Original subtitles

♪

NARRATOR: Two words that you can take to the bank.

RuPAUL CHARLES: Sex sells.

RUTH WESTHEIMER: I do know that sex sells.

SANDRO MONETTI: Sex sells,

and if you're looking to sell a product,

there's no better way to do it than with sex.

JUSTIN BIEBER: You're turned on right now? Yeah.

PRODUCER: You are? BIEBER: Yeah, I'm turned on.

ANNOUNCER: Obsession.

ANDY COHEN: What can sex not sell?

Uh...

JOSH WELTMAN: It wasn't rocket science.

Get the hottest girl to talk about a hot burger.

CHARLOTTE McKINNEY: I love going all natural.

I am all natural, so that's what made it funny, sexy, and witty.

NARRATOR: But how exactly do advertisers use sex

to get our attention?

MARGARET CHO: If you wear this body spray,

you'll have millions of girls in bathing suits chasing after you.

[laughs]

NARRATOR: And if companies add more sex to their ads,

does this guarantee more profits?

KATIE COURIC: What are we gonna be seeing 10 years from now,

people running around naked?

NARRATOR: Where is the sweet spot

when it comes to sex in advertising?

[screams]

MAN: Two times!

WOMAN: Two times!

CALVIN KLEIN: If parents got upset by what they were seeing,

young people just wanted more of it.

♪

NARRATOR: It's a kind of sorcery, almost like alchemy,

where the high priests of advertising

anoint everyday objects with irresistible sex appeal.

CALVIN KLEIN: Sex won't do it.

It can't be just about sex.

It can't be just about being vulgar.

There has to be a lot more thought behind it.

It has to be thought provoking.

TOM REICHERT: Sex actually works in several different ways.

First, grabbing attention, and that's easy.

There is an explicit brand promise, 'Use this, get this.'

♪ When something catches Charlie's eye ♪

♪ That makes his pulse rate climb ♪

♪ He uses a whistle, a wink, and Wildroot ♪

♪ It gets her every time

REICHERT: You will be more sexually attractive.

You'll get more sex, or have better sex,

or you'll just feel sexier.

NARRATOR: Exhibit A, soup.

SANDRO MONETTI: How do you advertise soup?

Soup is not a sexy product.

NARRATOR: Traditionally, soup has been a clever dish

to stretch ingredients, especially in desperate times,

like during the Great Depression,

when there were soup lines for those looking for a meal.

Today, instant soup also serves a basic need.

Add boiling water to a dusting of dried ingredients,

and it reconstitutes into something resembling soup.

One British soup company served up piping hot sex appeal.

ANNOUNCER: New Batchelors' deliciously thick Cup a Soup,

made with carefully selected quality ingredients.

MONETTI: How do you make soup sexy?

You have somebody sexy eating the soup.

So, Joey Essex, a big reality star in Britain,

star of 'The Only Way is Essex' reality TV show,

he's at home eating soup, but he's shirtless while he does so.

NARRATOR: The spot shows acres of abs

and cheeky self-awareness.

Then it spoons up a mysterious morsel of innuendo.

ANNOUNCER: Incredibly tasty.

Phenomenally thick.

MONETTI: So what we tend to do

is we go with what we call in Britain 'the cheeky.'

ANNOUNCER: Philips has created a new dimension

in color television.

MONETTI: The naughty, not full-out pornographic,

but suggestive.

NARRATOR: When advertisers want

to successfully create sex appeal,

they often try to balance skin with innuendo,

and they take a gamble,

estimating society's tolerance for sexual imagery.

KLEIN: I think it's more interesting

if you leave things to people's imagination.

They can take it where they choose to.

CHRISTOPHER RYAN: The man who founded advertising,

Edward Bernays, was the nephew of Sigmund Freud.

So the connection between psychological research,

human sexuality, and advertising

dates back to the very birth of the business.

NARRATOR: Freudian ideas of the libido

and how it powers human behavior

have informed advertising from the very beginning.

In early men's trade magazines

and industrial product catalogues,

advertisers free-associated their products

with images of nude women.

The ads worked, showing nudity

with a product like wood varnish,

because only men were reading these publications.

REICHERT: What they would do is they would usually use

some double entendre.

So they would show a nude woman and say,

'Look at how beautiful this form is.'

We're able to do that with your flooring with this varnish.

So basically, using the woman as a metaphor

for how well our product works.

NARRATOR: Possibly the most far-fetched link

between sex and a product appeared back in 1887,

when a US advertiser tried to sexualize a lump of coal.

REICHERT: There's a very centerpiece of this ad.

You had a couple in a romantic situation

being warmed by a coal-fueled fire.

And if you've got coal heating your home,

you might get more sex or better sex.

NARRATOR: The smoldering coal ad was a one-off.

But when companies started peddling facial soap

with sexual messaging,

it changed the way almost everything was advertised.

The year was 1911,

and the soap maker was an American named John H. Woodbury.

REICHERT: The Woodbury soap campaign is extremely notable

because it was the first example of a sex appeal

used in mainstream advertising.

Woodbury's facial soap was purchased by Jergens Company

right at the height.

It was a premium soap.

And no matter what they did,

all of a sudden, sales started to go down.

NARRATOR: Dr. Woodbury's products were first advertised

as a remedy for blackheads and other facial blemishes,

but when sales trended downward,

the brand needed to lather up their sales tactics.

JULIANN SIVULKA: So Woodbury hired

the J. Walter Thompson Agency.

And one of the specialties about the agency

is that they specialized in selling to the women's market.

And they talked to women for marketing research.

They went door to door to ask women questions about products.

They went into department stores.

They went into grocery stores trying to understand

what they liked about the product,

what they didn't like about the product.

They wanted to tap into those innermost thoughts,

innermost desires.

NARRATOR: The tireless research revealed two main things.

First, that women many women did not consider using soap

as part of their skin care routine.

And second, that they craved romance.

REICHERT: So they said, hey, we got a great idea.

Why don't we show women how to care for their skin,

and we'll show them the benefits of nice-looking skin,

most notably having handsome men

finding these women incredibly adorable.

SIVULKA: They presented an advertisement

showing a beautiful woman

who was embraced by an attractive man,

and it had the headline, 'A skin you love to touch.'

REICHERT: And in each of these ads,

they would tell women how to care for their skin.

Use this, get this, and here's the result of doing that.

You'll have some handsome man who's obviously wealthy.

He'll be so into you, because you have great-looking skin.

SIVULKA: And that was a pretty convincing argument

to many women.

As a result of the campaign, the sales increased over 500%.

The Woodbury campaign proved that sex could sell

a lot of soap.

REICHERT: And anytime you have success,

especially in popular culture, competitors are gonna copy them.

NARRATOR: Nearly as unsexy as a lump of coal or a bar soap

were dungarees, also known as blue jeans.

Levi Strauss invented jeans in 1873

and sold them to working men who valued the sturdy denim fabric.

Right on the label was and still remains the Levi message,

'Riveted together, not just sewn,

and a pair of horses couldn't tear 'em apart.'

[horses neighing]

Early on, they were known as the 'two horse' pants.

SAM SHAHID: When I was growing up as a kid,

jeans was like, you know, for the young kids,

and sometimes, it was wrong side of the tracks.

REICHERT: Jeans, at the very beginning,

had been targeted in terms of their utilitarian value,

whether they were long-lasting,

whether they had rivets that would keep the jeans together,

or their price.

So, those were the ways that jeans were advertised.

[gunshot]

NARRATOR: When popular culture partnered up

with the Hollywood Western,

the loners and rebels of the American West were romanticized.

And some of that sex appeal rubbed off

on the pants they were wearing.

ANNOUNCER: For the first time in history,

Levi's Shrink-To-Fit 501 jeans,

a cut especially for women.

JACQUELINE LAMBIASE: Jeans are kind of part of an era

that probably started in the 1950s

in terms of the idea

of the rebel and jeans.

And so, jeans have had

a connection with sexuality

for a while.

NINA HARTLEY: It's the quintessential

American article of clothing,

it's the quintessential uniform of youth and of rebellion.

It used to be a working man's outfit,

and then, you know, came Marlon Brando and James Dean,

it's like, 'Whoa, jeans are sexy.'

JOSH WELTMAN: It was about putting on an attitude

and an identity.

NARRATOR: In 1979, the brand with the horse

stitched on the back pocket

made the leap from jeans to sexy second skin.

Jordache also gifted the fashion world

a new and very lucrative term,

'designer jeans.'

SHAHID: Jeans couldn't get tight enough.

You practically were poured into them,

or you had to put them on and lie in a bathtub

to get them to fit.

REICHERT: With jeans advertising,

especially in the late 1970s, early 1980s,

you had a proliferation of designer jeans.

Barbara Lippert from Adweek called it 'cinema derriere'

because you had such a focus on rear ends.

NARRATOR: The rebranding of jeans

from coverall to reveal-all

was a new twist on sex in advertising.

Designers not only sexualized a humble product,

they elevated it into the realm of high fashion.

LAMBIASE: The brand of jeans mattered a lot.

The way they looked on you mattered a lot,

and all of that was bound up in teenage life

and the way you felt about yourself,

and the way that you had sex-esteem about yourself.

NARRATOR: Soon, designer jeans would spark

a worldwide controversy over sex in advertising

when a driven and debonair entrepreneur

unleashed his vision of sexy in New York's Times Square.

KLEIN: It was the early '80s.

We introduced the jeans with Brooke Shields

on TV and in print.

LAMBIASE: People felt like this was a very scandalous way

to sell a product.

ELLEN GOODMAN: Brooke Shields in that ad is 15 years old.

If I could quote my daughter, 'gross' would be my reaction.

[whistling]

NARRATOR: 35 years ago,

a clothing designer released a commercial

that still retains some of its provocative power.

BROOKE SHIELDS: You want to know what comes between

me and my Calvins?

Nothing.

REICHERT: It not only changed the way commercials look,

but also the way jeans were marketed.

GARY R. HICKS: Probably the first time

that a lot of Americans heard the name Calvin Klein

was with the Brooke Shields ads.

NARRATOR: But Calvin Klein's instant notoriety

had been a long time coming.

KLEIN: Being a fashion designer all my life,

knowing from the time I was five years old,

this is exactly what I wanted to do.

NARRATOR: Calvin Klein first learned sewing

and patternmaking from his grandmother,

who was a seamstress.

As for his later affinity for sexual imagery...

KLEIN: I grew up in the 1950s

where we were repressed sexually.

And as a child, I always felt different,

I always felt I didn't belong.

NARRATOR: In 1968, Klein opened his first shop

with boyhood friend, Barry Schwartz,

in a hotel in New York's garment district.

He got his first break

when a buyer from the department store Bonwit Teller

got lost in the hotel,

accidentally walked into Klein's shop,

and ordered $50,000 worth of clothing samples,

a fortune at the time.

In 1979, Klein had another brush with destiny

when he splayed the model Patti Hansen

across a Times Square billboard in a pair of his jeans.

KLEIN: I wanted to show this incredible body

and this gorgeous woman

who had a mane of hair like you've never seen.

And we put her on her hands and knees,

because the billboard was horizontal.

It never occurred to me that women would interpret

that she was put in a position of submission.

Well, that year I won the Pig of the Year award.

NARRATOR: He'd stumbled onto a secret of global recognition,

stirring controversy.

One year later, he upped the ante

with the first Brooke Shields commercial.

HARTLEY: In the ad, she has long, silky hair,

and she was on one hip,

and she was buttoning one button on her shirt

with the wind machine,

'What comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.'

SHIELDS: Nothing.

CINDY GALLOP: Calvin Klein was making jeans sexy

in a really disruptive and breakthrough way.

COURIC: Television commercials and print ads

are steamier than ever.

LAMBIASE: There was a lot of protest

against ads like this one of Calvin Klein's.

People felt like this was a very scandalous way

to sell a product.

WELTMAN: The world is still uncomfortable with young girls

being comfortable with their own sexual power,

so I imagine that's what the controversy was about

at the time.

GOODMAN: Brooke Shields in that ad is 15 years old.

If I could quote my daughter, 'gross' would be my reaction.

SHAHID: The media had a field day over it.

KLEIN: As it turned out, the Dow Jones had hit 1,000,

which was a very big deal.

Instead, on the front page of the news,

this was a huge, full-page picture

of Brooke Shields in the jeans,

and in the upper right-hand corner was 'Dow Hits 1,000.'

COURIC: If we're seeing these kind of commercials today,

what are we gonna be seeing 10 years from now,

people running around naked?

GARY BAUER: I think as a society,

we've got a responsibility to draw certain lines.

NARRATOR: The outrage over the actress's age

and the way the camera lingered on the skintight denim

would eventually fade.

But what gives this spot its timeless edge is the tagline,

one that leaves so much to the imagination.

SHIELDS: You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins?

HARTLEY: Nothing.

SHIELDS: Nothing.

ANDREA SCOTT: That's a great example of sexual innuendo.

What did she mean by that?

KLEIN: When it came to the words,

here's where we took some risk.

SHIELDS: Reading is to the mind

what Calvins are to the body.

KLEIN: I think it's more interesting

if you leave things to people's imagination.

They can take it where they choose to.

That's much more interesting than the obvious,

whether it's words, or it's film, or print.

NARRATOR: For the purpose of selling jeans,

the commercials excelled at their job.

SHAHID: The sales, as we all know, were extraordinary.

HICKS: It was very, very lucrative for Calvin Klein.

NARRATOR: Sales of Calvin Klein Jeans nearly tripled

after the first commercials aired.

A reported 200,000 jeans were sold

the first week they went on the market.

KLEIN: We sold so many jeans,

and often because if parents got upset by what they were seeing,

young people just wanted more of it,

they couldn't get enough.

NARRATOR: While Calvin Klein thrives on controversy,

other advertisers skirt scandal

by employing sly sexual innuendo instead.

JEFFREY MORAN: We're the king and queen

of the double entendre,

so we always want consumers

to get that little wink and the nod.

We knew we had to be completely different,

we were a different bottle, we were a different product,

we were a different country.

So we had to really introduce the US

to something that they had never experienced before.

NARRATOR: First distilled in Sweden in the 1870s,

Absolut Vodka was repackaged in 1979

in a vintage style apothecary bottle

with simple and timeless flowing lines.

The advertising seized upon the curves of the bottle

and ran with them.

MORAN: When you think of a silhouette,

whether it's the female form

or even the male form in the silhouette,

you immediately recognize it, you see it.

We saw that when we looked at this apothecary bottle.

And if you think back to our first set of ads,

which was Absolut Perfection and so on,

it was very simplistically a bottle,

which in and of itself is very sexy, very fluid, very simple.

But it's so simple and so curvaceous and beautiful

that you just immediately got it every time.

NARRATOR: As a launching pad to the world,

the sensuous-looking bottle was introduced

to a then-neglected US market.

MORAN: We were among the first brands

to ever even advertise to the LGBT community,

which had its own sort of drama in the '80s;

no one was talking to them.

So all of a sudden, you had this brand

with a relatively simple and still very sexy ad

that had one simple message, 'Absolut Perfection.'

NARRATOR: By 1997, Absolut finally clothed its naked bottle

in a purple corset.

MORAN: And it worked beautifully,

the color, the style, the simplicity.

We call it now a thumb-stopper on Facebook or Instagram.

But it was a page-stopper,

and it was, 'I wonder what's inside.'

So it was almost what we didn't say

that made that ad way sexier than what we said.

When you really spent the time looking at it,

and you thought through all of those

double and triple entendres of a corset,

and pulling something open, and revealing this inside,

and what is inside,

it really got a lot of consumers thinking, 'Wow, that's hot.'

NARRATOR: In more than 1,500 ads spanning nearly three decades,

Absolut has draped its curvy bottle

with suggestive images and language.

It's propelled the brand to its place

within the top five sellers of premium spirits worldwide,

all with the teasing silhouette of an old apothecary bottle.

MORAN: It's left to your own imagination,

which as we know, is the richest area to have.

NARRATOR: Sly double entendres have also managed to sexualize

what might otherwise be

a dull government initiative to conserve water.

ANNOUNCER: Conversation can feel oh, so right.

Shut off the faucet while, ooh, soaping those dirty hands.

NARRATOR: In 2014, as a lengthy drought

gripped California's San Francisco Bay Area,

these ads playfully suggested that saving water together

was as good as steamy foreplay.

ANNOUNCER: Replace your toilet and get paid for...

doing it.

Nice.

SCOTT: They would talk about things like,

shower together, save water,

nozzle your hose,

make it a quickie,

short and steamy.

I thought that campaign was brilliant.

The advertisers, they understood

the culture that is San Francisco,

where sexuality is very out in the open, it's understood,

and it really captured the imagination

of the people of San Francisco.

ANNOUNCER: Efficient fixtures for your kitchens and bathrooms,

screw them on.

Yeah.

NARRATOR: After the campaign ran,

water consumption dropped by 8%.

How many San Franciscans were having sex while saving water

is unknown.

ANNOUNCER: Most gardens need only to be satisfied

twice a week, oh, yeah.

NARRATOR: While advertisers have proven that double entendres

can sell a lot of vodka and save a lot of water,

it's also true that burger porn can move a lot of meat.

AUDRINA PATRIDGE: I call it my bikini burger.

NARRATOR: In the camp of advertisers

who use shameless, over-the-top sex to sell products,

there is one total standout.

JACLYN FRIEDMAN: The Carl's Jr. commercials

are an extreme example of the 'sex sells' strategy.

ANN COULTER: Paris Hilton basically having sex with a car.

NARRATOR: But the road from local burger outlet

to international notoriety

is a classic study of sex in advertising

and its power to transform a brand.

WELTMAN: Carl Karcher was a conservative religious guy,

and Carl's was a, kind of a regional player

before we ran the campaign.

NARRATOR: In 1941, Karcher opened a hotdog stand

in South Central Los Angeles.

He then open a burger joint called Carl's Jr.

because it was smaller than his first restaurant.

Gradually, Carl's Jr. burgers

spread throughout the western United States.

By the 1990s, Karcher no longer ran his namesake companies.

And his successors were fielding provocative ideas

from their advertising agency

in an effort to gain more market share.

WELTMAN: They weren't particularly comfortable

with what we were doing at first,

but they wanted to sell hamburgers.

NARRATOR: They started with the basics

of what makes people tick.

LAMBIASE: We have the same brains that we've had

for over 10,000 years.

We have the brains of a hunter-gatherer.

And so we are still hunting and gathering

for these kinds of sexual cues

that we might not really recognize as such,

but that advertisers know will work us over.

♪

NARRATOR: The agency did rigorous research among the men

who tended to do their hunting and gathering

at the drive-thru window.

WELTMAN: What we did was we got heavy fast-food users

in a focus group,

and we asked them what makes a good burger.

Every guy sort of bent over the table,

and they would hold their hands

and they would describe this drippy, messy, juicy burger,

and they become like these ape sort of creatures.

They thought about hamburgers and eating

with, like, a very primitive part of their mind.

And we took the tape to the client,

and turned the sound off,

and had the client watch their customers,

they looked like a bunch of monkeys,

like, sitting around a fire.

And we said, 'That's the guy we have to appeal to.'

NARRATOR: They'd found what brought out the ape in the man.

Now, they had to map the most direct route

to the simian part of their brains.

WELTMAN: It wasn't rocket science.

Get the hottest girl who says things are hot

to talk about a hot burger.

McKINNEY: Paris Hilton did the first ad

on the car with the burger,

and even as a young girl, you know, that caught my attention,

and 'Wow, she's gorgeous,' and 'I want to do that!'

NARRATOR: The first of the new breed of burger spots

was produced for the Super Bowl, but censored by the network.

And the ad only ran regionally.

But the buzz it created was so immense

that it soon spawned

a long-running national campaign.

WELTMAN: We made the burgers messy and drippy in the ads,

and they'd get all over stuff.

NARRATOR: This typically steamy Carl's Jr. spot

features reality TV star and model Audrina Patridge.

PATRIDGE: I'm totally obsessed.

I have to be a little bad.

I call it my bikini burger.

WELTMAN: The campaign just went through the roof,

and Carl's made enough money

to build a national fast-food network.

NARRATOR: In 2015 a Carl's Jr. spot aired

in the western United States during the Super Bowl.

It starred model and actress Charlotte McKinney.

MCKINNEY: And I was thrilled to be picked for it.

I love going all natural.

It just makes me feel better.

In the ad, I am walking through a farmers' market,

and you can't really tell if it's me naked or not.

Lots of fruit placements, and yeah.

NARRATOR: The in-joke of the spot

is that everyone's oblivious to the voluptuous model

except the guys squarely in the fast food demographic,

anyone channeling their inner ape.

McKINNEY: Nothing between me

and my 100% all-natural,

juicy, grass-fed beef.

It went viral.

It was the highest viewed ad they've ever had.

NARRATOR: Carl's Jr. claimed a record-breaking

three billion impressions across all media for the spot.

The one-time LA burger joint has expanded to 36 countries

including 300 new restaurants in Australia.

McKINNEY: What I think works with this campaign

is the shock factor.

You're looking at beautiful women doing, you know,

odd things with food, and it draws attention.

NARRATOR: When it comes to brazen sex commercials,

the carnivores at Carl's Jr.

are closely rivaled by the vegans of PETA.

NADIA TAHA: Sexy Carl's Jr.'s ads,

that's what we're up against.

And so PETA has to resort to a similar degree of brashness

to grab headlines and to grab people's attention.

NARRATOR: But PETA,

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals,

is seeking not to exploit our primitive urges

but to reverse them,

to steer consumers away from animal products

with shock value ads.

REICHERT: They're using sex to really make a statement,

to stand out, to be shocking, to draw people into that message.

NARRATOR: PETA's approach grabs our attention,

because they don't showcase anonymous models.

Rather, A-list animal lovers.

TAHA: No one can resist

looking at a naked body of a beautiful celebrity.

REICHERT: Otherwise, we're just not gonna pay attention

to PETA ads, but if they use something that,

boom, gets our attention, we'll pay attention to it,

and then we also might get our vegetables

along with our eye candy.

NARRATOR: The campaign began in 1991

when the girl band the Go Go's appeared

clothed only in a banner with the tagline,

'We'd Rather Go-Go Naked Than Wear Fur!'

The celebrities who've bared all for PETA ads

over the past 25 years could fill up any red carpet event.

First, using the 'I'd rather go naked' line

then as tattoos came into vogue

in the early years of this century, 'Ink, not mink.'

TAHA: We have worked with everyone

from comedians like David Cross and Steve-O

to movie stars like Eva Mendes

to TV stars like Taraji Henson and Lisa Edelstein.

♪

NARRATOR: In 2009, PETA produced a steamy commercial

that openly sexualized vegetables

and the vegans who love them

and submitted it for the Super Bowl broadcast.

The network banned it, which played right into PETA's hands.

REICHERT: PETA has certainly a definite strategy

in terms of not only trying to attract our attention

if those ads are available online,

but also they can come back and claim,

'Look, we're banned from the networks.

Look at what they've done,'

which certainly is gonna generate

even more attention for PETA.

TAHA: And so what PETA does

is grab as much of that market share as we possibly can

by using whatever imagery is out there,

including the human fascination with sex.

NARRATOR: Advertisers have long used perfect, sexy bodies

to sell their wares.

Finally, the millions of all-natural, imperfect people,

who are their customers, struck back.

TRISTAN TAORMINO: They are bodies of size.

They are women of color.

They are people with big butts.

NARRATOR: For well over a hundred years,

advertisers have plied the strategy of using sex,

mating their products with flawless bodies.

The old Woodbury soap ads first cemented the trend

by displaying their dreamy women with creamy skin.

ROXANE GAY: Advertising offer us very strict norms

for what the body should look like.

And so there are people out there who are trying to produce

counter-narratives that are more inclusive.

DITA VON TEESE: I think it's really empowering

when you do get to see other kinds of bodies

in a sensual, sexual way,

and I wish that we could see more of that.

NARRATOR: In this century, another soap company

opened a new door to their customers.

WOMAN: We had an option of two pathways to walk,

and they led to two doorways.

JANE WARD: In the 2000s, Dove launched their campaign

that is focused on the variation

in women's bodies.

SCOTT: The Dove Campaign for Beauty,

they decided to feature real women.

They had a whole variety of the shapes and sizes of women,

and that captured people's attention.

WOMAN: I went through the average door.

WOMAN: Really? WOMAN: Yeah.

WOMAN: Oh, my gosh.

WOMAN: Yeah. I didn't even hesitate.

TAORMINO: They are bodies of size.

They are women of color.

They are people with big butts.

They're things we don't see when we see the typical

kind of, you know, standard we think of, like, the great body.

LAMBIASE: The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty

is a great example of a company

that has tried to make a difference

in that kind of advertising that is done

over the last 10 years.

WOMAN: I wanted to go through the average door,

but my mom just pulled me over to the beautiful door.

TAORMINO: It was a step in the right direction.

I think we have to stop selling women on this idea

that the woman on the cover of that magazine

is who you should aspire to be,

because the woman on that cover of the magazine isn't even real!

WOMAN: It was quite a triumphant feeling.

It was like telling the world I think I'm beautiful.

NARRATOR: In 2006, Dove released an online film

that time-lapsed a model as she was primped and Photoshopped

before her image reached a billboard.

This exposé of the fakery behind advertising

was one of the first commercials to go viral.

In 2013, Dove posted another landmark film online.

FLORENCE: I showed up to a place I had never been,

and there was a guy with a drafting board.

MELINDA: We couldn't see them. They couldn't see us.

NARRATOR: First, the artist sketched the woman

describing herself.

GIL ZAMORA: What would be your most prominent feature?

WOMAN: I kind of have a fat, rounder face.

NARRATOR: Then the same woman as depicted by a third party.

MAN: She had nice eyes.

They lit up when she spoke.

WOMAN: Cute nose.

MAN: She had blue eyes, very nice blue eyes.

ZAMORA: This is the sketch that you helped me create,

and that's the sketch that somebody described of you.

NARRATOR: Real Beauty Sketches became one of the most watched

and shared video ads of all time,

with nearly 180 million views.

ZAMORA: Do you think you're more beautiful than you say?

FLORENCE: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

NARRATOR: While advertisers are quick

to employ sex to sell their products,

they suddenly get prudish when it comes to a certain item

that's actually used for sex.

BRUCE WEISS: It's just one of the big hypocrisies

that we deal with, even this day in 2016,

where the condom is seen as a no-no,

don't show it, don't talk about it.

SCOTT: Condom companies have a unique challenge

in how they sell their products.

There is FCC regulation in what you can show

and what you can say.

WEISS: You can turn on the TV on any given Sunday,

and be watching football,

and you'll see a woman eating a hamburger in a orgasmic way,

but you can't put on a condom ad to safely protect you.

I think people think that somehow

people would be corrupted by seeing an advertisement

about a condom, which is completely silly.

NARRATOR: American media outlets are prohibited

from showing the condom itself

or visually linking the product with a sex act,

forcing even venerable companies like Trojan Condoms

into sex-free messages, like using biblical quotes.

ANNOUNCER: To everything there is a season and a time

to every purpose under the heaven.

The makers of Trojan Condoms believe

there is a time for children, the right time.

WEISS: Way back when in the 1970s

when we first put our advertising on air,

we talked only about protection.

ANNOUNCER: The makers of Trojan Condoms

have been helping people for over half a century

safely practice responsible parenthood.

WEISS: That has changed over time

as Americans have increasingly grown comfortable

talking about pleasure.

That is, after all, why people have sex, it's for pleasure.

[screaming]

MAN: Two times!

WOMAN: Two times!

MAN: Honey, you forgot some!

ANNOUNCER: Introducing new Trojan Groove condoms.

NARRATOR: In 2013, a Trojan commercial

winked at their censors

with the provocative ad that never once mentioned sex.

ANNOUNCER: Nothing feels like the freedom

of Trojan Pure Ecstasy.

New Trojan Pure Ecstasy condoms,

revolutionary design and smoothness inside and out.

New Trojan Pure Ecstasy condoms. Feels like nothing's there.

NARRATOR: Sex may always have to wear a fig leaf in mass media...

WOMAN: Help me!

NARRATOR: But what happens when sex in advertising

meets the uninhibited ways of the Internet?

MAN: Now we've got your attention again...

MAN: Do you want to buy a house?

NARRATOR: Since the 1800s one thing's held true

about sex in advertising,

the narrower the niche, the racier the content.

But now with the Internet,

an outlet exists for every imaginable

type of niche advertising.

REICHERT: We will see much more provocative advertising,

but it's gonna be more individualized

and more targeted to niche audiences,

people that are much more open to sex in advertising.

VON TEESE: Follow me.

Now let's play a little game.

NARRATOR: Since this commercial from the 1970s,

Perrier has never been shy about equating sexual excitement

with its sparkling water.

[woman singing opera]

[laughter]

So when Perrier created an interactive campaign

for the censor-free Internet, the heat was on.

WOMAN: It started with a simple truth--

the more people in a room, the hotter the temperature.

Trust me.

We shot a club's interior several times,

each take becoming more crowded and hotter than before.

NARRATOR: When the number of online views

swelled into the millions,

the virtual club became more and more uninhibited.

MAN: And as the temperature soared, so did the sexiness.

MAN: It got so hot, even the club itself started to melt.

WOMAN: In less than three weeks,

11.5 million people transformed our first video

into amazingly sexy content.

The experience has been

hotly discussed on TV

and thousands of blogs.

MAN: A totally new way of using YouTube

and prove that Perrier is the ultimate refreshment

when things turn hot.

MAN: These yours? MAN: Thanks, mate.

NARRATOR: Internet advertisers are now showing

frank sexual imagery

to pitch some of the most expensive products of all--

multimillion-dollar homes.

ANNOUNCER: 92 Savoy Drive.

So private, you can walk around naked.

NARRATOR: The Australian real estate firm Neo

sparked a worldwide buzz with their Internet ads.

WOMAN: Help me! Emergency!

NARRATOR: Blending elements of Hollywood films

with self-aware salesmanship.

MAN: Now we've got your attention again...

MAN: Do you want to buy a house?

DISPATCHER: Can describe the home, please?

WOMAN: It's a three-level home, contemporary design,

open-plan living, gourmet kitchen.

DISPATCHER: Oh, that sounds lovely.

WOMAN: And a lingerie model tied to a chair!

Help me!

NARRATOR: The real estate agents produced their first film

about customer's property as a last-ditch effort

after it failed to sell by the usual means.

IAN ADAMS: They'd spent $30,000

on traditional marketing campaign,

newspapers, print, online, real estate advertising,

and $30,000 later, the house passed in an auction,

had no bidders registered.

They then approached us

and wanted to know what they could do.

We went out with a budget of $15,000,

and we created the movie that became

the number one real estate movie in the industry.

The last figure I heard,

it was close to four million views globally,

and we sold the house $300,000 over reserve

and also managed to sell all the furniture on top of that.

[woman screams]

POLICE: On the floor, now.

BILLY ROSE: You know, sex is beauty, beauty is sex,

and that's one way of drawing attention to what we're selling.

NARRATOR: The idea hopped the ocean to Hollywood,

where a real estate broker needed a new way to connect

with his exclusive clientele.

ROSE: If I'm selling a home in the Sunset Strip,

then that buyer is likely to be a younger male

who's made a lot of money recently,

and I'm probably gonna catch his attention with sex or beauty.

NARRATOR: So Billy Rose produced a short film.

It follows a woman as she prepares

for her anniversary night...

in an $11 million home.

ROSE: We see her practicing yoga,

and clearly she's got a beautiful body,

and that's a sexy moment.

We get to then see how sexy the pool is

and how sexy she looks in it,

and then the rest of it being laid bare,

as she goes into the steam shower, is steamy.

♪

NARRATOR: At the film's end,

the anniversary she's celebrating

has a seductive twist.

ROSE: It goes back to wanting to leave with a surprise,

be somewhat dramatic.

The reception actually has been somewhat overwhelming.

You know, the good and the bad of it is now everyone wants one.

I'm hoping we can do this time and time again.

NARRATOR: Sprawling across Los Angeles

is a billboard campaign with more sex appeal

than the Hollywood sign.

And the story behind this LA icon

is a textbook lesson in how sex sells.

SOPHIA LIN: That's what works, and that's what has worked,

and they're gonna keep it that way.

NARRATOR: From Los Angeles to Las Vegas,

one of the most eye-catching roadside attractions

is this one.

LIN: The Work Boot Warehouse billboard,

you're not gonna miss it.

It's basically a big yellow billboard,

and it says Work Boot Warehouse.

Maybe?

[laughs]

NARRATOR: But like many stories of sex in advertising,

these iconic local billboards were a long time coming.

In the early 1990s Work Boot Warehouse

ran street ads with a straightforward visual

of sturdy footwear.

DON GRUBERGER: We were doing okay for the first few years,

but it needed to grow, and it needed to grow faster.

NARRATOR: Then the rise of grunge music and fashion

gave Don Gruberger a simple but effective idea.

GRUBERGER: 1994 started, mid '90s,

where a lot of the girls were wearing logger boots, you know,

beefy, chunky, waffle sole kind of boots,

and that's where I originally got the idea

of having a girl wearing boots on a billboard campaign.

NARRATOR: Sophia Lin became the new face and body

of the billboard campaign.

LIN: I just moved to California from Kansas.

I had no idea what the heck Work Boot Warehouse was.

Depending on which billboard,

I could be sitting up more like this,

or I could be laying down kind of like that,

with like, my legs maybe kicked up in the air.

NARRATOR: It's sex in advertising

stripped down to the basics.

A humble workaday product plus an attractive model

equals dollar signs.

GRUBERGER: I think it's engrained,

so, you see a pretty a girl, you look.

REICHERT: It grabs attention,

and if you can get them to stop for half a second longer

on your advertisement,

then that is actually moving them closer to a sale.

GRUBERGER: We've used cleavage,

in particular Sophia's cleavage,

to make people remember our name.

So that branding has worked very well.

But it's not just the cleavage,

I think it's her whole look.

LIN: A girl on a billboard and she's smiling,

and it seems like she's really comfortable and having fun,

and that's what works, and that's what has worked,

and they're gonna keep it that way.

GRUBERGER: It's very memorable,

because I've had people telling me for years and years

they recognize the billboard, they recognize the name.

If I just mention the name now,

they say, 'Oh, you're the one with the billboards?'

'Yes, that's us.'

NARRATOR: And the long-running Work Boot model

has parlayed her exposure on the billboards to a career as a DJ.

LIN: Who would have thought a girl from Kansas

would be on a billboard for this many years?

And it's a super successful campaign.

It's just kind of mind-blowing. It's cool.

♪

NARRATOR: In the competitive world of advertising,

one figure endures as the master of using sex to sell.

REICHERT: When I think of controversy in advertising,

the person that comes to mind is Calvin Klein.

It's a rap sheet in terms of all the times

that he's pushed the boundary too far and had to apologize.

And especially in 1995 where he had some underage models

that were filmed in a basement.

KLEIN: And I must tell you that I really apologize.

NARRATOR: Even in 2016,

the Prince of Provocation is still at it.

BIEBER: Are you turned on right now? Yeah.

PRODUCER: Are you?

BIEBER: Yeah, I'm turned on.

NARRATOR: His campaign about the things people do

in their Calvin Klein underwear

includes one that can't be shown on TV.

DREW PINSKY: Calvin Klein has taken it too far.

Have you seen the upskirt stuff they have now?

Calvin Klein has taken it to the point

where they're showing perverse images

and then asking the viewer to be the pervert in response to it,

and it's deeply disturbing.

Yet here we are talking about Calvin Klein.

So, mission accomplished, guys, well done.

NARRATOR: The cardinal function of sex in advertising

is to attract attention to a product.

So to continue to get noticed,

advertisers will keep pushing the boundaries

and even cross a few lines.

COHEN: We're never gonna be over sex selling things.

That will always be.

Put a hot naked dude next to a toaster,

yeah, I want to buy the toaster.

♪

RYAN: Sex along with violence is something

that primates of any type are incapable of ignoring.

What follows may or may not be worth my attention,

but you've got it.

So I think that's the function of sex in adverting,

it just pulls in your attention.

ABBEY LEE KERSHAW: I'm not wearing any underwear, though.

[laughs]