Sex Sells Beer

The collage demonstrates beer companies’ use of feminine sexuality to advertise their products. In the collage there are three beer companies that use similar marketing strategies of using their version of the “ideal woman” to sell their product. The advertisements use young scantily clad women with large breasts and small waists. The beer market is heavily dominated by male purchasers, therefore, beer company’s market research indicates that the typical male will respond favorably to these ads. Beer companies often times use advertisements that objectify female sexuality to target their audience by creating imagery of lifestyle fantasies to the male beer consumer and to capture audiences attention quickly.

The beer companies use the sexuality of women to sell the product, by targeting the insecurities and fantasies of men. The product being advertised is beer, yet many of the ads in the collage do not even have a beer in the ad or say anything about why one should buy the beer. What these advertisements are doing to the product is giving it a masculine connotation, by drawing upon heterosexual men’s lifestyle fantasies. Therefore, men who are insecure about their masculinity may feel the need to drink the advertiser’s product in order to feel masculine, possibly even sexy, boding confidence to pick up women, like the women in the advertisements. Kilbourne states, “Advertisers are aware of their role and do not hesitate to take advantage of the insecurities and anxieties of young men, usually in the guise of offering solutions… The right perfume or beer resolves doubts about femininity or masculinity.” (Kilbourne 258)

The heterosexual male is drawn to the exposed female body. Beer advertisers use this to their advantage by using pictures of models that expose their bodies in sexual provocative manners.
Jhallt states, “Sexuality provides a resource that can be used to get attention and communicate instantly.” (Jhally 253) The advertisers hope is that they will draw the audience’s attention, and hopefully keep their attention long enough to subliminally pick up the strategically placed logo.

In beer advertisements women’s sexuality has been highly effective for selling beer. In the advertisements in the collage, beer is not sold by stating the positives of drinking their beer, but rather creating a desirable lifestyle image of what drinking their product will get the consumer. Between the desirable image tied to their product. The advertisers hope that men will identify with the good looking men and sexy women in the advertisements. It is the sex appeal of the women that quickly captures the attention of the heterosexual male audience. Several large beer producers have used sex to sell their product and thus our culture has been flooded with these advertisements. This advertising is not new. It has been very successful for many years.


Works Cited

Cory O'Brienon August 14, 2007 in Beer.
http://www.didntyouhear.com/category/beer/

Diane Klimaszweski, Elaine Klimaszweski
www.tvacres.com/sex_babes_coors.htm

Jhally, Sut. “Image Based Culture: Advertising and Popular Culture.” The World and I. Washington Times Corporation. July 1990. Print

Kilbourne, Jean. “The More You Subtract, The More You Add: Cutting Girls Down to Size”. Can’t Buy Me Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feed. 1999. Print

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http://www.ninjadude.com/index.php/jessica-simpsons-unsexy-beer-ad

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www.unsober.com/beer/7_miller_lite.html

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http://hardy5.wordpress.com/2008/12/09/advertisment-analysis-2/

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www.schm031.com/ht/Alcohol/0aa_899_coors_light