There seems to be an increasing number of products that are using the naked or nude label as a way of marketing to customers. In the food line, everything from healthy options to plant-based substitutes and even what was once considered junk food is jumping on the “Naked” marketing bandwagon.
You remind me of a TV series called "The Naked Anthropologist." I tuned in a couple of times but all I saw was anthropologists with full clothing.
As a whole it seems to me that the more often "naked" is used in a positive manner the more people will have positive psychological association with "naked" Apparently "naked" is already finding positive public
associations because otherwise advertisers wouldn't use it on their labels.
The more people associate "naked" with goodness, the better for actual naked. It's a sign we are winning, and according to surveys many young people are positive about nudism or "naked." Still, it would be good if use of the term "naked" had images of naked people at least sometimes.
Aug 14, 2022·edited Aug 14, 2022Liked by BOPBadger
Hi Steve, another great article. The reason nudity and naked are so prevalent in advertising is that sex sells and sadly nudity and nakedness is stiil seen by mainstream society as prurient. Happily your articles, like Naked Wanderings, It's Just a Bum and a few others are edging naturism slowing towards normalisation.
It's great up on the Moors eh, especially when the weather is so sunny. Even though the sun is not quite as strong there make sure you slipslapslop :)
Aug 12, 2022·edited Aug 12, 2022Liked by BOPBadger
There was a TV ad for Absolute Vodka in which all their employees appeared naked in the ad (FB safe version of naked) to show they had nothing to hide in their manufacturing.
There is also an Icelandic TV ad for a smartwatch, where the watch was all you really needed. It had nude people of a variety of body shapes doing a variety of activities and wearing only the smartwatch.. It was NOT FB safe in the slightest. However it still ran on Icelandic television in prime time and without any parental warning. Good for them.
Sometimes people use "naked" in their ad and we can take it seriously.
Re: the Naked Juice thing. A long time ago I belonged to a Naked Dares group. The idea was to do photos of one naked in unlikely locations and not get caught. I did a photo in front of the Naked Juice factory in Monrovia, near LA with the sign in the background.
At the crux of communication are agreements between the communicating parties as to the meaning of the terms being used.
At an individual level the meaning is going to be very nuanced with a lot of personal experience contributing to the meaning for that individual. Many attributes will be attached to that word.
At the other end of the spectrum is a very generalised agreement on what a term means. Different cultural groups will have a different agreement to others.
A subtle element to all of this is context. We have different agreements for the same terms used in different contexts.
With all of this in mind it’s extremely difficult to get universal agreement on the specific meaning of a term, that is going to reflect everybody’s personal experiences. What’s more there’s always going to be outliers that are never going to agree.
In summary the best you can hope for is a new agreement on the meaning of a word. This happens with incredible speed. Wicked, sick and bad are just three terms whose agreed meaning in popular culture have completely reversed. Not replacing the original agreed meaning, but adding to the long list of agreements based on context.
So far as advertising etc goes, all it’s really doing is adding further agreements to those that already exist. People comprehend the inference within the proposed context and passively accept the agreement.
In Jamie Oliver’s case, the jury is still out regarding chef, let alone naked.
It's a well-established fact that sex sells and has been used for a long time. Great looking men and women often dressed scantily in a sexy way promoting products. Since society by and large associates Nude & Nudity with sex it was only a matter of time before they ventured with those words as a theme to promote a product by word association.
We all know that the porn industry hi-jacked the nudist industry years ago. Which has always given nudity/nudist and our organizations a bad name by making it appear that the only time people are nude is for sex.
We think the reality may be that with corporations attaching the words Nude or Naked to a product in many ways tends to normalize both the product and nudity. So, it may be a win win for them and us.
I wish the Naked Juice company had dropped the genetically modified soy or replaced it with organic soy instead of stopping to claim to use all natural ingredients...I like normalizing nudity and hearing the words nude and naked as natural 😉
You remind me of a TV series called "The Naked Anthropologist." I tuned in a couple of times but all I saw was anthropologists with full clothing.
As a whole it seems to me that the more often "naked" is used in a positive manner the more people will have positive psychological association with "naked" Apparently "naked" is already finding positive public
associations because otherwise advertisers wouldn't use it on their labels.
The more people associate "naked" with goodness, the better for actual naked. It's a sign we are winning, and according to surveys many young people are positive about nudism or "naked." Still, it would be good if use of the term "naked" had images of naked people at least sometimes.
Hi Steve, another great article. The reason nudity and naked are so prevalent in advertising is that sex sells and sadly nudity and nakedness is stiil seen by mainstream society as prurient. Happily your articles, like Naked Wanderings, It's Just a Bum and a few others are edging naturism slowing towards normalisation.
It's great up on the Moors eh, especially when the weather is so sunny. Even though the sun is not quite as strong there make sure you slipslapslop :)
There was a TV ad for Absolute Vodka in which all their employees appeared naked in the ad (FB safe version of naked) to show they had nothing to hide in their manufacturing.
There is also an Icelandic TV ad for a smartwatch, where the watch was all you really needed. It had nude people of a variety of body shapes doing a variety of activities and wearing only the smartwatch.. It was NOT FB safe in the slightest. However it still ran on Icelandic television in prime time and without any parental warning. Good for them.
Sometimes people use "naked" in their ad and we can take it seriously.
Re: the Naked Juice thing. A long time ago I belonged to a Naked Dares group. The idea was to do photos of one naked in unlikely locations and not get caught. I did a photo in front of the Naked Juice factory in Monrovia, near LA with the sign in the background.
At the crux of communication are agreements between the communicating parties as to the meaning of the terms being used.
At an individual level the meaning is going to be very nuanced with a lot of personal experience contributing to the meaning for that individual. Many attributes will be attached to that word.
At the other end of the spectrum is a very generalised agreement on what a term means. Different cultural groups will have a different agreement to others.
A subtle element to all of this is context. We have different agreements for the same terms used in different contexts.
With all of this in mind it’s extremely difficult to get universal agreement on the specific meaning of a term, that is going to reflect everybody’s personal experiences. What’s more there’s always going to be outliers that are never going to agree.
In summary the best you can hope for is a new agreement on the meaning of a word. This happens with incredible speed. Wicked, sick and bad are just three terms whose agreed meaning in popular culture have completely reversed. Not replacing the original agreed meaning, but adding to the long list of agreements based on context.
So far as advertising etc goes, all it’s really doing is adding further agreements to those that already exist. People comprehend the inference within the proposed context and passively accept the agreement.
In Jamie Oliver’s case, the jury is still out regarding chef, let alone naked.
It's a well-established fact that sex sells and has been used for a long time. Great looking men and women often dressed scantily in a sexy way promoting products. Since society by and large associates Nude & Nudity with sex it was only a matter of time before they ventured with those words as a theme to promote a product by word association.
We all know that the porn industry hi-jacked the nudist industry years ago. Which has always given nudity/nudist and our organizations a bad name by making it appear that the only time people are nude is for sex.
We think the reality may be that with corporations attaching the words Nude or Naked to a product in many ways tends to normalize both the product and nudity. So, it may be a win win for them and us.
T & K
I wish the Naked Juice company had dropped the genetically modified soy or replaced it with organic soy instead of stopping to claim to use all natural ingredients...I like normalizing nudity and hearing the words nude and naked as natural 😉