Subject: Sex in Ads Becomes Less Explicit, As Firms Turn to Romantic Images Date: Published: 2/11/88 154 lines Source: WALL STREET JOURNAL. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. Sex in Ads Becomes Less Explicit, As Firms Turn to Romantic Images --- By Laurie P. Cohen Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal Last year's Guess? jeans ad: Two young denim-clad women kneel at the feet of an older mustached man with a black hat. He kisses one woman as the other watches. He seizes the other by her chin. This year's version: A pretty brunette fantasizes about a Spanish bullfighter, but they never meet face to face. They are together only in her dreams. A return to conservatism, sparked in large part by the fear of AIDS, has made its mark on advertising. Even the boldest advertisers are turning to more romantic -- and less overtly sexual -- images. "People want less sexuality" in advertising, says Paul Marciano, The Guess? jeans advertising director who created both print-ad campaigns. Sexual imagery isn't likely to disappear completely from television commercials and print ads. After all, "babies and sex sell," says Arthur Cohen, executive vice president of advertising for Revlon Inc., the cosmetics maker. But Mr. Cohen adds that sex sells better "if done tastefully." And after two decades of pushing increasingly more daring and suggestive ads, Madison Avenue executives are encouraging everybody to get dressed again. Sex in advertising has become "old hat," says Richard Kirshenbaum, the 26-year-old executive creative director of Kirshenbaum & Bond, a New York-based ad agency. "People are saying 'like please, enough already.'" Adds Stephen Bowen Jr., president of the U. S. operations for advertising agency J. Walter Thompson Co.: "People want to see relationships and good, clean fun." The new prudishness may also be spurring some advertisers to drop agencies that have promoted sexier ads. Travel Fox Inc., a shoe manufacturer, says it recently fired its Swedish ad agency, Hall & Cederquist. The company, which is using Mr. Kirshenbaum's firm for its new ad campaign, won't say why it fired Hall & Cederquist. But the shoe maker created a stir last year when it ran an ad showing a man and woman, naked from the waist down except for their socks and shoes. "We didn't want our shoes to clash with clothes," says Ashley Schapiro, president of Travel Fox. The ad was widely criticized, but according to Mr. Schapiro, "shock appeal absolutely worked." The company, however, has decided to alter its approach. In the future, says Mr. Schapiro, "we won't use sex to advertise shoes." Other advertisers have already turned away from using steamy sexual imagery to sell products. "Six months ago in Vanity Fair magazine there were a lot more breasts and nudity," says Jack Connors, president of Hill, Holiday, Connors Cosmopulos Inc., a Boston-based ad agency. "Nobody's really grabbing anybody anymore." The new television advertisements for Paco Rabanne Parfums, the French men's cologne manufacturer, are a stark illustration of the new attitude toward sex. In the company's 1982 ad, a man was lying in bed, naked, with a satin sheet carefully covering his body. The phone rings. "Hello," he answers. "You snore," a woman's voice says. "And you always steal the covers," he snaps back playfully. The new Paco Rabanne man, however, is tuxedo-clad. As he descends a winding stairway, he blows a kiss to the air. He prances down cobblestone streets and across a bridge, enraptured in a fantasy about the previous evening. He stops to smell the flowers. He doesn't utter a word. "The impact of AIDS has caused differences in relationships," says Norman Berry, chairman of the New York office of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide Inc., which created the Paco Rabanne ads. "Fantasy and romance are in; explicit sex isn't." A big test to see how prudish advertisers have become will come with Calvin Klein's ad campaign for his new fragrance, Eternity, which will be launched in September. No one at Calvin Klein will talk about the planned advertising. But one cosmetics-industry executive who is familiar with the new campaign says, "It's a safe bet that models in Eternity ads will have their clothes on." That would be a departure for Mr. Klein, the maker of Obsession fragrance and bath products. A recent print advertisement for Obsession for Men, for example, shows two women and four men -- all of them stark naked. They lounge near an obelisk, striking a variety of poses. Obsession, introduced in 1985, "was about lust and the ads were meant to reflect that," says an ad-industry executive who worked on the campaign. Even the name for this year's product -- Eternity -- conjures up a more "prudish" era, he observes. One impetus for the change is that consumers seem to be getting more prudish -- as well as more willing to let advertisers know when they have crossed the boundary that separates the acceptable from the objectionable. "You used to have to elicit consumer response," says Andrew Langer, president of Lowe Marschalk Inc., a New York-based ad agency that is a unit of the Interpublic Group of Cos. "You don't have to now. Consumers are more vocal than ever before and advertisers have to be receptive to that." Canada Dry found that out the hard way. After complaints late last year, the soft-drink maker canceled a television commercial that some viewed as too sexually suggestive. The TV commercial, created by New York ad agency Wells, Rich, Greene Inc., showed a husband and wife sharing a glass of Canada Dry ginger ale. The camera pans to the bottle on the dresser and then to their pajama-clad kids playing outside the parents' closed bedroom door. "For when your tastes grow up," a man says as the commercial ends. "I thought it was a little risque for a product like Canada Dry," says Thomas Dooley, president of Canada Dry Delaware Valley Bottling Co. in Philadelphia. Mr. Dooley says he received nearly a dozen complaints from consumers about the ad. Kenneth Olshan, chairman of Wells, Rich, Greene/Worldwide, a unit of Wells, Rich Greene Inc., defends his agency's ad. "It's an adorable spot," he says. "The target market is young adults, and they should be grown up enough to understand. I didn't do anything I'd be ashamed for anyone to see. I don't find (the ad) the least bit embarrassing." Besides being alarmed by what the couple was about to do behind the bedroom door, some consumers also said that the ad evoked images of child neglect or abuse, says Stuart Levitan, director of marketing for Canada Dry Bottling Co. of New York. Two new ads created by the same agency planned for later this year "aren't going to offend anyone," a Canada Dry spokesman says. Neither will new ads for Maidenform bras. Last year, TV commercial censors allowed advertisers to show semi-naked models in bras for the first time. But Maidenform Inc. is opting not to go that far. Instead, its new ad campaign features leading men, including Omar Sharif, Michael York and Corbin Bernsen of "L. A. Law," talking about women's underclothes. "I love a woman who says how she feels," Mr. Bernsen says coyly. He looks around as if to make sure that no one is watching. "But I also love a woman who has secrets." Mr. Bernsen adds that lingerie is "a secret she doesn't share with the world. So sometimes you don't find out. But, then again, sometimes you do." Maidenform and its ad agency, Levine, Huntley, Schmidt & Beaver Inc., figure a talking head like Mr. Bernsen is sexier than a nude woman. "Everybody has a model wearing a bra," says Marilyn Bane, vice president of advertising at Maidenform. "We felt we needed to do something different. Really, this is much more sexy than a woman without her clothes on." [This article is made available here by Dow Jones Co. for the personal and non-commercial use of callers to this bbs, in the hope that it will be of some help to those who are suffering from the disease and others who are seeking to help them.]