Sex and Coffee?

The other day some of my fellow students at KM08 and I were discussing an advertisment for Lavazzas coffee on the back cover of a food magazine. We all agreed on this was a great example of how the product is cannibalised by the sexy woman in the advertisement. However it was a beautiful picture by the great photographer Annie Leibovitz. It turned out that most of Lavazzas commercials are based on a strange connection between sex and coffee, which isn’t obvious to me and probably never will be. But the pictures in their advertising campaigns are often fantastic, if you like art! Especially the calender made by Finlay MacKay for 2008. In 2006 the Swedish Trade Ethical Council aganist Sexism in Advertising (ERK) banned a Lavazza commercial because the woman in the advertisement were not relevant to the espresso coffee. ERK says  that  one of the main factors for considering a commercial offensive is the lack of relevance between the featured sexiness and the product. This makes me wonder about a TV-commercial for the light spread Lätta , where a beautiful woman wearing light clothing sitting on a bridge eating a crisproll with Lätta light spread. Suddenly she dives into the water and when she appears again she’s riding a killer whale. In which way is the killer whale relevant to the light spread? Where can I get this commercial banned ?

Does Sex Sell?

Yes, it does! But not always. Sex in commercial messages have to be relevant for the product or for the consumer, otherwise the product will be cannibalised by the sexiness  featured in the advertisement.

Sexual content in mediated promotional messages has been around since the beginning of advertising and in several cases, sex in advertising has been the main factor for increased sales and interests from the consumers. Take Duke & Sons, the leading cigarette brand by 1890. They came up with the idea to insert pictures of nude ladies into their cigarette packs and the success was done. Today approximatly one fifth of all mediated promotional messages has some sort of sexual content. More or less ouvert.