Ads Gone Bad: Dolce & Gabbana proves (yet again) that sex sells
Posted by: in Marketing and AdvertisingFiled under: Consumer experience, Marketing and advertising, Sears Holdings (SHLD)
This post is part of our Ads Gone Bad series. Share your thoughts and memories of this ad in the comments, and be sure to check out our other posts on marketing gone wrong.
One could question whether there could be an ad so controversial as to harm the fortunes of haute couture shops. Certainly, noted fashion home Dolce & Gabbana has tested that hypothesis with an ongoing series of sex-charged ads, one of which caused an Italian minister to accuse it of inciting gang rape.
That particular shot, in which a nubile young lady is pinned down by her wrists by a virile male under the interested gaze of several other men, was singled out for its intimation of violence toward women. Other ads by B&G have heavily homoerotic content, and one, a tableau of soldiers posed around a particularly attractive male with a bullet hole in his forehead, has even been thought by some to play on the naughty joys of necrophilia.
The question we pose here, though, isn’t just what ads brought public vilification, but how those ads damaged the bottom line of the companies for which they advertised. In Dolce & Gabanna’s case, the company has seemed to thrive on such controversy. In fact, the New York Times commented on the apparent inconsistency between these edgy ads and the increasingly romantic style of their offerings. The company, founded for $1,000 in 1982, racked up $1.4 billion in sales and $200 million in profits last year.
Given these figures, perhaps companies such as Sears (NASDAQ: SHLD) should consider some necrophilia advertising!
When it comes to ads like this
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