Retrospectacle – Could Sex Sell Science?

What is Retrospectacle? This series of posts are a kind of Thomas Dolby-inspired ‘retrospectacle’ of  earlier popular entries from my site, which will fill in during the time that I am busy working for the rest of this month. Do continue to keep in touch, however!

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The question I got via Sonja on Twitter was – “How true is the comment ‘the days of this sexual marketing are really quite limited’ in promoting science?”

This interested me – and I’ll start digging out some more research when I’m less busy. But a few thoughts on the question. The comment stems from this article that Dr Ben Goldacre tweeted – ‘Gimme an Rx! Cheerleaders Pep Up Drug Sales’ in the NY Times. Yes, you may notice, it’s from 2005, so I’m not quite sure why he dug it out…

…now that federal crackdowns and the industry’s self-policing have curtailed those gifts, simple one-on-one human rapport, with all its potentially uncomfortable consequences, has become more important. And in a crowded field of 90,000 drug representatives, where individual clients wield vast prescription-writing influence over patients’ medication, who better than cheerleaders to sway the hearts of the nation’s doctors, still mostly men.

“There’s a saying that you’ll never meet an ugly drug rep,” said Dr. Thomas Carli of the University of Michigan. He led efforts to limit access to the representatives who once trolled hospital hallways. But Dr. Carli, who notes that even male drug representatives are athletic and handsome, predicts that the drug industry, whose image has suffered from safety problems and aggressive marketing tactics, will soon come to realize that “the days of this sexual marketing are really quite limited.”

Of course, there’s a few assumptions inherent in the question that have to be asked, which is why it’s not a straight-forward answer. Who is the ‘buyer’? Their gender, age, all those demographic questions.

What exactly is being ’sexed-up’? The scientists? The communicators? The scientific findings? Or is it just an overall ‘can we promote science better in general this way’? Just how badly (or well?) is the promotion of scientific findings (or science education? Scientific awareness and progress? Science literacy? What is being meant by ’science’?) – being done now anyway? Is it so necessary that cheerleaders, like those being used in the article to tout drug products, are really needed? Is it ‘resorting to dirty tactics’ to have sex do the selling?

… so, you can see the problem I’m having with answering the question!

There’s a few items that discuss sex in advertising that anyone can find, which points out the gender differences. That’s a factor touched upon in the NY Times article; the doctors are mostly men, the sales reps are mostly women.  A survey done by Media Analyzer back in 2000 (pdf) is a well-illustrated and fairly straight-forward read:

MediaAnalyzer Software & Research in Somerville, Mass., recently set out to explore how men and women look at sexually themed ads and what effect, if any, that visual behavior might have on the ads’ effectiveness. In September, the company had 200 men and 200 women take an online test. The first part of the test solicited general opinions about sex in advertising…

The second part involved a visual test in which Media-Analyzer used its Attention Tracking software to follow the visual behavior of respondents as they looked at 10 print ads. (The software has users move the mouse over each ad to indicate where he or she is looking.) The ad sample consisted of two U.S. print ads, one sexual and one nonsexual, from each of five product categories…

Responses to the general questions in the survey revealed that sex in ads is a polarizing issue. While almost half of men (48 percent) said they like sexual ads, few women did (8 per cent). Most men (63 percent) said sexual ads have a high stopping power for them; fewer women thought so (28 percent). Also, most women (58 percent) said there is too much sex in advertising; only 29 percent of men said so. Women were also much more likely than men to say that sexual ads promote a deterioration of moral and social values and that they are demeaning for the models used in them.

More recently, a 2009 study recapped on the question of ‘is it men or women you’re talking about when you’re selling something?’ – because there is a recorded difference – Science Daily – ‘Does Sex Sell? New Study Shows How To Make Women Respond To Sexy Ads’:

Authors Darren W. Dahl (University of British Columbia, Vancouver), Jaideep Sengupta (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology), and Kathleen D. Vohs (University of Minnesota) followed up on earlier research that has demonstrated that women exhibit negative reactions to explicit sexual content in advertising.

“Our work builds upon existing perspectives in sexual psychology, which argues for stark differences in men’s and women’s sexual beliefs and motivations. This literature portrays men as having positive attitudes towards casual and recreational sex, whereas women value the emotional intimacy and commitment that can surround the sexual relationship,” explain the authors.

…The authors urge marketers to “exercise caution” when it comes to sex in advertising, but they needn’t abandon it altogether. “The present experiments also revealed that the appropriate use of positioning and relationship context can improve women’s attitudes toward the ad and brand,” they conclude.

For my own part – I think about the audience of a potentially sexed-up product or branding with sexual allure in mind. Because diversity appears to be key.

One person’s ’sexually liberated’ is another person’s ‘explicit content’ or another person’s ‘borderline pornography’ and another person’s ‘blatant flouting of social norms regarding modesty’ or even ‘aggressive in-your-face sexual exploitation’.

I probably don’t have to make that clear, since we see it in the media all the time and hear it from people who want us to be ’safe’ and not taken for granted. I’ll use the phrase ‘explicit content’ from here on, just because it’s fairly neutral.

It is one thing to display one’s body to get attention – it was a former JREF intern / former stripper who first said to me ‘I know how to get myself popular on the internet with a bunch of skeptical nerds – I don’t need to hear a lecture on it to know how‘. The flooding of the internet with amateur explicit content probably existed as soon as the internet became public and it is hardly difficult or particularly special to do – as young people who are ‘sexting‘ have discovered. When does it become something that is really clever advertising that actually hits the mark (whatever that may be) – or can it be hit-and-miss?

There’s another question too – ‘is this really about sexually-liberated young feminist ideology reaching new people – or is this really meant to be about science reaching new people?’ Are those different things?

Sure, you might argue that pro-science is pro-feminist – that it appears to lead to empowered, educated decisions and a greater awareness of one’s health, economic position and how one should question anti-scientific beliefs in society.

But feminism, as we both know, hasn’t traditionally been palatable anyway. And ‘feminism’ is interpreted differently by different people, including the unfortunate ‘being about man-hating’ or ‘not for men’ and even ’something that has corrupted Western society’ – especially if you are thinking of getting non-Western cultures onside.

It also leads to us putting aside the label ’sexy’ as being a part of the ’selling’ – and begins to produce questions like: ‘is this really the best way to get a different message out about seeing the world – that science is a worthy and educational benefit?’ and ‘will it appeal in cases where explicit content is not the best vehicle for a message’?

Cases that come to my mind include:

• educational institutions and educational systems where there will absolutely be a conservative standard maintained that will not allow for material associated to overly explicit content – imagine a teacher who loses their job or a school that has parents pull kids out because the students are given access to such material? Sites such as YouTube are censored in many schools, for example;

• wider communities where there is cultural and societal tendencies towards modesty (whilst not censorship, more of a traditionalism that would not eagerly endorse explicit content);

• communities where explicit content will be latched onto by opposition as an excuse to censor non-explicit content that is associated (’they say they’re about promoting the scientific method, but they’re using foul language, are sexually-graphic and I heard this about their lifestyle….’) – when they are in fact wanting to censor concepts like anti-creationism or criticism of pseudoscience;

• women (particularly young ones) who will find themselves laughed at, criticised or critiqued / bullied or sexually harassed for wishing to adopt similar strategies and / or may find the content decreed as anti-feminist by women they respect who do not support explicit content / be just plain uncomfortable about not meeting implicit ’standards’ that may or may not be portrayed;

• communities where explicit content will be completely out of the question, despite a keen demographic who may wish to encourage rationalism;

• communities where explicit depictions of the body, is seen as clichéd, overtly aggressive, irrelevant or distracting to people, and gender-divisive (as illustrated in the research).

I’m certain there’s more permutations and mixtures, variations of fundamentalism and not-quite-convinced that will take the approach of ‘better not, just in case‘.

Maybe there will indeed be some who will stumble across the ‘unacceptable’ and it will prompt them to seek alternatives that reach the same useful conclusions about issues like pseudoscience and the paranormal. I guess it’s up for grabs as to whether that’s just a risk worth taking.

From a comment by a friend on a similar topic:

I do, however, think there remains a culture which risks continuing to reinforce those very stereotypes of male dominance that I thought were being addressed. The … aim, as far as I could tell was initially less about the ‘beauty and brains’ chanting, but more about addressing a perceived imbalance in how [science] was portrayed. Hell, I still can’t see what physical beauty even has to do with a form of philosophy!

Yet as time progressed, I saw beauty being referred to more often…. It got me thinking ’so, ugly girls aren’t being represented here? WTF?’. Not to mention one too many … more about angst, bitching or being witty than addressing a stereotype, bridging a gap or promoting practical thinking skills.

Perhaps promoting science and sexuality are not directly related nor really need to be? I’d probably take a bet both ways and see if a broader-umbrella approach will help reach more people – rather than putting all my energies into one stereotype of being ’sexy in order to sell’.

I should quickly pop this in as a possibly useful reference to consider – from Jezebel, “Sex Appeal” Doesn’t Sell Women’s Sports, Just Sex:

According to Zirin, research by University of Minnesota sports sociologist Dr. Mary Jo Kane shows that sexy images of female athletes may make that women bigger celebrities but they don’t translate into a deeper interest in their sport. Kane showed men and women sexy images of female athletes and found that while they may sell magazines, they didn’t make the viewer any more invested in women’s sports, and may actually alienate existing fans.

Select References:

Darren W. Dahl, Jaideep Sengupta, and Kathleen D. Vohs. Sex in Advertising: Gender Differences and the Role of Relationship Commitment. Journal of Consumer Research, 2009; 0 (0): 090109123844055 DOI: 10.1086/597158

Tagged as: advertising, ask podblack, atheletes, feminism, gender, lecture, marketing, news, research, Science, scientific findings, sex, sex appeal, sex sells, Skepticism, sport, twitter, women and science, women and skepticism