I'm curious about whether sex sells, empirically. I think it's relevant because if it does, it presents a memetic hazard and a hazard to our evolutionary heuristics.
I have started using a new disclaimer: Replies to the comment you are now reading accurately describe my ideas so the original post has been replaced by this disclaimer to spare your time :) because sometimes my comments become redundant when a commentator rephrases or restates all points of interest.
I'm curious about whether sex sells
But why would you investigate that by comparing promotion using attractive models (note: the fact that "model" has two quite different meanings is one reason why it would have been helpful had your original question been a bit more discursive) with random means of promotion? What you actually want to know is surely something more like: If you take some means of promoting a thing, and then make the minimum possible change to it that adds or removes a substantial amount of sexiness, what happens to its effectiv...
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