Sex... does it still sell?

Fashion houses have long used sexually provocative adverts to sell clothes, with the likes of American Apparel well known for their risqué images. But a wave of campaigns from some rather more unlikely hell-raisers are using bare flesh and innuendo to sell their products. Richmond Ham and the National Trust are two such brands attempting to get people hot under the collar.

Consumers’ reactions have varied widely. An ad for Kerry Foods’ Richmond Ham featuring naked farmers frolicking in luscious green fields is being investigated by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for potentially breaching broadcast advertising codes mainly due to 350 complaints about bare bottoms being broadcast before the 9pm watershed.

Meanwhile, a New Look T-shirt showing a woman with a football between her legs was withdrawn from sale last month after complaints from customers on blogs and Facebook. And the National Trust, not generally known for its outrageousness, has launched an app giving a guided tour of Soho’s red light district to lure younger people to the brand, though only one person has officially complained that it is ‘glorifying the permissive society’ by doing so.

Marketers all want their brands to stand out, but treading the right side of the line can be tricky, especially when it comes to mass media such as outdoor advertising

Also a marketing case study is this year’s publishing phenomenon, Fifty Shades of Grey by the British author EL James. The book would suggest that sex still most definitely sells but its front cover downplays the content. The erotic novel has become the fastest-selling book in the UK with nearly 3 million print copies sold (see box) and 20 million worldwide.

But how do marketers judge how much sex they can use to sell their wares?

According to Jane Frost, chief executive at the Market Research Society, sex now sells if it is used in a clever and appropriate way.

Frost, a former senior marketer at the BBC and Shell, says: “Sex sells partly because it is about grabbing attention. Creating a communication that gets attention and engages with the audience is a key thing and if you need a bit of sex to do that, then fine.”

Whether a brand can get away with using sexual images in its products or advertising is also a matter of context, she says. The New Look T-shirt was visible to children aged 15 or under, which is an inappropriate place for it to be, so it was taken off sale.

“I don’t think it should have been there in the first place,” Frost says. “Unless a brand defines itself as smut – and plenty do, which are bought by a certain type of person – you don’t go to New Look with the expectation that you are going to find stuff like that.”

However, you also don’t go to the National Trust’s website in the expectation of finding an ‘X-rated Soho tour app’, as London’s Evening Standard described the charity’s initiative to attract under-40s to the brand.

The app, which talks through Soho’s history, including an account of being a stripper and descriptions of drug-taking, says Ivo Dawnay, the Trust’s director of London.

“It’s interesting how little shock there has been. The idea was not to go out and gratuitously shock people to try to show how funky the National Trust is, but you can’t tell the story of Soho in a completely ‘Songs of Praise’ way,” he says.

Most of the Trust’s membership is over 50, so the charity says it needs to appeal to younger people. The edgy app is just a prelude to a series of events to start later this summer.

Dawnay says: “What we are trying to do is tell a different story about the National Trust. We feel just as entitled to be working in the Soho environment as we are working on our own properties or estates.

“Soho has this some would say sleazy, some would say bohemian image, which relates to the image of London since the 18th century. People are much less prudish than they used to be. People are more relaxed about sex in all its forms and that is the contemporary way.”

Yet it can be difficult for brands to predict how consumers are going to react to their campaigns. The ad for Richmond Ham featuring naked people on a farm, and showing a bare bum, has been edited by owner Kerry Foods to cover up the offending part, after complaints were made.

A wave of campaigns from some rather more unlikely hell-raisers are using bare flesh and innuendo to sell their products

But the ad wasn’t meant to be edgy, says April Redmond, chief marketing officer at Kerry Foods. “The advert was designed to convey our core message about 100% natural ingredients in a light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek manner, using the tagline ‘as nature intended’.

“The decision to use nakedness in the ad was wholeheartedly innocent – after all, Richmond is a family brand.”

The ASA’s investigation into this campaign is ongoing, with a spokesman stressing that just because the body is looking into it doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with it. Indeed the regulator looks at advertising partly in relation to the ‘prevailing standards in society’.

However the ASA told Marketing Week in May that it would not be scared of tightening up its judgments. The regulator cites research that wanted it to be tougher when it comes to sexual imagery that children might see, in line with the conclusions of the Bailey review of the commercialisation and sexualisation of childhood.

ASA spokesman Matt Wilson says: “The Bailey review immediately puts this kind of issue at the top of the political agenda, as well as media and societal debates. Research has shown us that the public don’t have a problem with sexual imagery, but what they do want is a regulator to stop the free-for-all – to make sure that ads don’t go too far and don’t degrade or overtly sexualise.”

The ASA’s own research, done with parents and young people just before the government commissioned the review by Reg Bailey, chief executive of the Mothers’ Union, shows that people want a slightly tougher line, especially when it comes to imagery in less targeted media, such as outdoor posters.

“We are in a different place now to where we were pre-Bailey,” says Wilson. “You could argue that ads that were likely to be acceptable two or three years ago are not now.”

The ASA banned eight online ads by American Apparel in April for ‘gratuitous nudity’. The retailer is known for using ‘real’ people in its advertising, who could be customers or floor staff.

Ryan Holiday, director of marketing at the retailer, says of the use of non-models: “The idea is not to embody some unattainable ideal, but to make great cotton and fashionable basics. By not using supermodels or celebrities, we can do it honestly and affordably.”

While Holiday won’t comment on the banned ads, he says: “American Apparel ads aren’t any more sexual than other fashion companies. I think it’s the fact that we use real models and don’t rely on Photoshop or professional makeup artists that make the ads seem somehow different than what else is out there. The fact that American Apparel ads are more realistic shouldn’t count against the company.”

However, the ASA disagreed, saying that using amateur models in suggestive poses made the ads seem exploitative to women.

Marketers all want their brands to stand out, but treading the right side of the line can be tricky, especially when it comes to mass media such as outdoor advertising.

Ansell Healthcare was investigated by the ASA earlier this year for posters advertising its Skyn condoms. The objections were to advertising that may have been seen by children, but as it wasn’t placed near schools the complaints were not upheld.

The brand launched its products in 22 countries earlier this year, using billboards with women in underwear proclaiming ‘roll on better sex’, and buying up football-pitch sized poster sites in places including Warsaw, to get its message across.

But the company claims that it was careful to make sure that the posters appealed to both men and women, given that 40 per cent of condom-buyers are now women, up from 20 per cent five years ago (see box).

Barry McCool, head of global marketing for the consumer division of Ansell, says the balance is sometimes difficult to strike. He adds: “Here is a case where we seem to have got it right, particularly because it is more disruptive coming from the female angle. In a world of cluttered condom advertising, a key learning for me is how you stand out when you are up against the big boys like Durex.”

Ansell is preparing the second wave of the campaign, to run as posters in seven UK cities in September, as well as Facebook promotions, online banners and in-store promotions.

McCool points out that most of the complaints have been about poster advertising, which could be seen by a broader audience than a targeted online ad, for example. And Frost at the Market Research Society agrees that when an ad is viewed by the target audience in the right context, it is more likely to hit its mark and avoid any offence or backlash.

The fine line between acceptable sexual imagery and smuttiness can be difficult to judge. But the key to successfully using sex in advertising seems to be to show a little but not too much.