The advertising think-tank is filled with intellectual guppies

I normally prefer to stay away from the war between the sexes. They usually end up being ugly accusations which cite extreme examples of behavior as a justification for the attack of half the population. It’s ridiculous and the attacker ends up looking more foolish than the attacked.

That said...

Some men are so fucking stupid I could have an aneurism just thinking about it!
There’s an old truism in advertising that says simply "sex sells." Let me be the first to raise my hand and testify to the truthiness (I love you, Stephen Colbert) of this statement.
The heavily male dominated advertising industry has been pitching sexy ads to the heavily male dominated executive businesspeople almost since mass media and branding were created. For the most part, it’s been a great success.

An new study conducted by three University of Florida professors is saying that for women, the theory is a falsehood.

The study showed women who were shown advertisements featuring attractive female models and asked to both categorize the type of beauty the model represented (classic feminine, sensual exotic, trendy, cute, girl next door, and sex kitten) and rate their level of response from bored to interested.

The data showed that the more sexually charged the model seemed, the less interested the women were. The conclusion? Sex does not sell to women.

OK, here’s a pop quiz who can see what is wrong with this statement? They were basing their conclusion on the responses of women to images of attractive *women*. No study was done based on the responses of women to sexy men.

Now, I don’t know if the studies participants were surveyed on their sexual orientation, but presumably, it was the same 90% heterosexual as the rest of the population.
So let’s analyze this equation. We are heterosexual women who aren’t attracted to images of sexy women, ergo, sex does not attract us in advertising.

And the Diet Coke guy had no part in boosting sales of Diet Coke that year. And Fabio’s books sold so well because he was a really brilliant author. (I said that sarcastically, but really, Pirate was a great book.)
For decades, Advertisers have been pitching sexy women in advertisements to women, hoping to entice the buyers to emulate the models. But the first rule of communication is to know your audience. Before we ever picked up a magazine telling us what products we want, society taught us not to be whores.

Damn society.

It took three PHDs to figure out that I really don’t want to buy toothpaste from a Victoria’s Secret model. How many of them will it take to figure out I’d buy any freaking floorwax you’re selliing if you just put Keanu Reeves’ half naked body on the kitchen floor.