By M. Christian

YNOT – The percentage of magazine ads using titillation and sexual innuendo to sell mainstream products doubled between 1983 and 2003, lending credence to the old adage “sex sells.”

Such was the conclusion reached by a research team led by Tom Reichert, a professor of advertising and public relations at the University of Georgia. The team studied 3,232 ads published in the general-circulation magazines Cosmopolitan[i], [I]Redbook, Esquire, Playboy, Newsweek and Time during the 20-year time span beginning in 1983. By the panel’s count, sexy ads increased from 15 percent to 27 percent.

The researchers’ conclusion: “Advertisers use sex because it can be very effective.”

Ads for health and hygiene products used sexual imagery most often: about 38 percent of those ads exhibited “sexiness” in 2003. Alcohol ads ranked second at 37 percent, up from 9 percent in 1983 for the biggest increase. Beauty products followed at 36 percent, and ads for drugs and medications came in at 29 percent. About 27 percent of clothing ads went sexy, while 23 percent of travel ads played to the desire for … well, desire.

Entertainment ads also spiked in frequency of sexual imagery use during the studied period: from 10 percent in 1983 to 33 percent in 2003.

Overall, according to the researchers, the upswing in overtly sexual imagery can be laid at the door of “sex-obsessed ads for alcohol, entertainment and beauty products.”

Reichert noted the gap between sexual imagery aimed at women and that aimed at men widened over the two decades the researchers studied, even though both categories doubled. In 1983, only 11 percent of all ads contained images of female sexuality and only 3 percent employed sexy male images. By 2003, sexual representations of women increased to 22 percent while sexy men reached 6 percent.

Based on the way ad categories lined up, Reichert and his crew came to a secondary conclusion: “Sex is not as effective when selling high-risk, informational products such as banking services, appliances and utility trucks.”

Results of the study were published in the May 2012 issue of the scholarly Journal of Current Issues & Research in Advertising.