Intimate with Intimacy for Senior Sex Appeal

In ads, it’s occasionally better to intimate—delicately hint—rather than to starkly pitch your case. One such circumstance is when using sex appeal to sell to senior citizens. That’s suggested by findings at Pennsylvania State University and at Germany’s Humboldt University, Max Planck Institute, MSB Medical School, and Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin.
     The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud claimed pretty much everything we do springs from the sex drive. Maybe Sigmund was taking a good thing too far. Still, it's true that the sex drive does move the merchandise.
     In using this fact, realize the sex drive refers to much more than raw passion. In consumer psychology, it means the mutual attraction of masculinity and femininity toward each other. It's the Yin and the Yang. The complete package of passion is in the interaction. And with seniors as compared to younger adults, it is in thoughts of intimacy to a greater degree than in thoughts, fantasies, and desires around sexual intercourse. For seniors, depictions in ads of touching, hugging, cuddling, and kissing will resonate well and arouse a sales appeal paralleling how depictions of sexually attractive models and sexually suggestive behaviors work for younger target markets.
     The waning preoccupation with sexual intercourse among the elderly can be attributed to hormonal declines, increases in cardiovascular and metabolic conditions, and loss of partners as people age. There is a psychological shift from pleasure as excitement to pleasure as the security which intimacy provides. On average, older adults prefer calm TV advertisements with few camera changes, slower speech, and relaxing or no music over more arousing advertisements.
     In the studies of sex and intimacy, two of the intimacy scale items were “I feel safe and accepted during sex” and “My needs for acceptance and security are currently satisfied.” Overall, the older participants in the study showed lower frequency of sexual activity and sexual thoughts than did the younger participants, but not different ratings of intimacy.
     With all of this, acknowledge the range of individual differences among seniors. About one-third of the 60 to 82 year olds in the studies reported more blatantly sexual thoughts and activities than did the averages for even the comparison group of 22 to 36 year olds. Still, remember that the conclusions were based on self-report measures. Hmm. Might the finding of enlarged libido among these one-third be due at least in part to boastful exaggeration and/or wishful thinking?

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