Selling
Sex
By:Siobhan Trainor
Christie Wachter
Lindsey Barone
Introduction
Television is the most widely used medium for
public communication. Companies use many
different techniques to sell their products on
television. The easiest way to grab the viewers
attention in 30 seconds to sell a product is sex.
The latest Neilson ratings show the average
person watches more that four hours of T.V a day.
In the average house hold the T.V. is on for seven
and half hours. That is a tremendous amount of
advertising for one person in a day (Nion 2004).
Kaiser Family Foundation surveyed that in the
U.S. Three out of every 10 children have t.v. sets
in their room under the age of two (Nion 2004).
Introduction cont.
Companies realize the amount of t.v exposure
available to people and need to portray their
consumers in a favorable light to sell their
product. They also need to know what grabs
the attention of the viewers.
Women are portrayed quite differently than men
in television as well as advertising. Studies
have shown that women and men are used
equally to sell products but what they sell is
extremely different. Men are portrayed more as
spokespersons while women are used to sell
an image. There is a turn however that in
recent advertisement women have been
portrayed outside of the home and more
independent (Funham &Skae 1997).
Introduction continued
Sex is the second strongest psychological
appeals. Its strength is biological and
instinctive and an excellent tool for
advertisement (Taflinger 1996).
By companies using sex they convince people
that products are of use to them ( Traflinger
1996)
This study wanted to compare three different
t.v. networks and the level sexual content in
commercials that is allowed by the network.
The second aspect of this study is to see
which gender of consumers companies sell
sex to the most -men, women, both, or
children and teens.
Introduction Continued
NBC, Fox 29 and Nickelodeon were
rated during prime time hours and it
was hypothesized that FOX would
allow more explicit sexual
advertisements and commercials for
men would have a higher sexual
content.
Method
Networks: NBC
FOX
NICKELODEON
*These networks were watched and rated between
8:00 and 10:00pm on a Monday night.
Rating was done upon a Likert Scale
using ratings of 1-5:
1=No Sexual Content
2=Possible, Questionable Content
3=Implies Sexuality
4=Promotes Sexuality
5=Explicit Sexuality
Coding Sheet
Score: Men Women Both Children
1-5
Procedure
We constructed a hypothesis based on sexuality
and commercials and wanted to compare whether
different networks had different amounts of sexual
content and whether this sexual content was
generated more towards women, men, both, or
children/teens.
It was hypothesized that the FOX network would
have a greater amount of sexual content in their
commercials than the other networks. It was also
hypothesized that the focus of this sexual content
would be geared more towards men.
Procedure (cont.)
On a Monday night between the hours of 8:00 and
10:00pm each member of the group viewed a
different network; either FOX, NBC, or
Nickelodeon.
While watching the networks for two consecutive
hours each group member recorded the
commercials they saw on the coding sheet. Each
commercial was scored on the 1-5 Likert scale. It
was then checked off who the sexuality was
geared toward: Men, Women, Both or
Children/Teens.
Procedure (cont.)
The results were then compiled and
two One-way ANOVA tests were
conducted:
1)A comparison between sexual
content and focus group
AND
2)A comparison between sexual
content and network
Results
Discussion
The One-way ANOVA test, done between
sexual content and focus group, showed
that there was a significant relationship
between the amount of sexual content
shown in the commercials and the group
that they were geared toward.
The comparison showed that there was a
difference between women and men; and
men and both.
Discussion (cont.)
This study may have been
improved if:
1) The sample size had been greater-----------
-Multiple networks used
-Longer duration of time
Discussion (cont.)
Analysis of the means showed that overall
there is more sex content in women’s
commercials as compared to men’s
commercials or those geared towards both
genders.
However, no relationship was shown
between women’s commercials and
children’s commercials, due to the lack of
data collected for children’s commercials.
Discussion (continued)
The next One-way ANOVA test showed that there
was also a significant relationship between the
amount of sexual content and the networks they
were viewed on. The comparison showed a
difference between NBC and Nickelodeon, but
none with the FOX network.
Analysis of the means shows that NBC did have
overall higher sexual content than Nickelodeon,
but no significant difference was shown with the
sexual content on the FOX network.