbury's used sex to sell soap as far back the 1920's - and the campaign was written by a woman. But the use of sex has always been a polarizing technique. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly. As you may know, we've been producing a lot of bonus episodes while under the influences on hiatus. They're called the Beatleology Interviews, where I talk to people who knew the Beatles, work with them, love them, and the authors who write about them. Well, the Beatleology Interviews have become a hit, so we are spinning it out to be a standalone podcast series. You've already heard conversations with people like actors Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, and Beatles confidant Astrid Kershaw. But coming up, I talk to May Pang, who dated John Lennon in the mid-70s. I talk to double fantasy guitarist Earl Slick, Apple Records creative director John Kosh. I'll be talking to Jan Hayworth,

who designed the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Very cool. And I'll talk to singer Dion, who is one of only five people still alive who were on the Sgt. Pepper cover. And two of those people were Beatles. The stories they tell are amazing. So thank you for making this series such a success. And please do me a favor, follow the Beatleology interviews on your podcast app. You don't even have to be a huge Beatles fan. You just have to love storytelling. Subscribe now and don't miss a single beat. new year new me season is here and honestly we're already over it enter felix the health care company helping canadians take a different approach to weight loss this year weight loss is more than just diet and exercise it can be about tackling genetics hormones metabolism felix

gets it they connect you with licensed healthcare practitioners online who'll create a personalized treatment plan that pairs your healthy lifestyle with a little help and a little extra support. Start your visit today at felix.ca. That's F-E-L-I-X.ca. From the Under the Influence digital box set, this episode is from Season 1, 2012. Your teeth look whiter than no, no, no You're not you when you're hungry You're in good hands with us You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly. Flight request to our flight attendants be seated at this time.

We'll be landing in about one minute. Thank you. I fly a lot between Toronto and Los Angeles for work. And I've had a lot of memorable seatmates. I'm riding this on a flight to L.A. right now, and sitting across from me is the Fonz himself, Henry Winkler. He's got one of those blue neck pillows on. The Toronto FC team just filed by, all wearing their red tracksuits, on their way to play some soccer with Mr. Beckham

and the L.A. Galaxy. I once watched actress Mackenzie Phillips fall asleep into her dinner. I took a business class seat on an upgrade when it was just me and Cindy Crawford vying for the last seat once. She wasn't happy. I watched Donald Sutherland never look up once while a Donald Sutherland movie played. Flip Wilson once borrowed my extra pillow, then proceeded to sleep on the floor between his seats, legs and red socks stuck straight up in the air. But one of my most interesting seatmates was a porn star.

His name was Adam Glasser. You might know him by his stage name, Seymour Butts. I recognized him as soon as he boarded the plane. No, I haven't seen any of his films. I recognized him because he had a reality TV series that ran for four seasons called Family Business. On the next all-new Family Business, the reality series that takes a revealing look at the first family of adult entertainment. People from all over want to be in my movies, but this industry is just not for everyone. The show was called Family Business because his Jewish mother and his 60-year-old cousin help him run his empire.

The program followed him around while he attended to his growing porn business, Seymour Inc. Glasser is one of the busiest porn producers, directors, and distributors in North America, and Seymour Inc. has made 70 adult films. But Adam Glasser, a.k.a. Seymour Butts, is an interesting guy. We sat beside each other for a five-hour flight and we had a conversation about marketing. In his business, he is a knowledgeable marketer. He completely understands his target market. He took me state by state and described what kind of porn videos sell in each one of them.

And that was an eyebrow-raising list, I may add. He told me how he distributes his videos and how he brands his company. A lot of states in the U.S. have very strict laws about pornography. In 2001, Mr. Butts was the focus of an obscenity-based court case because of his 1999 film, Tampa Tushy Fest 1. He eventually pleaded no contest and paid a fine. As a result, he told me his company keeps a law firm on retainer at $50,000 per month to protect him from the inevitable lawsuits

his profession attracts. He told me successful porn films show beautiful women having sex with really average-looking guys. And that is the secret to pornography. Beautiful women with utterly normal guys. It's a selling strategy, so everyday men can project themselves into the scene and therefore buy the videos as a result. Needless to say, it was an illuminating discussion.

It got me thinking about sex and the marketing of sex. The advertising industry has a long history of using sex as a selling tool. It's always been a contentious technique and it's been used in marketing going all the way back to the turn of the 20th century. It has outraged feminists, it has been the selling tool of choice for men, it has been used to sell all kinds of products, sex has sometimes even been used to sell sex, and the boundaries have inched a little bit further every decade. It continues to be one of the hottest debates in advertising.

Does sex sell? You're under the influence. Oh, my sweet baby. The use of sex in advertising is not new. We can trace sex in advertising all the way back to the mid-1800s, but it was an ad for Woodbury's soap in 1911 that is a landmark. Written by the creative director of J. Walter Thompson Advertising, Helen Lansdowne Reeser,

the headline stated, The Skin You Love to Touch. Then, in the 1930s, full female nudity appeared in advertising for the first time, and all bets were off. Yet, advertising is one of the most conservative forces in popular culture. As someone once said, it's more metronome than trumpet. Though full nudity made its way into advertising in the 1930s,

it's not something you see much of in North America. There are exceptions, of course, but not many in mainstream media. Sex as a selling tool is another matter. The summer of love in 1967 pushed a lot of boundaries, none more so than sex in advertising.

Just listen to this Noxzema men's shaving lotion commercial from that very year. Nothing takes it off like Noxzema medicated shave. Take it all. Take it all off. Nothing takes it off like Noxzema medicated shave. As the 70s ended, one of the most controversial and long-running sexual advertising campaigns began.

It was for Calvin Klein jeans. Designer Calvin Klein attended the Fashion Institute of Technology in 1963. He opened his first business five years later in a small, dingy showroom opposite the elevator bank in the now-defunct York Hotel. One day, a vice president for the upscale department store Bonwit Teller stopped on the wrong floor of the building. He wandered into Klein's tiny showroom by mistake, liked what he saw,

and invited Klein to show his samples to the president of Bonwit Teller. Klein didn't want to put his clothes into a cab for fear of wrinkling, so he wheeled the entire rack of clothes uptown by himself and won a $50,000 contract on the spot. Soon, Calvin Klein was inundated with orders. His first foray into designer jeans was a failure, so he revamped the styling by, quote, raising the groin to accentuate the crotch

and pulled the seam up between the buttocks to give the rear more shape. That's the very reason why Keith wears them to this day. Yep. A Times Square billboard showing Keith Richards' future partner, Patty Hanson, wearing the jeans, on all fours, derriere tilted up, caused a sensation. But it was nothing compared to the heat

Klein's next television commercial would generate. Shot by Richard Avedon in 1980, it featured Brooke Shields wearing Calvin Klein jeans. But it wasn't so much how she was posing, it was what she said. You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.

Calvin Klein jeans. It raised eyebrows not just because she suggested she wasn't wearing underwear. It was because those words were being uttered by a 15-year-old. On top of that, Brooke Shields brought along built-in controversy because she had recently played a child living in a brothel in the movie Pretty Baby, in which she was eventually initiated into her mother's profession. She was 11 at the time. You'll notice she was whistling

Oh My Darling Clementine in the ad. I thought it was an interesting choice, so I researched the song. Written way back in 1884, it is supposedly sung from the viewpoint of a bereaved lover who has lost his darling Clementine in a drowning accident. But the song was controversial because a section of the lyric was considered morally questionable. It said,

How I missed her, how I missed her, how I missed my Clementine, but I kissed her little sister, I forgot my Clementine. That subtle undertow and the explicit underage sexuality of the commercial caused a storm of complaints, and the ad was banned from the air by several networks. But Calvin Klein just cried all the way to the bank, because sales of his jeans surged to over 2 million pairs a month, generating revenues of over $100 million inside 12 months.

Even though Brooke Shields professed not to wear underwear, Klein started to design them. For the ad campaign, he hired photographer Bruce Weber to shoot a male Olympic athlete in provocative states of well-endowed undress. When Klein launched his new Obsession perfume in 1985, print ads showed nude men and women, limbs intertwined. Shocking, even by 1980s standards.

The TV commercial showed a woman who was the obsession of an older man. She left, and everything golden went with her. Nothing could bring that danger to earth. To drown in her laughter. Save me. To revel in the careless scandal of her walk. To breathe her innocence was life itself. My angel.

Ashes. All ashes. What did me, did I somehow drive her away? There are many loves, but only one obsession. Calvin Klein's obsession. Ah, the smell of it. Another ad in the series showed the same woman as the obsession of an older woman,

and even a 12-year-old boy. She loved me, and she's gone. Did I invent her? The secrets in her twilight eyes? The whispers on my bedside? While it could be argued there is an undercurrent of pornography in Klein's advertising, a 1997 campaign brought the issue to the forefront. The commercials showed young people auditioning in a low-rent, wood-paneled set

complete with shag carpeting and bad lighting. An off-camera voice flirted with the models. Kentucky. Kentucky? Yes. Well, that's where you got the blue eyes. What are you wearing? Can you dance? Yeah, I can dance, but I'm going to dance for you. Why? I don't know. The voice sometimes coaxed them to take their clothes off.

Are you strong? I'd like to think so. You think you can rip that shirt off of you? It's a nice body. To most, it looked like a bad 70s porn set. You can judge for yourself on our website. But Klein insisted the ads weren't pornographic. Rather, they, quote, conveyed the idea that glamour is an inner quality that can be found in regular people in the most ordinary setting. It is not something exclusive to movie stars and models.

Unquote. Consumer advocates disagreed. The American Family Association began a massive letter campaign to retailers threatening to boycott their stores, and Seventeen magazine refused to carry the print ads. The U.S. Justice Department launched an investigation into whether or not Klein had violated child pornography laws.

Under mounting pressure, Klein pulled the ads. But by that time, the controversy had turned his jeans into the must-have item of the season. Calvin Klein's advertising strategy has always been to court controversy and cultural outrage. While many brands in the fashion and perfume categories use sex,

Klein owns it. His ads have offended many people, but the resulting sales suggest the use of sex doesn't offend Calvin Klein's target market. In 2010, retail sales of products sold worldwide under the Calvin Klein brand names generated more than $6.7 billion in sales. And we'll be right back.

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to speak to an advisor free of charge. BidMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. If you're enjoying this episode, why not dip into our archives, available wherever you download your pods. Go to terryoreilly.ca for a master episode list. So, does sex influence purchasing decisions? Clearly, it does. And it works on several levels.

Sex can be used to gain attention. Few things work as well to attract eyeballs. Sex can be used to sell attractiveness. Everyone wants to feel attractive and sexy to some degree. This is the bread and butter of the fashion, makeup, and fragrance industries. Some ads use sex to suggest you'll get sex as a result of buying the product. Alcohol ads jump to mind.

Some ads use sex to sell low-interest products like insurance or hamburgers. But the more intriguing question is, what is it about our psyches that responds to sexual marketing? Good old Sigmund Freud had a few theories on that. Freud claimed everything that people do can be linked back to sexual motivations. These motives were not acceptable in society. But Freud felt people channeled their desire to gratify their needs into outlets acceptable to the outside world

by choosing products that signify their underlying yearnings. Bingoes! That unconscious motives compelled certain purchases. It prompted the famous question, When is a cigar just a cigar? Put another way, are high-heeled shoes just shoes or are they symbols of sexual preening?

Is red lipstick just lip color or is it a signal of sexual availability? Is a car just a mode of transportation or is it a symbol of sexual prowess? Sex has also revived dyeing brands. Abercrombie & Fitch was founded in New York City in 1892 by David T. Abercrombie and Ezra H. Fitch. It catered to sportsmen who like big game hunting, mountain climbing and fishing. The merchandise ranged from Tweety jackets to camping equipment to pith helmets to guns, archery and fishing tackle. Now, does that sound anything like Abercrombie & Fitch you know today. Not even close.

In 1988, the ailing Abercrombie & Fitch was purchased by a company called Limited Brands. It was a parent company to several fashion stores, including Victoria's Secret. So, sex wasn't altogether foreign as a marketing tool. In 1992, Mike Jeffries took over as president. Jeffries had

a vision for A&F, and he wanted to appeal to the American teen market, and he wanted the stores to, quote, sizzle with sex. To rebrand the stores, he brought in Calvin Klein photographer Bruce Weber.

The resulting photographs weren't so much cheesecake as they were beefcake. The overwhelming majority of shots were of near-naked guys. Most of those photos appeared in a publication called A&F Quarterly and featured pictures of models wearing

A&F merchandise and a fair share of non-frontal nudity. For Christmas 2003, the A&F Quarterly cover promised 280 pages of, quote, moose, ice hockey, chivalry, group sex, and more. The imagery raised the ire of various parent and Christian groups, which accused Abercrombie of using softcore porn in its marketing. Of course, the outrage of parents sent rebellious teenagers flocking to the stores. The strategy gave A&F 48 consecutive quarters of profit growth leading up to the recession of 2009, almost unheard of in fashion retailing.

In 2011, the once-ailing Abercrombie & Fitch posted net sales of $2.8 billion. Clearly, sex sells. And sometimes, sex sells sex. Back in 2010, an erectile dysfunction commercial ran in Australia. The ad showed a middle-aged woman trying to reach a bowl of cookies high up on a shelf. She strains, but can't quite reach. Then, she calls her husband.

Honey! Hubby walks into camera wearing a white terrycloth robe. Wife points to the bowl of cookies on the upper shelf. Husband opens his robe. Wife looks down. Her eyes widen. She smiles. Then she uses his erection as a stepping stool,

climbs up on it and reaches the cookies. Cue smiling hubby. And cue announcer. Solving erection problems is not out of reach. Take the right step towards erection problems. Call or SMS HUD to AMI now. You can see this ad on our website. It attracted the most complaints of any ad in Australia in 2010.

Not only that, but the actress Libby Ashby was thrown out of her church for appearing in the ad. She would not be reinstated until the ad came off the air. It's an interesting case. When you see the ad, it's actually not overly offensive. As one blogger said, it's a mild version of a Benny Hill skit. The other advertising I've talked about in this episode is much more overt

and explicit. But there is a dividing line here. Women can be objectified, but when a penis is brought into the picture, all bets are off. Especially if the penis in question has had the launch sequence initiated. Show a scantily clad woman and you may get a few complaints. Imply a penis and you get the most complaints of the year.

You might even get bounced from your church. approach to help you crush your health goals is here. Losing weight is about more than diet and exercise. It can also be about our genetics, hormones, metabolism. Felix connects you with online licensed healthcare practitioners who understand that everybody is different and can pair your healthy lifestyle with the right support to reach your goals. Start your visit today at felix.ca. That's F-E-L-I-X dot C-A. Sex in advertising never fails to be a flashpoint. One of the most interesting cases has to do with a certain old Milwaukee beer campaign. For years, every old Milwaukee beer ad was a variation on the same theme. A bunch of guys fishing or camping, culminating in the tagline, It just doesn't get any better than this. One day, years into the campaign,

Old Milwaukee's advertising agency decided to have some fun with the line. The brand was seen as old and tired. So, in a series of ads aired in 1991, we see the same old scenario with a bunch of guys camping, they crack open a few old Milwaukees, and someone says, Guys, it doesn't get any better than this. at which point the announcer tells us the guy is wrong.

Walt Smith was wrong. Soon, the Swedish bikini team helicopters in, all blonde, busty, and dancing around with six-packs, which prompts the announcer to say, It most certainly got better. Old Milwaukee and old Milwaukee light. It just doesn't get any better than this. The ad agency maintained it was an ironic take on their old tagline and a complete parody of all the T&A cliché beer commercials of the 80s.

But any way you sliced it, it still put bikini-clad blondes into a beer campaign. Then, the most interesting thing happened. The women who worked for Old Milwaukee sued their own company. They felt the Swedish bikini team advertising not only objectified women, but it was prompting unwelcome sexual harassment

on the floor of the Old Milwaukee plant. The lawsuit alleged the TV campaign and the posters of the bikini team on the plant walls were encouraging men to verbally and physically harass the women on the job. Parent company Stroh's Brewery responded by saying they had a very strict and definite policy against sexual harassment in the workplace. But as the women stated in their lawsuit, Stroh's was saying one harassment in the workplace. But as the women stated in their lawsuit, Strohs was saying one thing in the workplace

and quite another in the marketplace. The law told the men at Strohs not to treat women as sex objects, while the company ads told them to revel in the thought. Ronald Collins, a professor at the Columbia School of Law, put an even finer point on it. He said that when a single voice degrades women in the workplace, we call it sexual harassment. When that voice is amplified for millions of people, we call it advertising.

And there it is. The former was a legal wrong and the latter is a legal right. Until that profound tension gets resolved, advertising and sex will always be uneasy bedfellows. In an attention economy, all advertisers want to create messages you'll notice. So they spend millions of dollars trying to figure out ways to slice through the data smog. And many choose to use the power of sex.

There's no doubt sex sells. Just ask Calvin Klein. Abercrombie & Fitch was exhumed thanks to sex. On Advertising Age magazine's list of the top 100 ads of all time, only 8 used a sexual pitch. Yet, it's estimated 20% of North American ads contain sexual information. There is definitely a reason

why sex in advertising works. We are sexual beings, and sex is a subject that never fails to fascinate us. Freud felt we suppressed our darker desires and could only express them publicly in what we buy and wear.

Maybe Seymour Butz and Sigmund Freud are actually in agreement on that point, that we project ourselves into sexual situations to fulfill a fantasy. Can you be sexy without being exploitive? Yes, but what's considered tasteful is always in flux. We've gone from the scandal of showing a bare ankle in the 1890s

to a sex scandal in the Oval Office 100 years later. No one's ever quite sure where the limits are at any given time anymore until you cross them, as Stroh's Brewery found out. But that's always been the big question with sex. How far do you go when you're under the influence? I'm Terry O'Reilly. Hey, Terry, it's Seymour Butts calling. I don't know if you remember me.

We sat on a plane together once to Toronto. Listen, I remembered you're an advertising guy, and I need some help marketing my latest movie, Milk Kebab. So I thought this would be right up your alley. Give me a call, and we'll talk. Under the Influence was produced by Pirate Toronto and New York. The sound engineer was Keith Ullman, who looks quite fetching in his Calvin Klein jeans. Under the influence was produced by Pirate Toronto and New York.

The sound engineer was Keith Ullman, who looks quite fetching in his Calvin Klein jeans. See you next week. In case nobody's told you, weight loss goes beyond the old just eat less and move more narrative, and that's where Felix comes in. Felix is redefining weight loss for Canadians with a smarter, more personalized approach to help you crush your health goals this year. Losing weight is about more than diet and exercise. It can also be about our genetics, hormones, metabolism.

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