As a pickup line, it would only be a little bit more awkward than inviting her to see his model train installation.

Or is the real issue here that there was an advertizing meeting in some agency and the boss said, “anyone got any ideas how we can entice people to buy pointless gold coins at twice their face value in the middle of a major recession?” and everybody shrugged, and the boss finally said, “well, damn it, we have to come up with something for the client by noon today!” and this is the stupid ad they threw together without thought, originality, or care.

I teach in subject areas similar to our blog hosts, but in a communication department, and I regularly chide my students that I never want to hear such a naive analysis from communication students. (Yes, they frequently offer that as an explanation for a particular image or visual strategy.) First, when someone says “sex sells”, they almost always really mean “sexual objectification of women sells.” Second, it really isn’t an effective advertising strategy, according to this study published a few years ago in AdWeek. Advertising research suggests that such blatant imagery distracts men so much that their brand recall is poorer than with non-sexual ads, and women are either too offended to continue looking at the ads, or too annoyed to recall the brands either.

One thing that makes me laugh about ads like this is the literal use of “sex sells”. Why are naked people used to sell things that don’t usually involve naked people?