Contrary to popular opinion, sex doesn't sell. It just overwhelms the brain.

Adults are taught to be sceptical. But the subconscious is like a toddler.
By Shannon Rupp

Forget focus groups, marketing studies or even psychographics, 2009 is the year the selling juggernaut will use neuroscience and our own biology against us.

Or rather that's Buy-ology, the name of book by marketing mastermind Martin Lindstrom who recounts his findings from a massive brain-research project exploring why we buy. Appealing directly to the brain's buy impulse is called "neuromarketing," and he spent three years and $7 million, using both CT scanning and fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) technology, to examine how people's brains respond to advertising and marketing ploys.

SNIP

Sex, it turns out, doesn't sell (despite what every editor says). All that erotically charged imagery actually overwhelms the brain, which can't recall the product. What does work is sex with emotion, particularly sex with controversy. (Or as P.T. Barnum is alleged to have said, "There's no such thing as bad publicity as long as they spell your name right.")

Suddenly the success of that 1980 ad "Nothing comes between me and my Calvins," featuring barely pubescent Brooke Shields, 15, doing her Lolita routine, makes sense. As Lindstrom recounts, the outrage was loud, relentless and memorable. The most important thing in triggering a buy is to make a product memorable, which is what happens when a buyer experiences emotion connected with a product.

For this reason, product integration -- product placement where the gizmo is integral to the plot of a TV show -- is far more effective than conventional ads, which cue the audience to be en garde. Ironically, technology that allows viewers to skip TV ads may actually do sellers a favour, as it forces them to find more effective techniques.

Successful ads create fear about personal inadequacy (for which the product is the solution) but if you stimulate the part of the brain that registers general anxieties -- such as fear of job loss -- customers are put-off.

http://thetyee.ca/Views/2008/12/25/Neuromarketing/

Unless it's about P T Barnumbnuts because nobody had a willie smaller than he had. Indeed, "P T" actually stood for "Pretty Tiny", or so claimed his wife.

It really makes you think about all the ways that the marketing gurus are trying to sell us stuff. Very powerful. It was very interesting, and quick read too.