Everyone always says “Sex sells”, but in this case come on! You are advertising a kids toy, in this case little cars. Let’s look at the target market for Matchbox? Wouldn’t you say the ages between 4 – 12? What do the girls have to do with anything? I guess what they are trying to do is show the girls as car models? This makes no sense at all.
I really don’t like this idea/concept at all, because it could work with any product. Put a hot girl in the ad with the product, and you got an ad. This one comes from one of the more creative german agencies Jung von Matt, but I gotta say that these must be some of the weakest ads I have seen from them.
AdCritic writes the following:
According to Hamburg agency Jung von Matt, “The Matchbox cars are so authentic that the cliched “women and cars” concept still works. “It no doubt works for little boys, too, but they’re not the target; “the core market is the collectors community of adult men who love model cars and who also love the great freedom and the aesthetics involved in muscle car culture.”
Found these ads at the AdHunt Blog, through Colorobis.
I am pretty sure these ads are for Cars and Boxes, a website for vintage Matchox Box Car collectors, at least that is where the web address http://www.cars-and-boxes.de (at the top right of the ad) takes you. So, I’m not sure how far off the target they really are.
And normally I would agree with you, that using sex to sell is too easy, but I kind of like how they are playing with the stereotype of the hot models posing on the hoods of muscle cars. I thought they were pretty funny – and had a new twist on the old sex sells idea.