turning up the heat

Let's face it, most of you probably came to this post because of this picture:

Snagged this screen cap from Sports Illustrated's website. Check it here.

The old adage of marketing/advertising: sex sells.
But I'm not here to discuss this.
I'm here to discuss how cinematographers clearly captured and created a new market for superhero films that are adaptations from comic books.

Case in point is Thor.

I'm a big fan of comic books. Although I didn't read them much when I was a kid, I know most of the (popular) superhero's stories. So when I knew the movie Thor was on the silver screens as a lead up to assembling the Avengers, I had to go see it.
My older sister, and my female cousin were very eager to see the movie as well. All for a different reason.
You see, they aren't fans of the genre at all. They are, however, fans of good-looking men.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I present to you: exhibit A

Snagged this one here.

This is truly expanding the market and exposing the brand to people that they would otherwise have been missed. The two fanatical females would never have went to watch this movie under normal circumstances. However, their change of heart is wholly due to a conveniently placed scene in the trailer (that is rather revealing).

They are doing something similar with the Green Lantern movie.
Ryan Reynold, voted as 2010 Sexiest Man Alive, is the male lead in this movie.
Him as an actor, in a word, sucked.
But hey, he pulls in the box office numbers.
I think his physical attractiveness is probably the only reason why he was cast for this movie.
Regardless, it seemed to do the trick for Thor so it should translate to Green Lantern.

On the same note though, Subaru did an amazingly clever marketing campaign on the theme of sexiness.
Check it:
www.sexysubaru.com

Check it here.

This ironic ad was creative and eye-catching. Honestly cannot unsee some of the things Subaru showed me. But the brand is forever impressed and burned into my head.
The comedic, fun factor was extremely high. Political correctness was okay.
Did you know, sumo wrestlers were considered sex icons in Japan?

Oh btw, I do follow sumo wrestling, so I'm not making fun of them.

Another creative use of sex appeal is godaddy.com ads.
I personally don't like some of their innuendos so I will not give examples of their ads.
But they do pique interest and get their job done. I'm sure a ton of traffic is siphoned into their site each time their ads are aired.

I also like the recent Bud Light commercials. At the same time, I don't like how they exploit human emotions (more on this later).

Anyways, point is, using sex appeal has been done over and over again. Take a pointer from Subaru, the comic book movies and even godaddy.com and come up with some cleverer and refreshing.

You can probably tell there's a diminishing effort to write this as the article progressed... That's because it's late and I'm tired. Bear with me.
Once I'm rested and fully recovered from this cold, I'll be churning out better quality articles.

Stay busy.