Beefcake and Cheesecake: Insights for Advertisers

Abstract

Abstract Theory suggests that for an ad with a sexy illustration, the interaction of the sex of the viewer with the sex of the povocatively clothed model will influence that viewer's responses to the ad. Previous research with sexy ads has supported such reasoning, but principally has used women as the sexy models. The authors examined the responses of men and women to cheesecake and beefcake (a sexy male model) and found some expected and some surprising effects. Women reported disproportionately negative attitudes toward cheesecake ads, as hypothesized, but men 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 that hypothesized showed that women had higher recognition scores for cheesecake than for beefcake ads.