Sexy programmes 'hinder advertising'
Wednesday, 21 Feb 2007 08:34
Sexual content detracts from advertising's aim, study finds
Adverts placed during programmes containing sexual content are unlikely to have their desired aim, new research has found.
Researchers from the department of psychology at the University College London discovered that people are less able to recall the brand of products advertised during programmes with a lot of sexual content than if the advert is placed in a similar programme that has no such content.
In the study 60 men and women aged between 18 and 31 watched different programmes.
One group watched an overtly sexual episode of Sex and The City, which had sexual adverts running during the breaks, and the second group saw the same episode with non-sexual adverts.
The other two groups watched an episode of Malcolm In The Middle which contained no sexual content with either sexual or non-sexual adverts.
Programmes with a lot of sexual content seemed to prevent those taken part from remembering the brands they had seen during the adverts.
"The fact that recall of adverts was hindered by sexual content in the programmes suggests that there is something particularly involving or disturbing about sexual programmes," said researcher Adrian Furnham.
"Interestingly this is something that is also found in programmes with aggressive content."
But when it came to recalling the brands in the sexualised adverts, men fared much better at remembering them if they had sexual content attached to them.
In contrast women were actively put off by sexual content in adverts.
"Sex seems to have a detrimental effect on females recall for an advertisement," said researcher Ellie Parker. "Sex is only a useful advertising tool when selling to men."
The research is published in this month's edition of the Applied Cognitive Psychology journal.