Sex Advertising ?

Fragrance is part of the fashion line that can be considered quite exclusive but it has quite a different approach to advertising and promoting its’ product as compared to clothing lines. According to Sarah Oaks (2012), advertising perfumes in this competitive world nowadays isn’t easy because they are advertising a product that can’t be decided through the naked eye. Due to the fact that of all products that rely on sex to sell themselves, perfume is one of the product out there that relies heavily on sex advertising as scent is intrinsically linked to desire and sexual attraction. Out there today, most of the perfumes out there rely heavily on sexual attraction on the advertisement to promote and it is actually showing positive results in sales (Pearson 2008).

The reason that this is happening is because sex sells. According to an article by Bridgette Desmond (2008), the average person sees 1,500 advertisements a day on average and for an advertisement to stand out; it has to create an image for the viewers to not forget. This approach of advertising does provide a promising outcome to the business but it also brings negative outcomes not to the business, but to the culture. Products mostly uses sexy female contents such as half naked body or so to promote but this has eventually created a cultural difference and it harms the image of women nowadays. A report shows that the highly promoted of sexual values in advertisements shows degrading portrayal of women with overtones of violence, sexual domination and bestiality (Onyejekwe 2005). It is slowly damaging the value and the image of women today by degrading them for profit purposes and it is not a very wise thing to do. It is very common to see a women half nude to almost nothing in an advertisement promoting a product with a sexual touch on it. One of the reasons why would women or the community agree to do so still is probably due to the promising pay they received and also the brand that will carry their image around in the fashion world.

Desmond, B 2008, Sex in Magazine Advertising: Examining the past 15 Years, viewed on 5^th June 2012, fromr http://www.unh.edu/sociology/media/pdfs-journal2008/DesmondEDITED.pdf

Onyejekwe, CJ 2005, Advertising and Exploitation of Female Sexuality, viewed on 7^th June 2012, from http://www.quietmountainessays.org/Onyejekwe.html

Pearson, A 2008, ‘Perfume on Trial: The Truth About Our Scent Industry’, Daily Mail, viewed on 5^th June 2012, from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-550511/Perfumes-trial-The-truth-scent-industry.html

Sarah, O 2012, ‘The Highly Sexual Art of Selling Perfume’, Daily Life, viewed on 5^th June 2012, from http://www.dailylife.com.au/dl-beauty/the-highly-sexual-art-of-selling-perfume-20120518-1yvd4.html