A big part of my world involves advertising.

Most of it is just text based advertising. Much of it however consists of search engine marketing and direct marketing pieces — like the paid placements you see in pay per click or google adwords.

On a rare occasion I take a client into some light print advertising stuff, but when I’m working in financial services even this is often only boring black, white and gray-scale and utilizing a very small area and I need to put together an attention getter, a benefit or two, and a call to action in a very small space.

There is typically not much room to get very “artistic”.

Regardless, I like to look around at what the other wizards are doing in other spaces/markets/mediums, and one of my favorites is the world of “subliminal advertising”.

While copywriters do it all the time with inferences, and suggestions (get this or you’re a loser and your family won’t love you anymore) the really funny/interesting ones are when the photographers and graphic elements folks get in the mix, as it usually involves the suggestion of sex.

The Coke Bottle

While there is some argument that the developers of the original coke ‘hourglass’ shape actually knew what they were doing, they’ve undoubtedly benefited from having the iconic bottle shape.

Pierre Cardin Men’s Cologne Bottle

While there are a million other examples, the one that has always cracked me up as being absolutely *blatant* is the pierre cardin men’s cologne bottle.

The television commercial that they ran in the late 80’s on this one is just classic. Alas, I was unable to find it on youtube. So, unfortunately, you’ll have to live with my description. In short, it is a series of quick, sexy cuts that builds up to a climax that has the bottle “exploding” and gushing forth the contents at the end of the video. Subtle.

Sex Sells in Latin America

I spent the last few years living in South America. Below are some classic snap shots I took while walking around town I wanted to share with you.

I’ll start slow with the venerable Ta-Ta stores. Ta-Ta in and of itself isn’t that funny unless taken with the next entry

Fun with Food

Photographers and videographers have a lot of fun creating sexually suggestive images and video clips with food elements.
Below are two pictures that I snapped while grocery shopping in Montevideo, Uruguay

This last picture shows up on floor coolers in retail outlets.

In summary, until proven otherwise, I think we have to assume that sex still sells