Adverteasing: Sexual Innuendoes

Do you see sex written in every advertisement you read?  Probably not.  But in some cases there are people in the world that think most ads have hidden things in them and that companies are trying to send us subliminal messages through those hidden pictures.

According to “Advertising and Integrated Brand Promotion” a textbook by O’Guinn, Allen and Semenik that is used for University of Texas Advertising classes, there was a rise in the 1950s of people fearing that they were being influenced by subliminal advertising “to buy all sorts of things they didn’t really want or need.”

Wilson Bryan Key wrote a book titled “Subliminal Seduction” where he brought to light certain cases where people thought that they were getting a sexual subliminal message thorough advertising.  This book’s cover picture (below) relates to the old Gilbey’s gin ad where it is said to have shown the word “sex” in the ice cubes of the glass next to the gin bottle (also pictured below).  It is believed that sending this subliminal message would in turn sell more of the product.

On the other side of this argument there is an advertising ad that says “People have been trying to find the breasts in these ice cubes since 1957” which basically is putting down the idea that there is such a thing as subliminal, and in this case sexually subliminal, messages to get people’s attention.

There is also the idea of sexual innuendoes being put into ads to only ad shock value for the consumer.  In this case I believe that the idea of adding a sexual thing to the ad is not subliminal but more obvious so the consumer does become shocked at the ad and then proceeds to spread the message of what they saw causing some sort of publicity for the product or company.

 

O’Guinn, T., Allen, C., & Semenik, R. (2009).Advertising and Integrated Brand Promotion . Mason: South-Western Cengage Learning.

 

 

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