Rob Garner
The report here asserts that businesses usually earn money by using sexual and violent ads in order to make consumers more likely to buy their products. The basis of their research stems from things such as film, TV, and video game sales data from the last decade. The researchers point out the majority of movies that generated the most revenue were usually PG-13 or above and rated specifically for having sexual or violent content. The same can be said for TV programs and video games with the top 100 TV shows from the last decade being rated at TV-14 to TV-MA for graphic content – specifically sexual and violent. Finally, the top grossing video games of the last several years were rated T (ages +13) or M (ages +17) once again for violent and sexually explicit content.
A second stipulation of the article is that most sexual and violent ads are usually targeted toward the young adult population, defining them as being the group most likely to be disposable with their money. This is also done due to the belief that young adults will be more susceptible to these forms of advertising. This type of advertising increases especially on prime time programs such as sports commercials, or during major programming such as The Voice, AGT, or any other show that would promise a high viewership.
The final argument of the piece claims that humans will react naturally to violent or sexual stimuli. The article utilizes an example from a study where a group of people were presented with a crime scene where a gun was involved and they were also given the criminal’s face. The people involved in this study were more likely to remember the type of gun over the criminal’s face whereas people presented with a similar situation where there was no gun at the scene were able to recall the perpetrator’s face much more clearly.
When all the data is brought together and analyzed, it would seem as though sex and violence really have no effect on consumers. The data began to fluctuate when the advertising is broadcast to a wider range of an audience. The numbers revealed that when sexual and violent advertising is broadcast to a larger crowd, people seem to be less interested in the ad itself and won’t buy the product. It’s also been noticed that using sexual and violent imagery to advertise in something that is violent and sexual and about something violent and sexual, will seriously damage the chances that someone will buy the product. Granted, the movies, TV, and video games don’t support this, but when you look at them objectively, sex and violence are just in them. Most video games that are released today have violence in some form or another and occasionally something slightly provocative, and that’s just the norm. As far as movies and TV shows go, you need violence and romance nowadays in order to keep the stories compelling for the viewers. Plus, when it comes down to it, most people are smart enough to know when to separate what they see on advertisements from the real world.
In the end, it doesn’t really matter how you choose to advertise a product, TV show, movie, or video game. Sex and Violence won’t necessarily sell, but they do have an impact on how your final sales will turn out. If you make the sex and violence the main focus of your product, then you are definitely going to lose business. On the other hand, if you make the product about something else, but keep the sexual and violent themes as a backdrop to the narrative, then there is a higher possibility the product will sell.
For this piece I’m assuming the target audience would be largely parents of children who are worried about the ads they are seeing negatively affecting their children to think sex and violence are a societal norm. My thoughts went this way when I began to think about why adults would need to worry over the amount of sexual and violent content in things such as ad campaigns or TV commercials. In terms of reporting the research, I’m putting this out in order to show that sex and violence in terms of ads have no effect whatsoever on people’s’ memory and intentions to buy a product. The research here proves that most people are able to separate the product from the content of the ad and don’t seem to act upon the imagery in the commercial whatsoever.