The Land Where Sex Sells Paint, Fax Machines

Naked women promote cigarette lighters, busty ladies sell shoes, nasty women flog fax machines, seductive women whisper the glories of cellular phones and leggy women in micro-mini skirts lay it on thick about latex paint.


Russia's billboards, magazine pages and posters are full of ads that count on the appeal of sex -- specifically, the appeal of scantily clad women -- to arouse consumer interest.


"Babies, pets and breasts are sure to get people's attention," said Bruce Macdonald, the head of client services at the advertising agency Premier SV.


Sometimes these ads are grotesque, advertising industry sources say, sometimes they objectify women as little more than an accessory for the New Russian man, and often the idea of sex appeal has little to do with the product at hand. But those who commented confirmed the old suspicion -- sex does sell.


One ad, for the mobile telephone provider Beeline, features a woman with heavy-lidded eyes and her top lifted to expose a cellular telephone tucked into her skirt. "See how mobile it is," the copy reads.


"We've had very positive results with this ad," said Ilya Notkin, director of client services for the advertising company Ivan Press, which created the ad.


For the Beeline magazine spot, Notkin said, the company's ad budget was tight and the company sought maximum bang for its buck. The ad, a relatively straightforward phallic fantasy, had to be "something impressive," he said.


"Cellular phones are used by non-conservative people who aren't shocked by such an ad," Notkin said. "On the contrary, they think it's funny."


In Russian advertising, finding a balance between tasteful and tasteless sex-appeal hasn't exactly been rocket science: Shifting public mores since the end of the days of Soviet repression and less agreement on what is appropriate expression in a public forum have resulted in a broad range of sexual images in advertising.


"Russia is undergoing a sexual revolution and the sex we see in today's advertising is a reflection of this," said Yury Grimov, creative director of Premier SV.


The most obvious target for sexually charged plugs for high-technology gadgets, fashion and alcohol is the young generation of so-called New Russians.


"A sexy woman is an exterior sign of wealth for New Russians," said Oleg Panov, director of the advertising agency Euro-RSCG Maxima. "And by using these images, we appeal to their exhibitionist side."


One danger of using sex to sell a product, though, is that the means may blur the message: Consumers may remember the image but forget the product.


According to Macdonald, a product should have an intrinsic or logical link to the sensual or sexual images of the ad in order to be effective.


"If someone just remembers the sex appeal of an ad, the ad hasn't done its job in promoting the product," he said. Thus, just as alcohol or fashion products would generally work in such a context, household appliances or automobile tires may not.


In one Moscow ad campaign, for Italy's Salita shoe company, the link -- in this case, the pairing of shoes and cleavage -- may not be patently clear.


A recent ad in the series promotes the company's spring and summer collection. In it, a smiling and well-endowed woman in a generously opened jacket holds a bag of Salita shoes in one hand, while hooking the finger of her other hand around a button at her chest, as if poised to unfasten her jacket.


Salita representatives in Italy would not comment on the ad.


One Salita representative in Moscow, however, said she found the ads "too sexual" and lacking the desired effect.


"I would prefer people to focus less on her breasts and more on our spring collection," she said.


In a similar vein, industry sources found billboard advertisements for the shoe company Tervolina, which feature a sensually posed woman against a backdrop of a sea of shoes, making an illogical link between the product and sensuality.


"There is absolutely no relationship whatsoever between the woman and the shoes," said Johanna Cavarzan, Moscow creative director for the McCann Erickson advertising agency.


Another key in the sex-and-ads equation is the dosage of sex used, and how it is presented.


If the sex element of an ad is badly portrayed, advertisers say, it comes off as overdone, kitschy or even grotesque. Usually, they say, lack of experience on the part of the ads' producers is the main problem.


Sex can be a complicated element to use effectively in advertising. The risk is high that in the hands of beginners the ads may end up locked in cliches, where "girls look like prostitutes and men like mafiosi," Macdonald said.


But ad-makers' lack of experience may not be such a drawback in Russia, where viewers may also lack the consumer acumen of Western audiences.


Russians consumers, Panov said, are less exposed to advertising in general, and less attuned to the subtleties than their Western counterparts.


"Russian consumers better understand direct and even exaggerated speeches than nuances," he said.


An ad for fax machines made by Italy's Olivetti is one example of an extreme ad that may not make it any time soon to the shores of politically correct North America. The Olivetti magazine spot depicts a bottle blonde woman with a fax machine between her spread legs, with a caption that reads, "Fax me."


"Some ads are just sexist," said Cavarzan, a Canadian. She said she hopes that in the next few years, there will be more stringent laws against such type of advertising.


But for now, the playing field of Russian advertising is relatively open.


According to Alexander Segal, consultant for the State Duma's committee on communication, there isn't any legislation that sets advertising ethics, only a law that forbids outright pornography. But that law's reach is not clear either, he said.


"Advertising containing information which violates human norms and morality is forbidden," Segal cited the law as saying. The only problem, he said, is that no one knows what the norms are. "It's now very difficult to express in a law the difference between eroticism and pornography."


But Laurence Tanon, editor in chief of the communications newsletter MIR, said there are some controls in Russia's advertising world.


For example, she said, ads on television are more strictly controlled than on billboards or in the press, which she says explains why sexual ads appear more frequently in the street and in print than they do on television.


Alcohol and cigarette ads, commonly paired with sensual images, are also officially banned from the air.


Although sexy ads may reach their target audience among members of a young and wealthy generation who are proud to proclaim that sex in Russia is no longer a taboo, they have also attracted the attention of a less approving audience in the government.


Tanon said some conservative forces in the Duma recently asked for ads for tampons and sanitary towels to be taken off the air, arguing they were offensive to children.