Sex Does Not Sell: Effects of Sexual Advertising Parameters on Women Viewers’ Implicit and Explicit Recall of Ads and Brands

Abstract

This study investigated implicit and explicit memory effects of sexual and non-sexual advertisements embedded in either a sexual or non-sexual program among women viewers. We predicted that sexual appeals would facilitate implicit memory for the brand, and we explored whether program-type (sexual or non-sexual) and its associated congruity would impact or moderate recall of the surrounding advertisement among a small sample (n = 52) of exclusively women advertisement viewers. Sexual (versus non-sexual) advertising led to significantly worse implicit memory for the brand logo but better explicit recall for the advertisement scene itself. There was no effect of sexual appeals on explicit brand name recall, and no significant effect on advertisement recall of the program type. There was a significant interaction effect for program type and advertisement type for explicit recall of the advertisement scene, in which program-type moderated sexual advertisement recall. These results suggest that sexual advertising may increase memory for the advertisement at the expense of recalling the brand advertised. Limitations and implications of this study are discussed.

Sex Does Not Sell: The Effect of Sexual Content on Advertisement Effectiveness and Interference with Memory for Program Information

“…In sum, our results in this study suggest that sex does not sell, a finding that is consistent with that of earlier studies (Bushman & Bonacci, 2002) and meta-analyses (Lull & Bushman, 2015). Sexual advertising did not lead to enhanced recognition memory for the commercials, and implicit memory was better for the nonsexual advertisements, confirming the findings from Lawrence et al, (2021) who similarly found that sexual advertising led to increased memory for the advertisement scene itself at the expense of recalling the brand.…”

“…Our finding of implicit memory superiority for nonsexual advertisements is in line with Lawrence et al (2021) in which logos and image degradation were used as an implicit memory measure. Moreover, Shapiro and Krishnan (2001) and Law and Braun-LaTour (2004) suggested that implicit memory measures are more ecologically valid and reflective of real-world consumer behavior than are explicit memory measures.…”

“…This study extends work by Lawrence et al (2021) that explored whether, how, and why sex does or does not sell in advertising. Lawrence et al (2021) also examined whether sexual appeals facilitated implicit memory for the brand and whether the surrounding program-type (sexual or nonsexual) impacted recall for advertisement brand name and logo to moderate the amount of recalled sexual advertisement information through congruity-effects. They found that sex enhanced memory for the advertising scene but inhibited memory for the product, essentially meaning "sex does not sell."…”

“…This study extends work by Lawrence et al (2021) that explored whether, how, and why sex does or does not sell in advertising. Lawrence et al (2021) also examined whether sexual appeals facilitated implicit memory for the brand and whether the surrounding program-type (sexual or nonsexual) impacted recall for advertisement brand name and logo to moderate the amount of recalled sexual advertisement information through congruity-effects. They found that sex enhanced memory for the advertising scene but inhibited memory for the product, essentially meaning “sex does not sell.” In this study, we examined commercials with sexual and nonsexual content to investigate whether sexual advertising (i) led to better brand and product recall, as measured by both explicit and implicit memory measures, and/or (ii) impaired memory for program information that preceded commercials (i.e., retroactive interference) or followed commercials (i.e., proactive interference).…”

“…Lawrence et al (2021) investigated perceptually implicit memory in a sexual advertising context by using logos and image degradation as an implicit memory measure. Their results showed that implicit memory was weaker for sexual commercials compared to nonsexual commercials, but this finding is inconsistent with the spreading activation model (Collins & Loftus, 1975) suggesting that, at a neural level, sexual stimuli semantically prime sexual thoughts in memory and thus enhance subsequent encoding.…”