Brass Balls Wallpaper

The Sex Question

How much sex is to much sex when you are trying sell something.

In the book, Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy, author Martin Lindstrom suggests that sex doesn’t sell. All that erotically charged imagery actually overwhelms the brain, which can’t recall the product. For more details on the concepts, click here.

What does work, it turns out, is is sex with emotion, particularly sex with controversy. It requires that you create an intrigue to hook them into your offer.

Studies show “it takes as little as 2.5 seconds to make a purchasing decision.” Companies today know they have less than 2 seconds to catch your eye, lure you in and start a dialog. So you need to engage the prospect with the words, sounds, smells and visual imagery quickly.

From The Female Perspective

Research has shown that the average woman responds negatively to ads with explicit or gratuitous sexual content. It also looks like women are less offended by these ads if sexual imagery is viewed in the context of a committed relationship. A recent study, published in Journal of Consumer Research, finds that women respond more favorably to sexual ads when the item in the ad is described as a gift from a man to a woman. In addition, women have high positive responses to sexual ads that depict a committed and loving man — but not for those depicting a committed and loving woman.

Further results indicate that when viewing the sexual ads, women responded more favorably to the ad with the gift. However, men preferred the sexual ad without the gift.

The Latest Sex Sells Campaign

According to CEO Bob Parsons’ Go Daddy blog:

Our Web site has never been busier! Before the Super Bowl game was over, we received right at 1.5 million visits to our Web site. We had a whopping 2 million visitors for the day. This compares to last year when we had less than 1/2 million visitors.

A Lot Less Money Was Spent This Year

During last year’s Super Bowl, Go Daddy purchased and ran 3 spots – two spots during the game and one during the post-game. This year they purchased only 1 ad, which aired in the 2nd quarter. So for a fraction of the cost they generated 4 times the action.

Go Daddy Campaign Feedback

More than 160,000 customers took a survey after viewing the ad on GoDaddy.com’s Web site. 75% were male and 17% were female. The vast majorities of viewers liked “Exposure.” But here’s the surprise, 17.1% of males and 16.5% of females disliked the commercial – there was virtually no difference between the sexes!

Danica Patrick Working It

The Surge in Traffic Continues

Traffic to the GoDaddy Web site is up over 4 times normal levels. The real test concerning any ad’s effectiveness is simply this: did it generate sales?
In Go Daddy’s case, the answer is a resounding, “Yes. Sex sells.”

Sexual content in advertising must be appropriate to the product category and have a proper underlying message.

For example, In 2000 Heineken launched the “It’s All About the Beer” campaign. One spot, called “The Premature Pour,” shows a beautiful seductive woman pouring Heineken into a glass. When a guy across the bar responds by pouring his own, he nervously pours too fast and spills foam all over the table and himself.

The sexual content is implicit, yet direct. The sexual reference in this and other spots in the campaign worked, causing sales to rise 13% in the first two quarters of 2002. However, Steve Davis (VP of marketing in Heineken USA), claims that, “Provocative is a very good place to be, as long as we’re not inflammatory. But the spots also work for a different reason. From the tag line to the plot, they are about a desire for Heineken. Our ads make the beer the hero.”

A Little Sex History

Sex has been employed in advertising since the beginning of advertising. At the beginning, wood carvings and illustrations of attractive women (often unclothed from the waist up) adorned posters, signs, and ads for saloons, tonics, and tobacco. In several notable cases, sex in advertising has been claimed as the reason for increased consumer interest and sales.

In 1885, W. Duke & Sons inserted trading cards into cigarette packs that featured sexually provocative starlets. Duke grew to become the leading cigarette brand by 1890 (Porter, 1971). Woodbury’s Facial Soap, a woman’s beauty bar, was almost discontinued in 1910. The soap’s sales decline was reversed, however, with ads containing images of romantic couples and promises of love and intimacy for those using the brand (Account Histories, 1926).

Jovan Musk Oil, introduced in 1971, was promoted with sexual entendre and descriptions of the fragrance’s sexual attraction properties. As a result, Jovan, Inc.’s revenue grew from $1.5 million in 1971 to $77 million by 1978 (Sloan & Millman, 1979).

In contemporary mainstream consumer advertising (e.g., magazines, network and cable television), sex is present in promotional messages for a wide range of branded goods. Ads feature provocative images of well-defined women (and men) in revealing outfits and postures selling clothing, alcohol, beauty products, and fragrances. Advertisers such as Calvin Klein, Victoria’s Secret, and Pepsi use these images to cultivate a ubiquitous sex-tinged media presence. Also, sexual information is used to promote mainstream products not traditionally associated with sex. For example, the Dallas Opera recent reversal of declining ticket sales has been attributed to the marketing of the more lascivious parts of its performance.

Over the past two decades, the use of increasingly explicit sexual imagery in consumer-oriented print advertising has become almost commonplace. Sexuality is considered one of the most powerful tools of marketing and particularly advertising. Post-advertising sales response studies have shown it can be very effective for:

• Attracting immediate interest
• Holding that interest
• Introducing a product that correlates with that interest

Resources:

• From Scott Allen, for About.com
• By Sally Law, LiveScience’s Science of Sex Columnist
• Mark Levit
• Wikipedia

HubSpot Report

HubSpot Report Page

In recent months the popular story about Twitter has been that the service’s user base is growing at an incredible rate. With celebrities joining Twitter (including the all important Oprah) and CNN and Ashton Kutcher’s race to a million followers, it seems like microblogging is unstoppable.

Even so, some are suggesting that the free-form nature of the service may be hindering actual usage by new users. The stats indicate that many of the accounts on Twitter aren’t actually using it all that much.

• 79.79% failed to provide a homepage URL
• 75.86% of users have not entered a bio in their profile
• 68.68% have not specified a location
• 55.50% are not following anyone
• 54.88% have never tweeted
• 52.71% have no followers

We also found that since Twitter has implemented a limit to the number of users an account can follow (a maximum of 2000 when the user has less than 2000 followers) there is a large number of users who are following exactly 2000 users, possibly indicating that many active users are intentionally trying to gain as many followers as possible to increase their reach.

Down Load HubSpot Report.

We all know sex sells… but is it that clear cut? In the book, Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy, author Martin Lindstrom suggests that sex doesn’t sell. All that erotically charged imagery actually overwhelms the brain, which can’t recall the product.

How does he know? He spent $7 million using both MRI and EEG technologies to study what was really going on in the brains of consumers as they watched commercials and thought about brands.

It turns out what does work is sex with emotion, particularly sex with controversy. Think “Nothing comes between me and my Calvins,” ad circa 1980 where the public was up in arms… The most important thing in triggering a buy is to make a product memorable, which is what happens when a buyer experiences emotion connected with a product.

Martin Lindstrom pioneers the use of neuroscience to investigate consumer “Buyology” – the subconscious thoughts, feelings, and desires that drive purchasing decisions.

For this reason, product integration — product placement where the gizmo is integral to the plot of a TV show — is far more effective than conventional ads. For example, people tended to remember the Aston Martin brand in Daniel Craig’s first James Bond movie, Casino Royale, but not FedEx or Louis Vuitton whose placements weren’t central to the plot or even related to the on-screen action in any significant way.

Successful ads create fear about personal inadequacy (for which the product is the solution) but if you stimulate the part of the brain that registers general anxieties — such as fear of job loss — customers are put-off.

The Best Ads

The best ads offer wish-fulfilment — if you buy these jeans, you too will look like the pretty, happy models. But those models can’t be out of the consumer’s league. The trick is to create an idealized image of a consumer.

For example, Abercrombie and Fitch hired better-than-average looking teenagers to don the clothes and hangout, in packs, around their stores. They looked popular and attractive to the target market, but were well within what those teens could achieve themselves as long as they had the ‘rents credit card.

With their underdeveloped brains, teenagers particularly have the urge to mirror other teens, an impulse that appears to explain a lot of fads. It’s better known as monkey-see, monkey-do. Primates imitate those around them due, it turns out, to some observed actions stimulating certain satisfying parts of their little chimp brains.

Now marketers can wire up a focus group and see if the fad they’re selling hits those relevant grey cells. No more “throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks,” as Lindstrom puts it. Even in cases where we don’t consciously want a product, this research will give marketers a hammer for hitting the wallet-opening reflex.

What Neuroscience Reveals About Consumers, Brands, and Marketing

Based on the results of his studies, Lindstrom draws the following conclusions:

* Cigarette warning labels actually encourage smoking.
* Product placement only works if the brand has a logical and integral function in the storyline.
* People purchase goods and services that they think will help them be more like the people they admire.
* Subliminal advertising works, and may be more powerful than a logo.
* Products enjoy greater brand loyalty if they are associated with a ritual or superstition.
* People react to strong brands in the same way that they react to religious icons.
* Advertisements that appeal to multiple senses are more effectual than those that rely on vision alone.
* Sex and beauty don’t always sell.

Read more: http://businessbooks.suite101.com/article.cfm/book_review_of_martin_lindstroms_buyology#ixzz0JBCTtsNY&C

Sources:

• Shannon Rupp
• Amazon
• Neuromarketing
• Suite 101

Marketers will find Buyology an excellent primer as well as an outstanding source for significant amounts of new data. In addition, this is new and not all of the data is in… so you will need to verify the results of your techniques to see what works.

Shooting @ Brass Balls Choppers & Bobbers

Before the bikini contest, George Emmons Najar, Media Engineer, set up early and took a few shots to showcase the bikes. Before the crowd packed the place and the light went bad, he was able to get some good pictures. These pictures will be utilized in upcoming ads and promotions.

About the Smoke Out
The Smoke Out is about choppers. It is about builders, from professional builders to those bloody-knuckled guys (and ladies) burning the midnight oil in an unheated shed to build a chopper they can call their own.

Darwin Motorcycles, LLC. builds the World renowned, Brass Balls Bobbers and Choppers. “The above average bike for the average Joe”.

Where Are You Now?

Check Out the Flickr Party with iPhone 3.0 Software.

For those devices that support it (currently Android and the iPhone with the new 3.0 software), the Mobile Nearby page will figure out where you are in the world and show you photos that have been taken in the same area.

Use this to explore your neighborhood, or find the best places to photograph local landmarks from. You can reload the page as you walk around a city, and see the things that have happened there in the past.

The best way to get started is to head over to m.flickr.com where you’ll see a new link — “Photos taken nearby

The Little Chopper Shop from Oklahoma has a Star that is Still Rising

Top Clicks @ Brass Balls Choppers & Bobbers is none other than Megan, the Chopper Chick. A year after the photographs were found and posted on Flickr, Brass Balls Choppers & Bobbers is still seeing strong traffic in the Harley-Davidson Flickr community.

Monthly we track the activity of Brass Balls Choppers & Bobbers and it is of no surprise that Chopper Jockeys still find Megan to be popular. She has contrasting bronze skin and blonde hair that really sets off the motorcycle she is on.

Gratuitous Pictures of Megan
The following are a few additional pictures of Brass Balls most popular model.

Megan is retired from the life but she lives in the hearts of minds of Harley riders everywhere.

Hey, Get Out & Ride

June 15th is RIde To WOrk DAy.

Hey, Get Out & Ride… Your Wife Said it Was Okey!

In many parts of the country, particularly those with vibrant local economies, automotive ‘gridlock’ is rapidly becoming an unattractive fact of life. This is due to the greatly increased use of single-occupancy automobiles. Increases in automobile usage cannot be sustained without consequences, and this sentiment is beginning to have some resonance among the general public.

An objective analysis of the potential benefits of increased use of motorcycles will reveal that they are an underutilized solution, and that their value as a source of congestion relief is being largely ignored.

Motorcycles are a legitimate part of the overall transportation mix, deserving of greater consideration in traffic planning procedures and by those responsible for all kinds of social policy decisions. Our current culture largely considers motorcycles ‘toys’. This is an unfortunate hindrance to the status they deserve as a legitimate mode of personal transportation.

Horsepower Marketing Provides Email Checklist

SAMPLE SUGGESTION

Think of the preview pane as your teaser area – a place to grab
the reader’s attention and entice them to either scroll down or
to fully open the email. Don’t put anything in that area that
isn’t a benefit to your readers. E-newsletters should include
headlines or “in this issue” content teasers. Promotional emails
should summarize or highlight the key value proposition and
call-to-action.

This free guide will help you by providing:

• An overview of the designs that are most effective in email campaigns
• An explanation of why traditionally “good visual design” from print and postal mail do not translate to email
• What marketers should look for when reviewing an email design
• How to look for email design resources and advice

You’ll receive their Email Design No-No’s Guide which includes the top 10 things marketers & designers need to know to get the most from email design, plus a handy checklist.

You probably already know many of these items but you never know which idea will pay dividends by increasing your compliance ratio and delivering a better ROI.

-Jeff Najar

NOTE: While a great subject line and offer certainly broadens the appeal of your email, design plays a critical role as well. But the quirks and limitations of email mean that sometimes a good visual design can work against your objective. Click here to get your Lyris Email Design White paper.

Interactive Video Ad

SUMMARY: When Marketing Sherpa asked a sample of marketers using video advertising, either online or on TV, what effect various tactics would have on their video ads, greater interactivity and creating more versions for more consumer targets proved to be the most popular.

If you have ever spent and evening in front of your television and wondered why any advertiser would purposely fill every available ad break with the same ad over and over, or worse, have the volume so high that you must mute the volume, you are clearly not alone. Among the marketers surveyed, cranking up the volume on ads got the biggest negative response; an overwhelming 69% claim that the practice actually decreases the effectiveness of an ad. Like a pop-up ad, a very loud ad can certainly get a viewer’s attention, but by being annoying, that attention may hurt the brand and have a negative effect on purchase intent.

Bada Bing! Microsoft (MSFT) is planning to whack rivals Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO).

Microsoft is placing a lot of expectations on its new search engine and has wasted no time in building it up by calling it a “decision engine”.

Bing works a little differently than traditional search engines. For example, if you type “Haw” into a Bing search bar, an “auto suggest” feature may figure out that your intent is to research a vacation in Hawaii.

“Today, search engines do a decent job of helping people navigate the Web and find information, but they dont do a very good job of enabling people to use the information they find,” said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO in a statement about the launch. “When we set out to build Bing, we grounded ourselves in a deep understanding of how people really want to use the Web. Bing is an important first step forward in our long-term effort to deliver innovations in search that enable people to find information quickly and use the information they’ve found to accomplish tasks and make smart decisions.”

“Bing will lead to faster, better organized and more relevant results,” Ballmer said.

Some very clever touches are already evident: the endless scrolling in images works very well (first introduced in Live’s image search), while the video search is excellent. You can play back videos from within Bing, meaning you can quickly preview and discover the one you’re after. You can also filter images by size.

So check out the new Bing.