It's not like using sex to sell is a new idea, but something about the popularity of Sports Illustrated's annual swimsuit issue keeps inviting brand innovation by the digital marketers at SI and Time Inc. 

For the 2012 edition, arriving in mailboxes, newsstands and tablets to eager readers this week, a couple of automakers are throwing some curves — in the form of promotions with their own bikini-clad models.

Lexus is running a campaign that matches the twists and turns in a depiction of a competitive driving course to the body curves of a swimsuit model. The objective: to spotlight the 2013 GS, the sporty sedan featured in the brand's Super Bowl ad and a key launch for Lexus's hopes of a sales comeback this year after last years's supply-chain woes. Previous swimsuit-issue model Tori Praver is the model in the Lexus campaign.Continue reading...

It's sexy sex time!

Not to be outdone by all the sexing sex talk between Catholic leaders concerned with religious freedom and the Obama administration's mandate on providing birth control, brands got into the prophylactastic fun.

Are you ready for an almost-entirely NSFW post? Okay! First, there's the Louis Vuitton condom that wasn't.Continue reading...

It's the kind of headline some brands could only dream to attract: "American Apparel risks porn charge with latest ad campaign." AA founder Dov Charney can only hope.

But it should be noted that those "charges" are not actual legal charges, but accusations, and those accusations are almost solely from a media that has formed a symbiotic relationship with the retailer in which American Apparel creates an ad, media (especially web-based) falls over itself to criticize the ads all while printing the increasingly salacious ads and selling advertising against the pageviews. Beautiful.

American Apparel faces a real threat, but it's not from conveniently aghast bloggers.Continue reading...

In the wake of the FTC charging on Sept. 27 that its ads made deceptive health claims, POM Wonderful didn't waste any time putting out new ads that steer away from any health benefits. Instead, the California-based beverage maker's just-released trio of new ads subtly makes mythological claims under a new tagline: "Powerful Then. POM Wonderful Now."

While not stated outright, the not-so-subtle message of the new commercials, POM Wonderful co-founder Lynda Resnick tells the Associated Press, is that POM improves your sex life. The campaign — narrated by Malcolm McDowell— isn't in response to the FTC, she adds, but as AP puts it, a response "to competition from Coke and Pepsi, which are slipping small amounts of pomegranate juice into new beverages and stealing market share."

In the spot above, actress Sonja Kinski continues channeling her mom Nastassja's infamous nude-with-snake photo by Richard Avedon, with a similarly posed commercial in which she portrays a naked Eve, tempted by a serpent (and a succulent pomegranate) in the Garden of Eden. Check out POM's other libido-targeted spots after the jump.Continue reading...

The eager seductress has a long and honored heritage in the business of branding and marketing men’s shaving supplies.

Remember Gunilla Knutson, the Swedish model who purred, “Take it off – take it aaallll off!” in those Noxzema Medicated Instant Shave Cream commercials in the late Sixties and early Seventies? None too subtly, “The Stripper” song played in the background.

Well, at least in those ads, plenty still was left to the imagination.

Schick apparently has decided that the imagination is overrated and outdated, at least when it comes to advertising its Schick Hydro razor. In the spot above, a young woman appears to disrobe in front of a guy who probably was only hoping for hydration, and then throws her top at him.Continue reading...

Not content with the vast array of questionable products already out there bearing the Playboy brand, the media company is launching a new web venture named The Smoking Jacket (for founder Hugh Hefner's favorite attire). As Hef says in his welcome video, "It's Playboy's new safe for work website. Next to the mansion, it's the best hangout on the planet."

Meanwhile, a press release from Playboy's editorial director promoting the site's launch reads, "Cube dwellers and office drones alike shall rejoice at this fun, sexy, satirical antidote to the drudgery of the workday." Congratulations, Playboy! For years, everyone's been talking about how the brand was turning into Maxim. Now, the transformation from Playboy to AnnoyingFratBoy seems complete.

Somewhere, Norman Mailer is rolling in his grave. Why?Continue reading...

It's been eight days since she steamed up the Internet, and despite a surge of condemnation and controversy late last week, the UK's sexy spokeswoman for Burger King's breakfast menu is still serving suds with spuds.

Burger King's latest online marketing venture invites voyeurs to “watch the shower babe shake her bits to the hits at 9:30 a.m. every morning" on the web site, singingintheshower.co.uk.

While on the site customers can vote on what song the model sings and what bikini she wears, enter to win a date with the “shower babe,” and download coupons. The site is age restricted to 18 and over.Continue reading...

“Sexiness for everyone. Everywhere.” It’s a very appropriate tagline for a lingerie company – though one that viewers aren’t often apt to consider the implications of. That may be why the recent advertisement for the German online lingerie store Liaison has caused such controversy.

The ad opens with a beautiful woman putting on underwear and dressing. Rhythmic Middle Eastern music plays, but it all seems like a fairly standard advertisement. Until, in a twist at the end, she puts on her burka.Continue reading...