Growing Overtones : Sex in Ads: It Even Sells Detergent

Colleen Flynn-Lawson practiced for two days. She even rented a video of the blockbuster film “Flashdance,” just to see how one actress performed a similar feat.

Then, she stood in front of a roomful of producers and advertising executives and showed them that she could pull it off--her Maidenform bra, that is.

The trick, however, was to matter-of-factly slip the bra off while remaining fully attired in a sweater. While some women are familiar with this task, it is not every day that such actions are broadcast to millions of American homes--in a commercial. The ad ends with the actress dangling the bra from one hand.

A First for TV

This ad is scheduled to hit the airwaves on Aug. 17, when it will premiere on “Good Morning America,” the “Today Show” and the “CBS Morning Program.” When it does, Flynn-Lawson, a 25-year-old model who had never done a commercial before, will become the first woman to remove her bra--albeit while still fully clothed--in a U.S. television commercial.

“I won’t say the ad isn’t sexual, because it definitely is,” said Flynn-Lawson, a Jersey City, N.J., resident whose girl-next-door looks helped her land the role. “But even my mother, a devout Irish Catholic, liked the ad so much that she made me play it for her nine times.”

Many mothers, however, may not be pleased with the recent spate of sexually provocative advertisements that have found their way onto network television, into a growing number of magazines and newspapers, and even inside some New York City bus shelters.

Straight From Dr. Ruth

What’s more, sexually suggestive commercials are rapidly spreading from advertisers who have long relied on sex as a selling point--like cosmetics and designer jeans--to far less likely products, like laundry detergent and running shoes. Ad agency executives concede that the number of advertisements with sexual overtones have reached historical highs.

“There is nothing more interesting than sex,” said Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the radio talk show hostess, author and columnist. “Advertisers know this better than anyone.” And Dr. Ruth herself stars in a new TV spot for Signal mouthwash, where she says, “Don’t be afraid to tell your partner what gives you pleasure.”

Not all ad chiefs, however, are sold on sex as an advertising ploy. “If sex is the best method you can find to sell your product, then it had better be one fantastic product,” said Jack Roth, president of Los Angeles-based Admarketing. “After all, sexual ads are bound to upset a lot of people.”

It may not be sexy, but Playtex broke new ground in early May when TV commercials for its Cross Your Heart Bra began to show models instead of mannequins in bras. It didn’t take long for rival Maidenform to react. Not only did it create the bra-less Flynn-Lawson ad, but another campaign scheduled for release in September that features British actor Michael York. In the ad, he says, “When a woman wears beautiful lingerie it says she likes herself. I think that’s sexy.”

Now, even Fab, the laundry detergent, is selling more than suds these days. A recent ad for the Colgate-Palmolive product shows an attractive man suggestively jumping out of bed and hopping into his Fab-cleaned clothes. And Fab’s ad agency has appropriately titled the commercial “Reverse Strip.”

Meanwhile, a new print ad for Borateem bleach has certainly taken the homemaker out of the laundry room. The ad features the arms of six different men reaching out to grab a woman who is dressed in skintight, zebra-striped shorts--and wearing a bracelet that looks like handcuffs. “That ad may be slightly pushed to the edge,” said Brad Ball, president of Davis, Johnson, Mogul & Colombatto Inc., the Los Angeles ad firm that created the new print ad. “But we had to find a way to grab attention for a product in a pretty dull category.”

And a recent perfume commercial for Revlon’s new fragrance, Intimate, features a steamy look at a man running an ice cube down the neck of scantily clothed woman. Although NBC rejected the commercial, ABC and CBS both ran toned-down versions of it.

A Steamy Picture

And that’s just the beginning. Amid passionate scenes of couples kissing, a new Close-up toothpaste commercial blatantly asks: “Want Love? Get Close-up.” A spokesman for the toothpaste’s maker, Lever Brothers, said the ad is “tastefully executed.”

A recent magazine ad for Reebok shows a couple embracing, with the man clearly grabbing his girlfriend’s behind. But all of this is tame compared to a provocative print ad for Travel Fox running shoes, which depicts a couple who appear to be engaged in sexual intercourse while attired in only their sneakers.

Advertising is simply catching up with the rest of society, said Hal Riney, one of the creative gurus of the advertising industry. “Usually, about four years after something shows up in movies, you start seeing it in ads,” said Riney, chief executive of San Francisco-based Hal Riney & Partners. “For example, it took years for rock music to work its way into advertising.”

Time Called Ripe

Industry analysts say that bottom-line pressures have forced the media--particularly network television--to accept ads it once banned. “If I were an advertiser with an ad that up until now had been rejected,” said Al Hampel, a New York ad industry consultant, “I’d say that now’s the time to come back with it.”

But Brandon Tartikoff, president of NBC, said it is not financial pressures that have led to these changes at his network--which is enjoying record revenues. “Our advertising is changing because the world around us is changing,” Tartikoff said. “There’s competition from the cable networks and from everywhere else. There are limits, of course, but most viewers not only accept this type of advertising, they expect it.”

The recent spate of sexually provocative ads has increased the number of complaints received by anti-pornography watchdog groups. For one, “business is booming” at Morality in Media, said Evelyn Dukovic, executive vice president of the 25-year-old New York-based group. “We tell everyone to write the advertisers directly,” she said. “That can work wonders.”

But sexually explicit ads can work wonders, too, say some advertising executives. If nothing else, they say, the commercials are attention grabbers. And that, after all, is one of the primary goals of any ad. “We can’t create commercials that will only be approved by the Parent-Teachers Assn.,” said Malcolm MacDougall, president of the New York office of Hill, Holiday, Connors, Cosmopulos Inc., which created the ad for Revlon’s Intimate. “We’re in the business of selling products. When you’re selling a fragrance by the name of Intimate, you’d sure as heck better say what it’s for.”

Some television viewers aren’t eager for their children to see these kinds of ads. So they are taking matters into their own hands--literally. When Janice Bryeans watches TV with her year-old daughter, Kristin, in the room, she sits with the remote-control device in hand. “The beauty of remote control,” said the Whittier housewife, “is that when these ads come on the screen, I can flip the switch.”

But Brice Black, who has a 3-year-old son and a year-old daughter, knows that he can’t always be there to flip the switch. “There’s just no getting away from it, sex sells” said Black, a computer operator with Pacific Bell. “Sure it bothers me when my kids see these commercials, but it’s a part of society that I can’t change.”

Some experts say parents should not consider these ads harmless. “It makes children ready to fall in love even before they reach adolescence,” said Dr. Benjamin Spock, the lecturer and best-selling author of books on child rearing. “Sex may be an effective way of selling automobiles and hair dye,” Spock said, “but advertisers are also robbing sexuality of its spiritual aspects.”

The real problem, said Dr. Joyce Brothers, the radio talk show hostess and syndicated columnist, is that advertisers aren’t a very original bunch. They are generally “over-reachers,” she said, who take the seed of a good idea “and often shape it into a bad one.” For example, she said, “Calvin Klein was among the first to advertise jeans as a way for youngsters to show off their behinds.” Then, the stakes were raised in late 1980. “Jordache started putting little kids into jeans, and tried to make them look sexy. That’s where we started running into trouble.”

But some advertising executives insist that it was provocative perfume ads by Calvin Klein, the designer jeans and fragrance maker, that have placed the present sexual taint on the advertising industry. Klein’s television ads, which began to appear in early 1985, mixed men and women in situations rife with sexuality. A recent print ad for Obsession--which appeared in a number of womens magazines--shows a side view of a passionate man with his face pressed against a woman’s naked breast.

“I think that Calvin Klein ruined it for all of us,” said Ed McCabe an industry consultant and former president of the New York ad firm of Scali, McCabe, Sloves Inc. “He went one step too far.”

Klein, however, refuses to speak about the company’s advertising--which is all produced internally. “He likes to let the advertising speak for itself,” said a company spokesman. “Why break the bubble by clinically dissecting the ads?” The success of Klein’s ads--particularly the print campaign--cannot be denied. Last year, Klein’s ads ranked as the most-remembered print advertisements, said Dave Vadehra, president of Video Storyboard Tests Inc., a New York company that monitors the success of advertisements.

But at the same time, Calvin Klein television ads didn’t even rank in the top 10 last year. Experts speculate that television simply may not be the most effective medium for sexually provocative advertising. After all, advertisers are generally given much more leeway for sensual ads in print then on television or radio. Yet the sudden boldness of some advertisers is even forcing magazine publishers to set new ground rules.

For years, Surfing magazine had no written policy on advertising. It does now. “We’ve become increasingly aware that more than half of our subscriptions aren’t paid for by kids, but by their parents,” said Bob Mignogna, the San Clemente-based magazine’s publisher.

Some of those parents recently complained about the sexual content of bikini ads. So the magazine established guidelines that rule out ads that show nudity. As a result, the magazine has rejected five ads in just the past few months. That compares to only two or three ads it had rejected over the past 10 years, Mignogna said.

Even Cosmopolitan has set new guidelines. “We won’t accept any ads with frontal nudity,” said D. Claeys Bahrenburg, publisher of the popular women’s magazine. “At Cosmopolitan, we think that sex is a healthy thing, not a dirty thing, but there are limits.”

Although many advertisers are convinced that sex sells, recent surveys indicate that some things are far more attention-grabbing. In fact, the best way to catch the viewer’s eye is with a plate of food, said Donald E. Bruzzone, president of Bruzzone Research Co., an Alameda, Calif., firm that tracks viewer reaction to 1,000 current commercials.

Pets, Cute Kids

“It’s particularly effective if the food looks appetizing,” Bruzzone said, “but that isn’t a necessity.”

The second-most effective advertising subject, Bruzzone said, is a shot of a friendly looking pet. And pictures of cute kids finish third. “Sex ranks just about in the middle of the pile,” Bruzzone said. “It tends to overpower the product’s message, so it’s usually a bad idea.”

Not one of the top 10 television advertisements last year was even remotely sexual in nature. The No. 1 ad--created for the California Raisin Advisory Board--showed a bunch of dancing raisins. And McDonald’s ads, which ranked second, were mostly filled with song and dance. “People are seeing so much sex in the TV shows,” Vadehra said, “that they’re not all that interested when sex shows up in ads.”

While sex may sometimes grab viewer attention, it rarely translates directly into product sales, said George Belch, marketing professor at San Diego State University. “Sex may be a great hook,” said Belch, who specializes in consumer response to advertising, “but it’s often at a cost of viewers not even remembering the brand’s name.”

Industry Abuzz

Don’t tell that to the executives at Travel Fox, a footwear manufacturer. Back in March, Travel Fox placed an ad that still has the footwear industry abuzz. In the ad, a couple appear to be engaged in intercourse while wearing nothing but their Travel Fox shoes.

“We had no idea the ad would create this controversy,” said Janet Sloane Schapiro, Travel Fox’s marketing director. “If we’ve offended anyone, we apologize, but as far as our company is concerned, there is nothing distasteful about the ad.”

The company reports that sales are up 70%.

After most magazines refused to accept the ad, however, the Travel Fox ad was greatly modified. So after passing the limits, Fox retreated. But the definition of those limits vary wildly among advertisers, the media and the most important judge--the viewing public. “For the time being, I’d draw the line at advertisements that show people completely naked,” said Dr. Ruth, as she is commonly called. “But I might change my mind.”

Before she does, however, outraged viewers may force advertisers to retreat. “The pendulum will start to swing back,” said Julie Edell, a professor at Duke University, who specializes in advertising research. “Probably within the next year.”