Calvin Klein’s Novel Sexting Ads Are Not Only Unethical, They Might Not Even Be Effective

A bare-chested man lounges on a immense couch while two attractive juvenile women relax next to him. A text message appears: “Hahah, a little threesome never hurt anyone.” Where could this scene be from? An adult novel, an adult film?

No, it’s a fresh Calvin Klein ad.

The brand known for risky promotions has adapted its advertising to the digital age, new jeans campaign in which juvenile people send each other sex messages, or text messages of a sexual nature.

Each ad in the campaign features a provocative photo, a sexually suggestive text message and a tempting tagline: “raw copy, real stories.”

It’s not clear from the ads that the company is promoting anything more than just denim.

When you compare ads from 100, 50, and 25 years ago to Calvin Klein ads today, you can see that sexual content has become more explicit. You may have also noticed that the number of such ads has increased. For example, 2012 study A study by the University of Georgia that analyzed ads from 1983 to 2003 found that the percentage of ads with sexual content nearly doubled.

Such ads raise two questions: first, are they effective? And second, even if they are, do they cross a moral line that should not be crossed?

Over a 25-year career spanning industry and higher education, I have had ample opportunity to reflect on how marketing and ethics interact. In my experience, I have concluded that what is best for business and what is moral are not mutually exclusive.

Instead, organizations can differentiate themselves in both economic and ethical terms. In fact, these two goals are often complementary. For example, Corpedia Ethics Indexof public companies rated highly for ethical behavior, outperformed the S&P 500 by more than 370% over the last five-year period.

Does sex sell?

First, does greater physical creativity mean that “sex sells”? Not necessarily. For example, 2010 study from Texas A&M International University found that people are more likely to remember ads that contain sexual or violent content. But that doesn’t mean they’re more likely to make a purchase.

Memory doesn’t always predict purchase intentions or other positive behaviors. While people remember positive experiences, they also remember things they’d rather forget, like car accidents, breakups, and kidney stones. Memory only leads to sales when it’s connected to a compelling reason to buy.

AND classic study conducted by Baker and Churchill in 1977 showed that the physical attractiveness of advertising models increased viewers’ attention as well as their positive evaluations of the advertisements. At the same time, however, it was found that the sexual content in the advertisements did not influence the respondents’ deeper understanding, which made physical attractiveness ineffective in gaining acceptance of the advertising message by the target market.

Similarly, Parker and Furnham in 2007, it was realized that the content of sexual advertisements had no effect on viewers’ ability to remember the details of television commercials. The study also found that women remembered non-sexual advertisements better than sexualized advertisements.

More last examination A July study by Ohio State University found an even more contradictory effect. Violent and sexual content in ads captured attention again, but it also overshadowed other crucial aspects of the marketing effort, including the product being promoted. As a result, the researchers concluded that sex and violence in ads actually made it harder to remember the product and reduced purchase intentions.

But what if sex “sells” to some companies? Perhaps erotic advertising works for Calvin Klein and some others who still utilize it in their target markets. While companies can find exceptions to what works, there are no exceptions to what is ethical.

Why Ethical Advertising Matters

Unfortunately, some advertisers and other marketers have been flouting morality for decades, to the detriment of the industry.

For example, when respondents were asked to “assess the integrity and ethical standards” of people from different fields, December 2014 Gallup Poll placed advertisers last on the list, only above car salesmen (another group of marketers) and members of Congress. But such infamy should not have occurred.

Of course, most people do not want to be seen as unethical, so such a reputation can discourage morally minded people from entering the discipline. Furthermore, people generally do not want to do business with people they do not trust.

Even though I know many others share this belief, marketing unfortunately does not have a common paradigm for identifying and solving moral problems in this field. For example, each year Ethisphere announces its choices for “The most ethical companies in the world”, which many winners are keen to promote. The organization 140 Questions Apphowever, it is a tool that marketers can easily utilize when making everyday ethical decisions.

This absence convinced me last year to develop a uncomplicated model of marketing ethics called Mindful Marketing to evaluate marketing strategies and tactics, including morally questionable ones such as sexually explicit ads.

To put it simply, for marketing practices to be considered “conscious”, they must meet two characteristics: be effective, i.e. achieve the intended marketing goals, and be ethically justified, i.e. not result in obvious moral compromises.

These two goals together form the basis of what I call “careful matrix”, a visual representation of the concept and four categories of marketing: mindful, single-minded, naive, and mindless.

As in case of severe food poisoning

So where does sex in advertising fit into the attentional matrix? As mentioned above, there may be times when sexualized ads are effective in achieving marketing objectives. More often, however, sensual promotion fails, distracting members of the target market from the product’s benefits and failing to create value for stakeholders.

From the point of view of social values, erotic images often used in this type of advertising undermine decency and respect, treating individuals (usually women) as objects, igniting unhealthy sexual drives and reducing human existence to the satisfaction of sensual desires.

Yes, sexual ads are attention-grabbing and often memorable, but so is severe food poisoning. Like other mindless ads, sexual ads leave many consumers with bad feelings and can make society unwell.

Will there come a day when advertising is automatically considered forthright and marketing is at the top of the credibility charts? That remains to be seen, but for now Mindful Marketing invites marketers and consumers to share this vision of ethical exchange and aid move towards such a future.