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The ads that prove sex sells

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By John Costello
Tuesday Jul 7 2009

As a risque Calvin Klein billboard causes uproar, John Costello says men's primal desires have always ruled their wallet

They are semi-naked, their bodies entwined. Their oily skin oozes sex. So, no surprise the 50-foot sexually explicit Calvin Klein billboard in downtown Manhattan has been raising more than eyebrows.

It features two young men and a young woman in hot threesome action, while another man lies at their feet peeling away his pants.

The American Decency Association has lambasted the ad as "degrading" and is urging consumers to call Calvin Klein and complain. But should we be so shocked that billboards can sometimes be more soft porn than advert?

No, according to Geoffrey Miller, evolutionary psychologist and author of Spent: Sex, Evolution and the Secrets of Consumerism.

"We've known since Darwin that animals are basically machines for survival and reproduction," he says. "Now we also know that animals achieve much of their survival and reproductive success through self-advertisement, self-marketing and self-promotion."

In fact, pretty much everything you have ever bought is simply a misguided quest to attract sexual partners, according to Miller. That iPhone you splashed out on? The sleek new BMW? That outrageously expensive Chanel handbag? All for sex.

"We take wondrously adaptive capacities for human self-display -- language, intelligence, kindness, creativity and beauty -- and then forget how to use them in making friends, attracting mates and gaining prestige," he says.

"Instead, we rely on goods and services acquired through education, work and consumption to advertise our personal traits to others."

This fact is not lost on the likes of Calvin Klein. Indeed, in a series of experiments, Miller discovered people were more likely to spend money on products and activities if they were first primed with alluring photographs of the opposite sex or stories about dating.

We then use these purchases -- clothes, cars, mobile phones, sunglasses -- like a peacock's tail to display our biological fitness to potential mates.

We buy pets to display conscientiousness, modern art to show our openness, fair trade coffee to show our caring nature.

We continuously try to achieve our social and sexual goals through the relentless display of our personal qualities to others. And marketers have succeeded in convincing us that the only way to effectively display ourselves is through the consumption choices we make.

"For the last two million years or so we lived during human evolution in small scale hunter-gatherer societies in little clans of 20-30 people," says Miller.

"They would interact with other clans to make friends, allies and choose mates, and there would only be a couple of thousand people in your area that even spoke the same language.

"So we are used to caring a great deal about our social status within our local community and trying to be sexually attractive to potential mates within these communities. The reproductive pay-off for this was enormous and our brains have been shaped to care about those pay-offs.

'What happens in modern societies is that we have these residual instincts for caring what everyone thinks of us even if they are total strangers in a city of 10 million who we will never meet again and who can have no sexual or social interactions with us. And that's what marketers are tapping into and that is what drives a lot of consumption with regards to clothes and vehicles."

But, according to Miller, while we may be flaunting it we are also faking it by displaying our physical fitness in the wrong ways.

"These costly signals are mostly redundant or misleading, so others usually ignore them," he says. "They prefer to judge us through natural face-to-face interaction. We think our gilding dazzles them, though we ignore their own gilding when choosing our friends and mates."

The fundamental consumerist delusion, suggests Miller, is believing our purchases affect the way we're treated. We cloak ourselves in brand names, even though no one really notices or particularly cares in any meaningful way.

Can you remember what your best friend was wearing two days ago? Or what shoes your boss wears?

While the watch you wear or car you drive may send signals, most people don't notice. So when it comes to impressing people and showing them how clever or cool you are, it is more effective and far cheaper to do it in the good old fashioned way -- by talking to them face to face.

'There are many alternative ways people can become popular and sexy and achieve the goals they want without conspicuous consumption," says Miller.

"Consumers should be allowed choose but I think it would be wonderful if consumers became more sophisticated about the unconscious motives that are driving consumption and that they don't get caught on the consumerist treadmill."

In a time of dire economic circumstances, such enlightenment could help unchain people from their massive credit card debts and needless spending on luxury items that are more about style rather than substance.

"Applying evolutionary psychology to consumerism can make consumers a lot smarter and more discerning and more conscious about their choices," believes Miller.

So the next time you are sitting in your expensive car, wearing that Ralph Lauren shirt or buying designer sunglasses, spare a moment to consider just how your consumer choices are manipulated by marketers who play on the fact that, according to Miller, we are all just "insecure, praise-starved flattery-sluts".

- John Costello