Sexvertising 101

Sexvertising 101 (Leveraging Sex in Marketing)

Ok nerds, it’s time to have the birds-and-bees talk.

I’ve been wanting to write this post for a while. Sex is a weird topic. It’s everyone’s favorite thing, but it’s also a dirty topic not to be discussed in corporate America. 

But this ain’t corporate America, baby. 

This is the motherfucking internet. This is social media, not a monastery. I’m a meme marketer, not a nun.

The marketing/advertising world may be the one place where it’s appropriate to discuss sex in business. In marketing, sexual themes and imagery are as common as it is on spring break. The creator of public relations used sexvertising in one of his most successful stunts. Leveraging sex appeal to sell products even has a name: “sexvertising”.

These brands embrace a simple truth: sexual themes and imagery get attention — and in the attention economy we all live, you gotta do whatever you can to get attention. 

Back in April, Anyone But You starring Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell hit the theaters. The two stars are married to other people, but because of their on-screen chemistry and good looks, there were rumors flying that they had an affair. And as they say “all press is good press”. So the two stars leaned into the rumors. They posted the pic below of each other grabbing each other’s butts. It went viral, the movie got hyped up even more, and according to Powell, “the speculation played out exactly as they intended“.

Sexvertising is widely used in fashion, Hollywood, and music, but the SaaS industry has ignored it completely. My wife works in luxury fashion and when I told her I was writing this post, the first thing she said was “yeah well obviously sex sells.” Why does sex sell? I know this sounds like a dumb line of questioning, but let’s break it down to two simple undeniable reasons:

1. Sexual imagery sparks our attention out of our control (ie. you can’t help but look at the half-naked girl or guy on the billboard)

2. Everyone desires to feel sexier and impress romantic partners (ie. the perfume or cologne will make you smell good to attract partners)

Marketing is all about fulfilling desires. And sex taps into the most primal desire of all: to find mates and reproduce. Simple as that. It’s why Sydney Sweeney goes viral every time she posts a pic and the dude who started RizzGPT (a ChatGPT bot to teach you to talk to girls) is making a few million a year. Sex sells because we’re all humans with desires. And if marketers in fashion, Hollywood, and music understand the power of sex appeal and leverage it, why won’t SaaS touch sex appeal? Is it impossible to make SaaS sexy?

Can SaaS leverage sex appeal?

I believe any industry can.

Cars aren’t inherently sexy. They’re marketed to make the people driving them feel sexier. There’s a reason 60-year-old men love Corvettes. Same reason why finance bros love fancy watches. They make them feel sexy.

In fact, back in the 90s and early 2000s, the tech industry used to leverage sex in marketing. We had Nintendo ads with dirty jokes in the 90s and GoDaddy girls in the early 2000s, but since then, tech marketing has had the sex appeal of a doctor’s waiting room.

I know we’re not in the 90s anymore and we live in a more politically correct cancel culture, but I do think cleverly leveraging sex can be worth the risk.

Fear always gives an opportunity for those who wish to arbitrage on it. 

I’ve found that anytime people are afraid of something, there’s an opportunity. 

People are afraid of investing in a bad market, so by investing during a bad market, you can arbitrage on their fear. People are afraid of being seen as “cringe” so if you embrace cringe on social media, you’ll go viral easier. People are afraid of their boss seeing them post memes on LinkedIn, so by posting memes there, you’ll stand out and grow faster. Here’s the same. People are afraid of talking about sex, so by talking about sex, you’ll stand out in the attention economy like a girl showing cleavage at a bar. Sure leveraging sex appeal is risky, but you gotta risk it for the biscuit, right? You really think my videos would’ve gotten millions of views if they weren’t sexual? I’m not saying your brand needs to be as unhinged as me, but I made these videos and still have a job (too many jobs) so just maybe you’re overthinking things.

Think about so many of the memes that go viral.

Hawk Tuah. The Olympics pole vaulter with the big shlong (#goals). Sooo many viral memes are sexual. If you’re afraid of leveraging sex in your content, you’re missing an opportunity to make money.

People being afraid to talk about sex is why I embrace sexvertising.

Most people are afraid to do it, so I stand out more. I ain’t gonna miss an opportunity to go viral and make some sweet internet moolah just because I’m afraid of some woke mobs who haven’t gotten laid in a decade!

It should be noted I don’t think every brand should be using sexvertising and—but I do think it’d be worth asking yourself if you’re not leveraging sexvertising because a) it doesn’t fit with your target market (ok, fine) or b) if you’re just scared of getting cancelled (laaaaaaame).

If your target market is young people, maybe you should speak their language instead of PC corporate bs—and especially if your target is men, don’t forget men think about sex 8x/minute (women also like sex so I’ve been told but this is just a rumor…) Speak the language of your customers!

In an effort to show this is possible, I thought about some of my favorite SaaS that me and my friends (men, women, and everything in between) use. And I thought how can I make these sexy? How can I make them have some semblance of sex appeal? I then took the liberty to draft up some rough ad ideas in Photoshop. Note: Some of the marketers/founders at these brands subscribe to this newsletter so I am absolutely yolo-ing it right now.

If it fits with your brand, it might be time to say fuck it, grow up and accept the fact that everyone loves sex, and start leveraging the birds and bees.

My adventures this week

Every week, I do a 1-hour call with my community The Strategists.

This week, I talked about my systems for managing creators (ex. hiring, giving feedback, iteration, etc.). Here’s what 1 VC said about the call.

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Tech Memes of the Week

Thanks for reading nerds.

Create some cool shit this week.

Jason “The Memelord” Levin

Head of Growth @ Product Hunt, Author of Memes Make Millions