Maybe sex in advertising is what the market really wants. First, consider Jerry Judge, former top dog at Lowe, who grouses to WSJ today that ad creatives are way behind the times, because they use too many images that objectify women:
There was the sexual revolution, and I think advertising looked away from the growing importance of women in commerce. It was a strange denial. How can you have about 85% of your creative department be men and about 85% of the purchasing power in the hands of women?He has a point. We've seen reports that women account for 80% or more of home purchase decisions, yet in meeting after meeting with clients, women rarely enter the discussion.
But second, let's consider Oprah. Walk by the magazine rack at your local Borders and count the faces. The women's titles line up like a Victoria's Secret fashion show: Vogue, Cosmo, Bride, In Touch, Essence, all with females on the cover. There are a lot of women looking at women in the media. We call this the Oprah effect.
So we see four possibilities:
1. Communications leaders tend to be men, and because men tend to be sexist, they use images of women.
2. Women are simply more attractive than men, so viewers of both sexes buy more titles or products from images with women.
3. Women -- 51% of the target consumer population -- prefer to compare themselves to images of other women.
4. Men -- 49% of the target population -- have an adverse inclination to look at other attractive men. (Either because they are homophobic, or have an evolutionary impulse to fight competitive males, or maybe just find facial hair damn ugly.)
Hmm. Pick your poison. We do know that (smart) communicators measure results, either in terms of ad response or magazine cover sales, so over time one would think the selection of top-performing creative would lead to the supply of creative the market demands. Women rise to the top of images because, perhaps, to the fair go the spoils.
We don't want to seem sexist. But then, we don't buy Oprah.
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