The Deadly Sins in Sexy Advertising

Ad found in the October issue of Lucky Magazine

When just flipping through the magazine, this ad pictured above is usually just scanned over and it is seen at face value.  This is because it is very similar to many other advertisements seen when looking through magazines, women selling clothing and accessories by portraying their bodies in a sexual manner.  This technique of advertising has many underlying “deadly sins” used to achieve the advertiseing goals. The sins can be seen when the advertisement is analyzed through three view points: women, men, and the creator.  Lucky magazines audience is middle class citizens who can afford to splurge on clothing from a brand like Guess.  The audience uses the cultural background of dressing to impress as their motivator to buy clothing similar to the ones depicted in the ad above.

Women, for this particular magazine, are the target audience mainly because an overwhelming majority of the people who read this magazine are women. To appeal to the plethora of female viewers, the advertisement uses the deadly sin of Envy (which is one of the worst sins). The advertisement uses envy to make these viewers jealous of the beautiful women in the advertisement. It persuades the audience into thinking that if they buy what the advertisement is selling then they will certaintly look like the models in the advertisement. This marketing strategy of using jealousy as a persuasive form of selling a product is very common.

Another view point to analyze is the males perspective on these sexy advertisements. Granted, they are not the common audience of the ads in magazines like Lucky, but it is still important to look at what sins are used in the advertisement. This advertisement shows lust and pride, using them as a persuasive technique to sell their product. First, the men obviously lust over the beautiful models presented in little clothing. Then the sin pride comes into play, persuading the men to buy the product for their significant other so they can demonstrate to the world they have a women like that and feel prideful.

The last sin the advertisement utilized to furhter the sale of their product is greed. The men and women audience want the best clothing that will make them look and feel the amazing. This greed stems from the money-driven society that is prevalent today. Also the creator of the advertisement, in this case Guess, shows greed by using what some consider unethical marketing stratagies (by creating unrealistic visions of women through photoshopping the images) to sell products. The use of this sin in advertising is so effective again because of our money-driven society.