It's the week of love. Whether you like it or not. Brands lean in. Windows soften and campaigns get a little closer and suggestive than usual. Everyone suddenly remembers that desire exists.

Which always brings the same phrase back into the room.

Sex sells.

It's usually said with an assumption. Like a lazy rule everyone knows but pretends they're above. But I've always thought that reaction misses the point. The phrase doesn’t have to be crude. If anything it’s just honest.

What people really mean when they say sex sells is that feeling sells.

The interesting thing is how early this showed up. Long before digital. Long before modern branding. The phrase can be traced back to the late 1800s, when Pearl Tobacco ran one of the earliest known examples. A poster selling cigarettes, fronted by a naked woman. No connection to the product. No logic. Just attention, attraction, and curiosity doing the work.

That detail matters. Because even back then, the point wasn't relevance. It was interruption. The image didn't explain the product. It didn't need to. It created a moment that stuck.

That's the bit people forget when they roll their eyes at the phrase now.

This didn't come from some sleazy corner of advertising. Contrary to assumption. It came from an early understanding that people don't buy with logic alone. Edward Bernays later put language around it. Desire, identity, aspiration. Products weren't just things, they were shortcuts to how you wanted to feel or be seen.

Sex was never really about nudity. That's the part I keep coming back to.

When I look at the brands that used this well, they weren't speaking in facts. They were suggesting. Calvin Klein didn't build cultural moments by explaining anything. Those images worked because they trusted the audience to feel something without being told what to feel.

Same with Tom Ford at Gucci. It wasn't explicit. An undone shirt. A stare held half a second longer than expected. The sense that something might happen after the frame cuts away.

That's where this actually works.

I think the reason the phrase still holds today is simple. We haven't changed that much. We like to think we're more rational now. More aware. But desire still moves faster than thought. It still catches us before we've had time to filter it.

Social media didn't kill this. If anything, it highlighted it.

Being surrounded by constant imagery and video has made us more sensitive to when something feels forced. Overt sexuality often lands flat now. It feels try-hard. The stuff that cuts through is smarter. The sense that you're being let into something rather than shown everything upfront.

That's why fragrance campaigns still look the way they do. Why certain fashion brands lean into sensuality without ever naming it. Why intimacy still works better than exposure.

Sex sells because it bypasses explanation. You don't need to justify it. You feel it or you don't.

Where brands get it wrong is treating sex like a trick rather than a tone. When it's bolted on, its awkward. When it's baked into the world, it feels natural. You know when it belongs.

And that's where this gets interesting from a brand point of view. Sex isn't a tactic you roll out in February. It's a way of understanding how people connect. Are you creating tension or just visuals…

As we head into Valentine's week, the irony is that the most effective expressions of love rarely announce themselves. They live in pauses and in the things left unsaid.

Advertising hasn't moved on. We've just forgotten what the phrase was really pointing at.

It was never about skin.

It was about feeling.

Shot of the good stuff.