Member Exclusive   //   September 2, 2025

Brands Briefing: The return of raunchy marketing

By Gabriela Barkho
BondiBoost

In an increasingly noisy landscape, marketers are returning to the “sex sells” adage. 

Racy ads have been a cyclical mainstay in marketing. In the early 2000s, for example, the fast-food chain Carl’s Jr. built its brand on evocative ads featuring scantily clad women, like Paris Hilton and Charlotte McKinney, eating its messy burgers. Brands also embraced raunchy advertising toward the tail-end of the pandemic, as people craved the return of in-person intimacy. In 2021, menswear company Suitsupply ran an eyebrow-raising ad campaign featuring models licking each other.

But this year, it seems that more brands are turning to provocative ads to stand out in a sea of minimalist marketing. Earlier this month, Gap launched its “Better in Denim” campaign featuring low-rise jeans, which are experiencing a resurgence as part of the return of Y2K fashion. The ad features the members of girl group Katseye wearing midriff-barring Gap denim looks and dancing to Kelis’s 2003 hit “Milkshake,” which paid off to the tune of high engagement and view counts. American Eagle Outfitters also leaned into sexual undertones with its “Sydney Sweeney has Great Jeans” campaign, featuring close-ups of the actress pulling on a pair of jeans. That marketing effort, however, drew backlash, with some on social media alleging it evoked eugenics.

The latest brand taking a page out of this playbook is the Australian hair-care brand BondiBoost. To launch its new scalp serum, Lock Drops, BondiBoost said it decided to skip quiet product seeding to influencers and instead head straight to Las Vegas. The brand partnered with fellow Aussie male dance troupe Thunder from Down Under for a month-long takeover of their Vegas striptease show.

Hilary Zeber, director of infleuncer marketing and public relations at BondiBoost, is blunt in her assessment of this type of advertising: She says the brand is embracing “horny marketing” with its latest campaign.

“We wanted to do something that’s a little more risky, and horny marketing is different from the playbook that we’ve seen across a lot of our competitors,” said Zeber.

Zeber explained that boosting brand awareness is part of BondiBoost’s 2025 priorities as part of a bigger rebrand. At the beginning of this year, BondiBoost went through a reset that included the launch of a new creator community called the “Wellness Club.”

“We didn’t want to pigeonhole ourselves just into ‘wellness,’” Zeber said, adding that the company wanted to conjure a relatable image of hair care and wellness. “So you may be out until 3 a.m., but you’re also going to wake up to get to that 7 a.m. Pilates class.” Zeber said this direction also takes inspiration from Alex Cooper’s recent launch of her Unwell network and beverage brand, which evoke a “chaotic” take on wellness.

The evolution of wellness culture is what inspired Zeber and the team to seek out more fun ways to engage BondiBoost’s mostly female audience. The strategy is part of a larger creative shift for BondiBoost to lean into “horny marketing.” 

BondiBoost has also experimented with more traditional tactics, like hosting fitness classes and “hot-girl” community walk clubs. But for the second half of the year, BondiBoost wanted to turn it up a notch with the Thunder from Down Under partnership, which included BondiBoost becoming a key sponsor of all 41 shows in August. Throughout the month, the Thunder campaign generated social posts across TikTok and Instagram from 211 influencers, plus 287,000 online engagements. All in all, the partnership resulted in 3.7 million impressions across the web. 

The tagline for the launch of BondiBoost’s Lock Drop product is “Shed Happens,” which Zeber said lends itself to playful tie-ins. Every Thunder from Down Under show brings in about 100 attendees, Zeber said. Many of them are women tourists ages 18-65. “So, while we are using men to do the marketing, it is a fully female audience, which is our demographic,” she said.

BondiBoost also found that its ads featuring the shirtless Aussie men are consistently outperforming the beauty creatives BondiBoost would typically use. According to BondiBoost, the male-led ads are generating 2X the return of female-led creatives, with a 2.8 ROAS on Meta. BondiBoost also blended the campaign with influencer with retail touchpoints to drive traffic to Sephora, Ulta and its DTC website. 

Throughout August, the Shed Happens creatives appeared on all the Thunder from Down Under pre-show screens, which normally feature footage of shirtless men. BondiBoost is also featured in the mid-show “orgasm segment,” in which the winner receives a product goodie bag valued at $200. “And post-show, every single person walking out gets a Miracle Hair Mask sample,” Zeber said, which is also sold at the Thunder from Down Under store at the Excalibur Hotel & Casino throughout the month. 

On the digital front, Zeber said BondiBoost was able to leverage the partnership by having the Thunder from Down Under dancers in content and retail appearances. “We were able to film footage at Ulta with the guys in front of our shelves,” she said, which generated excitement among customers. Some social media commenters are asking whether the guys come with a purchase of Lock Drops.

Still, for most brands, experimenting with raunchier imagery is a big gamble, as it can either help reap major engagement or backfire with a backlash.

Sunny Bonnell, CEO of branding agency Motto, said the resurgence in sexy marketing “feels like a reaction to cultural boredom.” She added that in-your-face sexy advertising also contrasts with the way many brands have retreated to minimalist branding. The bland aesthetic that many companies adopted over the past decade has become dull and repetitive to many consumers, Bonnell said. Cracker Barrel’s attempt at modernizing by stripping back its logo, which received backlash on social media, is one such example.

“When you look across the landscape, everything is starting to look the same,” Bonnell said, whether that’s neutral or pastel logos or glossy, polished ads. “At some point, people stop paying attention, so brands have to raise their hands up above the noise.” 

Sexual imagery is one of the easiest ways to stand out, Bonnell explained. She noted that racy ads featuring hot models is nothing new, recalling the marketing language of the 1990s and early 2000s. Calvin Klein, for example, helped pioneer this playbook with its raunchy underwear ads. 

The difference is that audiences today are much more vocal and can react to an ad on social media in real time. “In the past, feedback meant writing a letter or making a call to corporate,” she said. “But as brands, we have a lot more power and influence over what we put out into the world than ever before,” Bonnell said. It’s up to each company to weigh the risk and reward of running evocative ads in hopes of grabbing attention. 

There is indeed a major risk factor, Zebra said, as people’s reaction to raunchy content can be unpredictable. From a customer’s perspective, Zeber said, the response to the partnership and campaign has been largely positive.

“We also did an influencer brand trip to Vegas for the launch of Lock Drops,” Zeber said, which included the influencers attending the show. Zeber was nervous that taking 16 highly followed creators, one of whom was pulled up on stage, would backfire as a stunt. “I was thinking, ‘This is way more vulgar than I even imagined. Are we going to be canceled by these creators?’” she said. Luckily, she said, everyone in attendance ended up loving the show. “But I was prepared to do damage control for this brand campaign,” Zeber said.

Jake Paul’s personal care brand gets into aluminum-free deodorant

Jake Paul’s personal care line, W, is coming out with an aluminum-free deodorant after “overwhelming” demand from its customer base. W’s CEO, Woodie Hillyard, described the product as “a game-changer” for the company, one that people have been asking for in its DMs since W launched with its original antiperspirant last summer.

Aluminum-free deodorant is becoming a popular alternative to traditional formulations as people look to prevent any negative health effects. 

“People were disappointed to see it had aluminum in it, and this demo of men [ages] 18-24 are about 20% less likely to use antiperspirant than the older generation,” Hillyard said. “So it definitely is an important thing for them.”

The new W Aluminum-Free Deodorant comes in four scents. It is already available on Amazon and will hit Walmart shelves alongside the original W product starting September 2. 

Behind the scenes, W worked with a new manufacturer that produces aluminum-free deodorant for other brands, Hillyard said. Paul was involved in testing dozens of samples. Since the official launch on August 19, his content promoting the product has yielded over 2 million views and received more than 100 reviews. 

Hillyard said this launch is the first in a wave of products planned over the next 18 months, tapping into a growing customer base.

“We have a Discord of 6,000 people who are mega fans of the brand that we talk to almost every day,” Hillyard said. “And they’re all really hyped on the product.” –Melissa Daniels

Job postings to watch

Hill House Home, a fashion and home brand that markets itself as “digital-first,” appears to be prioritizing physical retail more. The brand, which launched in 2016 with bedding, recently posted an opening for a retail operations consultant to “lead store openings for new retail locations.” The person in the role will also “act as a primary point of contact for weekly store development calls” and “travel to manage all new store openings on-site.” Hill House Home still has a relatively small physical retail footprint — it has four stores to date, although it’s scheduled to open another location later this year in North Carolina, according to Axios. –Julia Waldow

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