Does Sex Still Sell?

Marketing, as much as we want it to be, is not an exact science.  Technology innovation has allowed us to better understand buyers, influencers and the performance of our activities.

Insightful, creative and relevant ideas that trigger human emotions can –  and do – sell.   For as much as I wanted to believe that buyers were rational creatures behaving in predictable patterns, I now understand that they are not.

At the end of the day, business is personal.  We can’t remove the human element from the buyer or seller side.  Relationships and perceptions matter, how a product and/or a brand makes a customer feel is important, and it’s not easy to model or predict.

Sex has been used for centuries to sell every kind of products to customers guided by their primitive instincts. It worked, it works and it will work, as simple as that; one day we will visit our children using a spaceship, and sex, love and affection will still rule our world, because the hability to speak and to socialize make us different from the rest of the animals, but just our instincts and our emotions make us differents from the machines.

As an example, take a look to this commercial by Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s. I don’t know you, but I would buy 5 of those burgers if I was there!

Now you’ve watched the commercial and, don’t be naive, some of you will think: “I don’t want to buy a burger, I want to go camping with the girls”, but in the end, you will associate the brand behind the commercial with positive thoughts, desire, pleasure, happiness and you will be more likely to visit this business than any other of it’s competitors.

My conclusion:

It really doesn’t matter who is your target or what is your product, if you find the way to do it right, sex will sell for you.