Introduction
Marketers employ a series of tactics to have the strongest impact on the market. In most marketing contexts, the use of sex appeal to influence consumer behavior is contentious because some cultures, societies, or governments do not support its use in contemporary marketing spaces (De Mooij, 2004). Some of their concerns have been centered around the effect that such a marketing strategy would have on children, women, and society (Sandhu, 2019). In other contexts, the use of sex appeal in marketing has been criticized for objectifying women (De Mooij, 2004). Therefore, most of the criticisms leveled against this marketing technique have been advanced on moral or ethical grounds.
This paper analyses a commercial of an automobile that is being sold to customers because of its improved features. The analysis is being undertaken from two basic tenets affecting consumer behavior and by extension, its success, or the lack of it. The first one is how the commercial tries to capture the attention of consumers and the second is the commercial’s relationship with the ethical implications of marketing. In the context of this analysis, the use of sex appeal refers to the use of both genders in sexual contexts to manipulate customers to behave in a predetermined way (Solomon, 2011; Lawrence et al., 2021). The use of sex appeal in marketing is among a series of other strategies used by marketers to influence consumer behavior with the others being humor, romance, and adventure (Griffith et al.. 2016). Sex appeal emerges as one of the most commonly used marketing strategies and stems from the widely held belief that “sex sells.”
This marketing strategy was first used in 1960 America to encourage customers to buy goods and services (Solomon, 2011; Lawrence et al., 2021). Since then, the advertisement strategy has been a core part of western marketing culture. This document reviews the use of the marketing strategy to advertise a car in an innovative commercial involving a man, woman, and a blue pill. Key sections of this paper will explore the theoretical foundation of employing such a strategy and the ethical implications of its adoption in the automotive sector. By doing so, it will be possible to understand how best to tweak such a marketing strategy for optimum results and how effective marketers could be in changing modalities for improving the context in which it is adopted. However, before delving into the details of this analysis, it is important to understand the contents of the commercial as described below.
Description of Commercial
The Fiat 500X commercial uses sex appeal to draw attention to the car’s features. It involves an incident where an old couple is about to have sex and the man rushes to the bathroom to take a Viagra pill. In an attempt to ingest it, he misses the target and the pill falls off from the window into the fuel tank of a Fiat 500X cr. Consequently, the car becomes bigger and more masculine (Sheth and Mittal, 2004). The lesson learned from the advertisement is that the Fiat 500X car is stronger, bigger, and more powerful than older models. Therefore (Schiffman and Kanuk, 2010), based on the assumptions derived from the advertisements, it is safe to assume that the commercial draws comparisons between the effects of the Viagra pill on a man and the car’s features.
Analysis of Commercial from Consumer Behavior Perspective
As highlighted in the introduction section of this paper, the FIAT advertisement will be analyzed based on two fundamental concepts – how the advertisement captures audiences and the second one is the ethical implications of the advertisements. These two concepts are critically reviewed below.
Capturing Audiences
Part of the role of marketers is to capture the attention of audiences and most of them use different and unique ways to do so. To understand the impact that a company’s marketing strategy would have on the attention of audiences, it is important to review several theoretical basses that seek to highlight this philosophy (Bagozzi et al., 2007). Several theories have been proposed in the analysis of consumer behavior and most of them are relevant to marketers who want to predict such conduct. They depend on using basic assumptions from the theories to achieve this objective (Haugtvedt et al., 2008). These theories can only be used to achieve one objective if they are implemented or applied correctly. In the context of the current investigation, applicable theories are those that strive to explain the use of sex appeal in the advertisement because this is the core of the current analysis of the Fiat commercial.
The psychoanalytic theory presupposes that human unconscious biases play a critical role in influencing their behaviors and, by extension, their purchasing habits. Proponents of the theory argue that it is an effective way of drawing the attention of customers towards a specific advertisement issue (Ariely, 2008; Underhill, 2004). Relative to this assertion, scholars say that most customers perceive sexual themes advertisements as more interesting and fun compared to those that do not (Solomon et al, 2009).In this regard, sex appeal has been used as a practical way of increasing the strength of the bond that customers have with the products they wish to buy (Peter and Olson, 2010). Research studies suggest that sex-based advertisements that have nudity appeal more to women than men (Solomon et al., 2009). However, cultural and national differences have a moderating effect on the impact that such advertisements would have on both genders.
Ethical Implications of Advertisement
As highlighted in the introduction section of this paper, sex appeal has been used in the Fiat case study to draw attention to the product being sold. This strategy is not unique to the advertisement because other researchers have used it to achieve the same goal with varying levels of success (Eagle et al., 2020) The use of sex appeal in advertisement draws several ethical and legal implications, some of which are unavoidable (Hawkins & Mothersbaugh, 2010). At the root of this strategy is evidence that shows the efficacy of sex appeal in influencing consumers to behave in a particular manner suitable to marketers (Csikszenthmihalyi & Rochberg-Halson, 1989). Consequently, several theories have been proposed to explain the subconscious bias that this type of advertisement has on customers.
The Fiat commercial has no nudity, meaning that it could appeal to both genders. However, given the cultural differences in various markets, the impact that such an advertising campaign would have on audiences is likely to vary with the context of analysis (Hoyer et al., 2017). For example, it is established that the use of sex in advertisements is likely to work best in western cultures and countries, such as the US and the UK. However, its efficacy is probably going to decline in markets that subscribe to Eastern cultures (Schiffman and Kanuk, 2010). For example, the Asian culture frowns upon the use of sex in advertisements. Therefore, the FIAT commercial is likely to have a lower level of efficacy if it is marketed to people who live in these countries. The opposite is true in western cultures because most people are not bothered by it (Schiffman and Kanuk, 2010). In this regard, cultural differences play an important role in understanding the ethical implications of implementing such a marketing campaign.
Given that the selected advertisement is about cars, the use of sex appeal emerges as an appropriate marketing selection tool because men are more enticed by sex in an advertisement compared to women and are more likely to buy cars compared to their female counterparts. (Schiffman and Kanuk, 2010). Therefore, the use of sex in the Fiat advertisement is consistent with the views of researchers who opine that men are more attracted to such types of marketing campaigns compared to women (Gabriel & Lang, 2006). Therefore, from a gender perspective, the marketing campaign is effectively designed to appeal to men as the target audience.
Evaluation of Good and Bad Attributes of Commercial
The Fiat commercial had several aspects of its development that appealed or discredited the commercial. The most appealing part about it is the “element of surprise” that was ingrained in the commercial’s development. Indeed, at first, it did not seem to be a car commercial; instead, it appeared to be about a home-based product or service because the commercial started with a woman lying on the bed and beckoning her partner to join her. Several seconds later, the man rushes to the bedroom to take a sex enhancement tablet that slips and falls into the fuel tank of a car.
This crossover of the environment from the bedroom to the fuel station is an abrupt twist of circumstances, which keeps audiences glued and amused at the same time. The bedroom scene served its purpose, which was to draw attention to the commercial because it keeps audiences asking, “What is next?” Instead, the commercial quickly turns into a car marketing promotion campaign – a departure from the bedroom. These two scenarios seem unrelated and have an impact on the audiences’ attention span (Underhill, 2004; Solomon, (2009). The ultimate value of the message is revealed at the end of the commercial when the car transforms into a “muscular” vehicle, which was the message of the advertisement – that the car is newer, bigger, more powerful than older models. Therefore, the use of sex appeal to draw the audience’s attention is a significant advantage of the commercial’s design.
Another positive attribute of the commercial is its relatively short duration. Cumulatively, the commercial runs for about a minute and a half, which is enough time to hold a customer’s attention at a time before they lose interest (O’Driscoll, 2018). If the commercial were longer, customers would have been unable to understand its ending, which is the most important part of the advertisement (Cialdini, 2007). Therefore, the ability of the developers to summarize the campaign in less than two minutes is a significant advantage of the campaign.
A negative attribute of the commercial is that it is over-imagined to the extent that it could make the audience assume that the marketing concept was far-fetched. This challenge stems from the fact that the journey through which the Viagra pill makes as it misses the man’s mouth, out through the window, and into the car’s fuel tank is overstretched and over imagined (O’Driscoll, 2018). In other words, it is highly improbable that a pill would fall from the balcony of a house, bounce through several surfaces, and end up in the fuel tank of a car. Therefore, it is over-imagined and appears fake to an extent.
Summary
This paper has highlighted the important role of marketing techniques in changing or influencing consumer behavior. Based on the contents of the Fiat commercial, two marketing concepts have been investigated in this context and they relate to how the advertisement draws the attention of its audiences and the ethical implications of using sex as advertisement bait. The findings of this study suggest that the use of sex appeal was effective in drawing the attention of its audiences towards the marketing campaign and played a significant role in maximizing its impact on men who are ideally the target market for the campaign.
The ethical implications of using sex as bait stem from the cultural context of implementing the marketing campaign. It is established that western cultures are more receptive to such marketing campaigns but Asian markets are not. Therefore, it is pertinent to understand the socio-cultural context of using this marketing strategy to draw the attention of audiences. By extension, this analysis means that the marketing strategy does not have serious moral or ethical implications in a western market but it may be unacceptable in conservative countries. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the ethical implications of using such a marketing campaign, relative to the sociocultural dynamics of a market.
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