Sex doesn't sell

If there is one golden rule of the advertising industry, it has to be that sex sells. Whether it is the model draped over the bonnet of a car or the latest Wonderbra, they are images all too familiar to us. But according to a new survey, the way women are portrayed in such adverts is the last thing that people actually want.

Research by the Chartered Institute of Marketing found almost half those questioned believed women are still regularly and inaccurately stereotyped in advertising.

The blatant use of sex to sell goods has proved controversial. Sophie Dahl's naked billboard pose for Opium perfume saw the advert banned, and one for the British International Motor Show which featured a woman in a lacy bra was labelled "sexist and pathetic" by Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt.

The public, it would seem share the minister's views.

"Consumers soon grow tired of outdated marketing practices and marketers need to become more imaginative to talk to them," said Institute spokesman Mike Johnston. "It also demonstrates that using sex to sell a product is not always effective."

The survey of 1,000 men and women found that nearly a third did not enjoy looking at such adverts and that their purchases were not influenced by them. It did, however, discover that 47 per cent thought women were per cent admitted enjoying sexy adverts and being influenced by them. Twelve per cent said that women are not stereotyped in advertising at all. The Advertising Standards Authority disagreed in the case of the Opium advert.

The ASA took the unusual step of banning the 20ft poster in 2000 - after it generated more complaints than almost any other in the authority's history - on the grounds that it was degrading and offensive to women.

Last October the British International Motor Show attracted criticism - and headlines - due to comments made by Ms Hewitt for its poster advertising the event.

It featured the slogan: "The other way to your man's heart is down the M6 and off at junction

4." It prompted Ms Hewitt to say that advertisers were "stuck in the Fifties".

Advertising experts agree that women do get a raw deal in adverts - but then so does everybody else they say.

"The trouble is advertising has to talk to lots of people at once and so everybody gets stereotyped by lazy advertising," said James Burgess of advertising company Klondyke.

However, it seems that men may be the new women when it comes to being poorly treated in adverts.

Penny Harris, a senior planner at advertising agency St Luke's, said: "I am more concerned at the way advertising shows men being humiliated, physically assaulted and being stupid. If women were being treated this way there would be an outcry."