@inproceedings{01HB8KRWCF6712GT6P642WASWM,
  abstract     = {{Social media influencers (SMIs) are currently seen as an important component of companies’ marketing strategies, where they engage with a company by using their abilities to promote a product or service as part of their own content (De Veirman et al., 2017). SMIs try to influence their audience in a subtle way. An influencer defiantly using his/ her body as a commercial tool to promote products is a familiar image to many people. In the classical advertising context, several studies already showed that the use of nudity in advertisements is not always effective (Grazer & Kessling, 2011). The results implicate that naked appeals must be embedded in an appropriate manner into the advertising message. For example, explicit nudity of the model would be less likely to be accepted by the consumer than implicit nudity. Consumers feel they are being persuaded, which would backfire on the ad likeability, because it negates the credibility of the advertisement  (Wirtz et al., 2018). Trivedi & Teichert (2021) also emphasize the existence of a congruence-effect between naked appeals and the product being promoted. Products such as body lotion in combination with naked appeals would be better received by consumers than products such as mobile telephones. Furthermore, several other factors have been found to affect the perceived acceptability of nakedness in advertising, including factors related to the source of the ad and factors related to the viewer, such as: gender, age, cultural background, self-confidence etc. (Trivedi & Teichert, 2021).
Factors at play within the digital marketing world, could also influence the effectiveness of erotic appeals. For instance, the content that is shared by influencers is labeled as trustworthy and authentic, because they are considered ‘equals’. Moreover, the fact that the influencer chooses him-/ herself to post his/ her naked body on his/ her own channel, could improve the acceptability of the naked appeal. Existing research regarding influencer marketing tends to focus on the general characteristics of the ‘ideal’ influencer and the existing strategies of influencer marketing. However, it is unclear to what extent, nakedness is an effective content strategy in influencer marketing. Could the naked influencer on social media ensure a higher ad likeability and is a naked appeal a good choice in terms of advertising effectiveness?  
This study aimed to examine whether nudity of the influencer and the congruence of the product that was promoted had a dual impact. Firstly, on the viewer, by stimulating upward social comparison (USC) with the SMI and affecting self-image. Secondly, on the evaluation of the ad by affecting ad skepticism and ad likeability.  An online experiment (N = 121) was set up, using a two (nudity; implicit vs. explicit) by two (product: congruent vs. incongruent) between-subjects design. The main purpose of the experiment was to measure the impact of the influencers’ nudity.
The results indicated that the influencers’ nudity had no direct impact on the ad likeability. Hence, nudity is no predictor of ad likeability on Instagram, whereas in traditional forms of advertising, this appears to be the case (Wirtz et al., 2018). There was also no indirect effect of the influencers’ nudity on ad likeability via source credibility and skepticism, neither was there a moderating role of product congruence. However, there appeared to be a significant indirect effect of the influencers’ level of nudity on ad likeability via the variables USC and the respondents’ self-confidence. Implicit nudity of the influencer caused more USC and less self-confidence resulting in lower ad likeability. Therefore, we can conclude that influencers should think twice before using their naked bodies for advertising purposes, even if the nakedness is rather subtle, as nakedness does not lead to higher advertising effectiveness. On the contrary, implicit nakedness could affect the viewer’s self-confidence, leading to lower ad likeability.
We can conclude that simply applying traditional, existing insights regarding sexually oriented advertising in the digital marketing world is a difficult proposition. The current literature focuses mainly on traditional forms of advertising which means that the existing insights cannot be simply placed in a digital context. Moreover, this study is, to our knowledge, the first to investigate the effect of the influencers’ nudity as a potential marketing strategy.}},
  author       = {{Dhondt, Bo and De Veirman, Marijke}},
  booktitle    = {{Etmaal van de Communicatiewetenschap 2023, Abstracts}},
  keywords     = {{Influencer marketing,sexfluencers,naked appeals,ad likeability}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  location     = {{Enschede, the Netherlands}},
  pages        = {{409--411}},
  title        = {{'Let’s talk about sex…' in advertising : the impact of influencer nudity on advertising likeability}},
  url          = {{https://nefca.eu/etmaal-2023/}},
  year         = {{2023}},
}