The Daily Stat from Harvard Business Review

September 28, 2015     Violence and Sex in Ads May Make Consumers Pay Less Attention to Brands An analysis of 53 past experiments involving 8,489 participants shows that brands advertised in violent media content are remembered less often and evaluated less favorably and are less likely to be purchased than brands advertised in nonviolent, nonsexual media, say Robert B. Lull and Brad J. Bushman of The Ohio State University. Almost half of the most popular shows, films, and games contain violence, and more than a quarter contain sex. But humans’ evolutionary predisposition to paying attention to sex and violence pushes brand awareness to the background in these contexts and thus impairs brand memory, brand attitudes, and buying intentions, the researchers theorize. SOURCE: Do Sex and Violence Sell? A Meta-Analytic Review of the Effects of Sexual and Violent Media and Ad Content on Memory, Attitudes, and Buying Intentions

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