Unlike many other countries, where exploiting the power of sex in advertising is a long-accepted strategy, it is a new game to advertisers, ad agencies, and the public in Taiwan. No one seems quite sure of just how to react to this powerful advertising approach, as local residents have traditionally maintained puritanical views on sex, even if in word more than in deed.
The current scene is being swept with rapid social and cultural changes, and one of the most striking of these amounts to a revolution in thinking about sexual matters. Changes in attitudes are especially visible among the young, and since they constitute almost half of the consumer market, advertisers are doing their best to attract their attention by inundating the media with a deluge of sexy ads.
But people are beginning to worry that such sales tactics are further eroding conventional mores, a process that is causing the public to rethink the whole issue of sex and advertising.
Even though sexual advertising in Taiwan is tame by European or American standards, what appears on television, on billboards, and in the newspapers and magazines today would have been unimaginable just four years ago. Bikini-clad Chinese models can be seen promoting every kind of merchandise, from satellite dishes to soft drinks.
Although local newspapers and magazines have run rather daring pictures of females for years, the "sexual revolution" in the Taiwan ad market began gaining momentum only after the lifting of martial law and press restrictions in 1987. This more liberal atmosphere coincided with the opening of the domestic market to foreign goods, which engendered a boom in consumer products.
"Modern" and "foreign" are the catchwords of the 1980s for Taiwan's youth, and both local and foreign ad agencies are taking full advantage of an atmosphere that can be described as "buy crazy." In response, the agencies are hitting the market with a barrage of sexy ads designed to project an image of a new, sexually-liberated Chinese society. That image is taking on an increasingly daring character, and appears to be redefining overall attitudes about sexual expression.
Most of the new ads rely on the proven formula of using the human body to attract attention, and many rather inexperienced local advertisers have been criticized for going ridiculously overboard in their use of half-dressed models. Clearly, some agencies depend on sex as a cheap replacement for creativity, with little regard to the less obvious sensitivities of the target audience. Shock value, or at least catching the eye, has become everything.
The crudest of these ads are often for female undergarments. They feature long, lingering close-ups, and until very recently invariably used foreign models. Chinese women have traditionally been reluctant to show so much skin. But a sign of the changing times is the appearance of local models in ads for swimsuits, underwear, and female toiletries. Chinese girls now model in bikinis and even pose semi-nude in shower or bedroom shots—all quite unthinkable just a few years ago.
Judging by reactions in the local media, the most shocking of recent ads were those for Travel Fox sport shoes. Two bare—or nearly so—male and female bodies were featured in various embracing poses while wearing the advertised Italian footwear. The ad created quite a stir in U.S., and experienced repeated rejections—even by the liberal Rolling Stone magazine. For the importer to attempt running such ads in Taiwan was a major risk, but much to everyone's amazement, the government made no objection to the ads. Widespread controversy and debate immediately ensued.
Even though Travel Fox was definitely pushing the edge of Taiwan's cultural limits, the ads worked. The controversy resulted in more free publicity for the Italian shoes by word of mouth and media debates than any product in the history of Taiwan. Although complaints appeared in the editorial columns of the daily newspapers, Travel Fox shoes were a striking success in the local market. Most surprising of all, the ads were more or less accepted by the general public.
Within the dense thicket of relatively crude sexual advertising in Taiwan, at least one agency has been producing ads that stand out as both erotic and in good taste. The agency is Ideology Advertising Inc., a firm that has already received a host of awards for its creativity. Ideology has produced suggestive and sensual ads for products as diverse as soft drinks and department stores, but its approach is subtle, with not so much as a bared shoulder revealed. Instead, Ideology creates its highly sensual moods through the creative use of charged images.
President and client service director Sam Jeng in fact denies that his ads fall into the category of "sexual advertising." He insists that the agency just seeks out issues related to the social frustrations of the younger generation, and uses them as a vehicle to reach out to the target audience.
Two ads produced in 1988 for Stimoral chewing gum are a case in point—even though they placed second and third after Travel Fox in a poll conducted by a local magazine on the "sexiness" of advertisements in Taiwan. One of these, entitled "The Dream Analysis," shows an unmade bed in the early morning light, with wind-blown rose petals and a green snake coiling sensuously around a half-eaten apple on the floor. The other ad, called "The Urban Jungle," deals with sexual harassment. It characterizes the colleagues of a business woman as menacing beasts in the "jungle" of the modern office.
Of course most of the sex in local advertising is neither creative nor subtle. The innumerable small agencies at the low end of the taste scale usually replace creative talent and professionalism with sex whenever their budgets run low. The ads are often gratuitous and sexist, but enjoy wide exposure because most of the new mainstream magazines and newspapers on the island lack internal advertising guidelines.
But several local women's rights groups are starting to challenge what they consider to be an uncontrolled trend. One of these is Awakening Foundation, which attacks any advertising it classifies as "commercializing and degrading" to women. Winnie Peng, secretary-general of the group, says that the ads in question treat women as sexual objects, adding that the agencies responsible for them should not be free to operate with impunity. She airs her feminist viewpoint in Awakening, the organization's monthly magazine.
Peng has no complaints about the ads produced by Ideology, but contends that the Travel Fox ads are "unsuitable for Chinese society." She says, "The advertising presents a message that these shoes are modern and expensive, which is very attractive to young people. It says, 'I am someone.' But it's unnecessary to use sex to sell shoes. This type of advertising is harmful to our youth."
The foundation expresses its point of view by complaining directly to both advertisers and merchandisers, and by encouraging women to boycott the offending companies. Awakening also sponsors public seminars on the subject of sex in advertising.
The foundation is particularly rankled by the large number of ads found daily in most local newspapers that promote sexual elixirs. Peng points out a typical example: the ad features a businessman lounging with two young women clad in lingerie. Its caption reads, "100,000 males have witnessed the results-and 300,000 females are cheering for more!" She maintains that such ads "clearly promote infidelity and polygamy."
But Peng says the last laugh will be on the advertisers, because it is the women, not the men, who control family finances, do the family shopping, and have the major say in large family purchases. In addition, 47 percent of the Chinese women in Taiwan between 15 and 65 have entered the labor force, and their numbers are rising. Thoughtless advertisers who ignore them as a market group do so at their peril.
Complaints about demeaning ads sound familiar to people in the West, where the struggle over bad taste has been going on for decades. Social critics have suggested that crude and inappropriate sexual advertising inevitably gains currency at a certain stage of economic development, reflecting a general lack of sophistication and immaturity among advertisers, merchandisers, media, and the general public. The broad range of styles and approaches to sexual advertising now common in Taiwan demonstrates that social ethics are very much in flux. Advertisers and the media are no more sure than the public of "what goes" and what does not.
While some advertisers feel that profits are more important than ethical questions, they still must respond to the altering views of society about their techniques. The titillation or shock value of sexual advertising could even become a liability as people rethink their views. As Sam Jeng at Ideology has already discovered, creativity also works, and in fact may have more staying power in the marketplace. But for the present, sex sells.