Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Sex Sells Cars Too

As we heard on Monday, sex isn't always the easiest thing to sell. Its touchy and sometimes awkward and marketers looking to sell sex have to tread carefully. The good thing about sex though, is that it makes selling anything else a piece of cake. Seductive commercials are a way to insure you appeal to a wide range of target markets, as well as capture attention and make your add the loudest noise in the room.

Cars can be a tricky product to sell. Besides the fact that they are expensive, high involvement purchases, the competition is huge, and many people are very particular about the company they buy from. These two commercials for the Fiat stood out because they both appealed to a wide rage of people. They also did a good job leaving the viewer with something to take away, so even if you didn't buy right away, you might come back later. The former uses a very seductive approach, hoping to capture attention before you are even aware of the product. Once you start the commercial, you have to finish it to see what happens. Making it the most interesting thing in the room helps to eliminate any other noise that may distract the audience. Leaving the viewer with a "you'll never forget the first time you see one" punchline, the company hopes that next time you need a car, you'll remember the first time you saw a Fiat. The other commercial uses a famous opinion leader to try to capture the same attention. Good or bad, Charlie Sheen has had more news time in the last few years than most celebrities see in a lifetime. Even if some people are not so fond of Sheen, anyone not living under a rock will recognize him instantly, and that recognition alone goes a long way in getting audiences to remember your add.

Either way, using sex (or a celebrity with a reputation for sex) in an add greatly increases the range of audience your add will appeal to. Almost as important as the add itself is the message behind the add that the consumer will retain, and the advertisement of the Fiat does both of these things very well.

Commercial 1

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