BEEFCAKE AND CHEESECAKE - INSIGHTS FOR ADVERTISERS

Theory suggests that for an ad with a sexy illustration, the interacti on, of the sex of the viewer with the sex of the povocatively clothed model will influence that viewer's responses to the ad. Previous resea rch with sexy ads has supported such reasoning, but principally has us ed women as the sexy models. The authors examined the responses of mel t and women to cheesecake and beefcake (a sexy male model) and found s ome expected and some surprising effects. Women reported disproportion ately negative attitudes toward cheesecake ads, as hypothesized, but m en. did not show a parallel response to beefcake. They did have higher recall scores for ads with a nonsexy female model than for cheesecake ads, as expected. Significant results in a direction opposite from th at hypothesized showed that women had higher recognition, scores for c heesecake than for beefcake ads.