Using Sex to Sell

Upon opening my Facebook account today to check how people are doing and how their weeks have gone, wondering what people might be doing today, I was presented with an update to businesses Facebook page that I had subscribed to get updates from .

On initial inspection the company seemed on the ball with regards to selling conference call technology . And I’m a tech geek so it interested me. I liked the page and allowed it to post updates to my news feed. With todays update I think I am questioning the affiliation that I am having, as everyone can see that I am a ‘fan’ of the page. Do I really want people seeing this affiliation?

Check it out…

Is this something that you would use for your companies communication? Would you use sexual innuendoes to sell your product or service? When is it ever right to use sex to sell more stuff?

Granted they identify that this is a “very cheeky” offer but I think that it is irrelevant that more harm could have been done to the brand than good. I hope that they do well with this offer, sex certainly gets peoples attention and they remember the brand normally for good and bad reasons.

It is so important for you to be strategic about your marketing and communications, especially online. Once online it is very difficult to remove anything good or bad. Using sex irreverently can alienate many people…would you want to risk that?

About the Author

Ant Hodges is a seasoned Internet marketing professional and mentor for small businesses and start-up's. Having been successful, and not so successful at times, Ant now runs a busy SEO and Internet marketing company called HodgesNet and helps to serve start-up businesses with his expertise and experiences to get the right foundations in for success.

  • grahamjones

    The answer to sex and selling is…it depends…! Some people will see the “cheeky” nature of the connection. Others will be offended. Sometimes it can be a laugh, others it can be a real issue. But that’s no different to any other aspect of marketing or selling. You don’t have to use sex to create offence or to produce humour – politics, religion – you name it, there’s an endless array of getting it right and wrong at the same time.The real issue is failure to know and understand your customers in any real depth. If you know them well and understand that sex would sell to them, fine. But if you are only guessing, it suggests you don’t know them well enough.With sex it is even more complicated because it also depends upon the short or long term nature of the product being sold. I wrote about this a few months ago:http://www.grahamjones.co.uk/blog/internet-marketing/make-people-think-of-sex…

  • Ant Hodges

    As always Graham very insightful and full of wisdom… I look forward to being wise one day!

  • voiceoverartist

    Agree with Graham really. It’s something I wouldn’t do as it’s a dodgy game to play when you’re being as overt as that. Subtle suggestion often is ok, and you can get away with it, but when using that kind of vocabulary, then it could very very easily backfire, and backfire royally. Therefore, it’s not something I would like to adopt as a marketing tactic, I play a bit safer than that!

  • Ant Hodges

    I have had a few people comment on Twitter about the fact that I found this somewhat offensive, due to my faith. Really what was offensive to me was the fact that the cycle through London with the tag line on a three person bike was enough for me to ask this question. I just imagined my 5 year old who is learning to read, trying to work out what the word threesome said and then asking “Daddy, what is a threesome?” – not something that I want to be talking to my 5 year old daughter about.

  • Heather Travis

    I would consider myself quite broad minded and have a modern approach to life but whenever I click onto something on facebook which has a tag line containing sexual content I click off immediately thinking I have entered a site which is inappropriate. After undertaking a quick survey in the office, the females mostly do exactly the same as myself whereas the men tend to read on past the title and further into the content!

  • Andrew Pearce

    Hi AntFirstly let me just thank you for taking an interest in our campaign and taking the time to write a blog post about it! Whilst I think your post is interesting and informative, im not sure that I’m in agreement with you! As a business we market ourselves in many different ways, saving the environment, saving time and effort travelling to meetings, increasing business efficiency etc….. However no-one stands up and takes notice as this is just background noise in the wider conference call field, I don’t really think that we are taking a massive risk in using sexual innuendo to market Powwownow. We sell conference calling – not very exciting! So we think that anything we can do to make it cheeky, interesting and make people smile will make us stand out as a conference call provider. This campaign caught your attention enough for you to write a blog on it, none of our other campaigns have generated the interest that this campaign is generating. We know our customer base; 75% male between the ages of 25 and 55, and more importantly our target customers. As such we are not targeting a campaign like this at an inappropriate audience (unlike Coke-a-Cola and a recent Facebook debacle!) And in reaction to Heathers response – these stats prove that we don’t have a large female audience – so the fear of women clicking off this campaign is not something we need to be massively worried about.In regard to your concerns about your 5 year old daughter stumbling across this campaign – I too have a young daughter and a young son and I can understand your concurns but the whole crux of this campaign is the play on words. It is your choice if wish to explain a threesome to her as a three way conference call, or as something sexual. Personally I’ve already done the former.Ultimately this campaign was aimed to be fun and tongue in cheek way of looking at threesomes for conference calling, and I would question whether a one off campaign such as this would really stop anyone from using a service which is free – I do hope not! But will it attract attention to us as Europes Leading Free Conference call provider and win us new customers? I know it can and already has.I’d just like to say that we never aimed to cause offence. Andrew

  • Ant Hodges

    Hi AndrewThanks for your comment here. I guess in some senses the use of Sex is advertising and marketing has always been a way of getting more attraction, positive or negative.With 25% of you target audience potentially being alienated from this as Heather did point out, is this not a cause for concern for Powwownow.I appreciate that this campaign was not meant to cause offence and I do wish Powwownow all the best.Thanks again for taking the time to comment here Andrew.Ant

  • Andrew Pearce

    Hi Ant,Just thought I should respond to your observation about our target audience. My feeling on the matter is whilst we know that women form about 25% of our customer base, we do not know that 100% of women will be alienated by the campaign. I don’t think they will be, 4 of my marketing team are women and they not only helped come up with the idea they also think it’s very funny!All the bestAndrew

  • Ant Hodges

    Thanks again for taking the time to comment Andrew. I hope your investment in this campaign pays off for you and your team.Ant

  • Nigel Morgan

    Firstly, kudos to Andrew Pearce from Powwownow for taking the time to respond and address your concerns – too many businesses merrily ignore bloggers as their reputation is damaged!It does sound like Powwownow has understood its target audience and correctly targeted them and hopefully it has already translated to the business they obviously seek. However, in this age of social media not all audience members are created equal and any brand seeking to use sex, innuendo or suggestion to market their services does need to recognise this.It takes little more than a heartbeat for someone to blog about such a promotion, tweet about it, share it on Facebook and hopefully that leads to a nice bit of organic viral marketing… However, if someone is upset it can easily backfire and lead to even greater negative publicity.Now you could argue that if it still sells then no harm done. However I am not so sure. A brand tarnished with a conception, wrongly or rightly, that they use sex to sell, may well suffer. I had not heard of powwownow before this blog, yet now it will always be linked with concerns about them using sex and putting the author of this blog in an imagined tricky position with his young daughter! And the truth there is that is how Ant felt and any explanation Andrew Pearce might come up with does not remove that initial discomfort.American businesses are often more puritancal than us Brits and I wonder how they would feel if they were invited to be part of a threesome with powwownow? Especially if they subsequently learned of any controversy?Interestingly, according to Wikipedia using Pow Wow in a way that does not refer to the gathering of Native American tribes can be viewed as disrespectful to Native Americans. Throw sexual innuendo into the mix… Imagine if the American bloggers got upset about it?!Great post Ant and some interesting debate too!

  • Ant Hodges

    Thanks for your comments Nigel… opens the debate about using sex to sell a little further… Interesting comments on the US angle too.