Buyology - Martin Lindstrom [79]
THE QUESTION REMAINS: If sex and beauty don’t necessarily sell products, why are they so prevalent in marketing and advertising? Thanks to our brain-scan experiments, for the first time ever, we know the brain science behind why. And the answer lies in the mirror neuron.
In an earlier chapter, we saw how, when we see attractive, scantily clad young people, our mirror neurons allow us to imagine ourselves as being equally cool, attractive, and desirable. The same goes for sex appeal. By simply observing a gorgeous model adorned in a pair of lacy underwear in a Victoria’s Secret catalog, most women can imagine the feel and touch of it against their own skin—and feel equally sexy and seductive as the woman in the ad. As I mentioned earlier, this phenomenon is what underlies most advertising nowadays, whether it’s a perfume commercial with Scarlett Johansson or a diamond ad with Elizabeth Taylor.
Or if you’re a man, chances are that you’ve come across the explicit photographs of male crotches on the labels of underwear boxes. Doesn’t matter if you’re buying boxer briefs, tighty-whiteys, or jockstrap-like thongs, there are bulges everywhere. These may appear to be targeted at gay men, but in fact they are less about sexual attraction than about visions of one’s ideal self. Thanks to mirror neurons, just looking at those idealized bodies lets all those average guys out there feel as confident and sexy as though those bodies were theirs. Now, enter girlfriends and wives. Who do you think is buying most men their underwear? You guessed it. In fact, I would estimate that more than three-quarters of all pairs of male underwear are bought by women for men—a phenomenon known as the Gillette Strategy (referring to the widespread assumption that 90 percent of all Gillette shavers are bought by women for the men in their lives). After all, women, too, are happy to picture their man looking as fit, virile, and strapping as those models in their underwear.
Unfortunately, sometimes the intended effects of mirror neurons can backfire. Consider a recent public service campaign in Milan, courtesy of the Italian fashion label Nolita, aimed at discouraging anorexia among young fashion models. Nolita, which is based in northeast Italy, targets young women with midrange apparel and has a long history of running edgy ad campaigns. Yet the brand has never attracted major attention in fashion circles—until now.17
Nolita’s billboard ads feature an emaciated, cadaverous-looking twenty-seven-year-old Frenchwoman named Isabelle Caro who weighs in at all of sixty-eight pounds. Above her head is the tagline No. Anorexia. According to one news site, the photographer, Oliviero Toscani, created the images “to show everyone the reality of this illness, caused in most cases by the stereotypes imposed by the world of fashion.”18 Yet it seems to have had an opposite effect. Just as the gruesome health warnings on the cigarette packages made smokers crave cigarettes, these images of the deathly thin model made anorexics want to emulate her, thanks to their brains’ mirror neurons whispering to them, “You should look so skinny”—we’ll go back to the same-old, same-old. In other words, as the president of Italy’s Association for the Study of Anorexia explained, “far from helping women suffering from anorexia, the photo may make many of them feel envious of the model and determined to become even thinner than her.”
This is an unfortunate consequence of a fact that I continuously remind myself: that sex in advertising is all about wish fulfillment,