Marketing Profs

Imagine your company brochure was so popular that people could sell it online for $38.95. Or your carry bags went for $9.90, and stickers featuring your company logo fetched $15.50 each. Impossible, right?

Think again. Consider Abercrombie & Fitch, Victoria's Secret and Playboy. A never-ending range of merchandise attached to these brands gets sold on eBay all the time, demonstrating the true value of those brands. And, perhaps, the value of their prime driver: sex.

But, is it really that simple? Does sex sell?

Provocative behavior, seasoned with sex, seems to be an ever-effective formula. Seventy years after the first lightly clad woman was featured in advertising, for an automobile, sexual suggestiveness still seems to do the trick.

As trivial and superficial as it sounds, the magic in the old formula still seems to work.

If you pass by an Abercrombie and Fitch store, you might notice something unusual about the US clothing retailer. This summer, the staff who greet you at the entrance are wearing an unusually small amount of clothing: a pair of undies for the boys and, for the girls, a micro-sized bra that you can hardly see.

Then there's the store itself. It exudes a distinctive exotic aroma that you can detect from the other side of the street. Meanwhile, high-decibel chart-topping music maintains momentum. The windows are covered with posters of lightly dressed teens, preventing people on the outside from seeing in, and people on the inside from seeing out.

All this, combined with the fact that the staff act more like models than sales staff, seduces you into feeling you've entered a nightclub rather than a fashion store.

Of course, this is all quite on purpose. And, it's all about sex. Abercrombie & Fitch has learned that sex is so powerful that even the toughest retail crises can't compete with it. It keeps attracting customers.

Whereas other fashion retailers build their identity on the clothes their models wear, Abercrombie & Fitch has become known for the clothes its models don't wear. And it's earned this reputation by going as far as possible—or, according to some religious groups, too far.