Gender Stereotypes in Advertising - The Big Game

Every year the Superbowl of advertising is, well, the Superbowl. Many of the ads that aired in this year's Superbowl had rampant gender stereotypes but not all were 'offensive'. There were also a few ads that gender stereotyped men, a group not usually vocal about offensive ads. So where is the line between acceptable, tasteless, and offensive use of gender stereotypes in an ad?

 One of the most offensive was Axe's commercial Lifeguard. It not only portrays women as helpless but also that they are objects of rescue. It implies that to repay being saved a woman is expect to fall in love with her rescuer, typical knight in shining armor.

Verdict: tasteless, because ultimately it seems as if the ad is parodying the knight in shining armor gig with the astronaut showing up at the end. But regardless are they using gender stereotyping to deliver their message: yes.

Kate Upton washes the Mercedes CLK in slow-motion. I don't even understand this commercial. It's almost like they didn't even try. This is how I imagine the ad meeting going: "What will sell cars?" "I dunno, boobs?" "I don't know, isn't that a little classless?" "What about boobs in slow motion with super cheesy Vegas stripper music?" "Sure, seems legit."

 

Verdict: tasteless, offensive, and not funny. This commercial is like a dead horse that Mercedes decided to put lipstick on. The genre is old, offensive, not clever, and only appeals to teenage boys on Reddit.

Now here is a curveball, a commercial that gender stereotypes men as stupid, laughable (by squirrel standards at least), and overweight.

 

Verdict: funny, not offensive (to me at least) but still uses gender stereotypes to sell its product. Did you catch that the woman could eat as much chocolate as she wanted?

Semiotics

Semiotics is the study of signs classified as symbols, icons, index and how these signs make up the majority of human interaction and culture. Without semiotics we would be unable to communicate; image speaking to someone who is blind that doesn't speak the same language as you. When you take away the visual and linguistic references that we used to communicate then you are left with no communication. Advertising has to be very cognizant of these cultural semiotics because they determine how you message is received. As we move closer and closer to a global culture, advertisers have to be more careful about their message because the 'target audience' won't be the only one seeing it.
For example, this ad for Groupon might be funny to most of the American audiences but it is seen as greatly offensive to the Tibetan people.

The American public might see the human right violations in Tibet as some far-away rarely-talked-about issue but the Tibetans don't see it that way. Could you imagine if the ad was changed to some issue with more media coverage in America like: Boston, Katrina, Iraq, or Israel? Many Americans would be outraged by the nonchalance shown by the ad towards issues that hit so close to home.
Advertisers often use metaphors, play on words, and jokes that only make sense in a certain language as well. This is a form of semiotics. 

This ad for Modelo, a Mexican beer, says "Modelos y Futbol. Para que Mas!" or in English "Models and soccer. What more could you want?" The play on words is Modelos, which means in spanish: models, refering to the sexy ladies in the ad, and/or Modelos, the plural form of the brand of beer. Any audience that doesn't speak Spanish, wont get the joke. This is semiotics in advertising in a nut-shell.

Toblerone Social Campaign

For our Toblerone social ad campaign we decided to mimic a campaign similar to the on run by Lay's chips which let the fans choose the next flavors of Lay's. Through a facebook application it allowed users to customize their own Lay's bag complete with stock picture, text, and bag color. Once you create your flavor it shares it to your facebook wall and gives you the option to instagram, tweet, or email your flavor. It also connected with your friends and allowed face off type voting to create flavor competition.




With this campaign Lay's effectively created a library of user created content that engaged and challenged other users to create better and better flavors which eventually lead to a final three fan-made flavors put into production.



Our campaign takes similar a similar stream of consciousness, forcing friends to compete against one another with their own custom Toblerone flavor. "Two is better than one" "We made a new flavor, now it's your turn."
The flavors will compete in a bracket voting system leading up to the holidays. The winning fan-flavor will be sold during the holiday season and share a special edition holiday box with our holiday Crunchy Salted Almond flavor.

Interruption Ads

The advertising industry is one that techniques are constantly evolving due to the changing attitudes of the consumer. Interruptive ads are a direct response to consumers 'tuning out' classical adverts. Unfortunately this has had even more extreme affects: I hardly even watch commercials anymore. With so many other media outlets as soon as my television program cuts to commercial my eyes go straight to my cell phone. This behavior is so prevalent that sometimes when I actually watch a commercial I recognize the audio but realize I have never watched the commercial in its entirety or really analyzed the message. Rather than creating simply gregarious and shocking ads to get attention, it is better to play off emotions and nostalgia while being original/artistic, most importantly with the audio and cinematography. The Levi's 'Go Forth' campaign was an example of unique audio and cinematography that immediately captured my attention and delivered their message as well as branding their aesthetic.

The web is perhaps the place where most interuptive ads are found, and unfortunately many sites allow advertisers many liberties with just how interuptive those ads can be, mostly because they are usually the sites only source of revenue. From pop-ups to ad-gating to ads that pause when you mute them the presence of online ads is becoming more and more interuptive. Just check out milliondollarhomepage.com

The problem with interuptive ads is that they aren't interesting to the consumer. This is why I am a huge advocate for advertisers to be able to use cookies to track your interests. I would rather see ads that were catered to me than ones I have no interest in. Unfortunately (as the method stands now) there is no way for the consumer to manage these interests. I would like to see more consumer control of what type of ads they want to see. I think this benefits both parties, the advertisers want to sell their product to consumers who are most likely to buy, and consumers don't want to see ads regarding products that don't interest them.

iPod Toilet Roll Dock Ad Campaign

The basic idea surrounding our campaign was to embrace the 'gag-gift' angle of our product by using iconic rock music to create a theme centered around the use of the toilet. The feeling we wanted to convey was that this musical device would give you the inspiration to poop.
Below was a rough timeline sketch we came up with in class along with our radio spot

Less Conversation
SFX: Elvis - A Little Less Conversation slowly fades in. Music cuts quickly during toilet flush.

Announcer: (Mr. Moviephone Deep Voice)
Claim your porcelain throne,
Be the King of your Bathroom,
with the Toilet Roll iPod Docking Station.

SFX: Song cuts back in to guitar solo.

Major Pumping Required

When it comes to marketing failures nothing can possibly be worse than Hasbro's marketing addition to its popular Supersoaker line, the Oozinator. The following video can only be described as a complete and udder marketing failure that should have never left the advertising womb.

Steve Hall from AdRANTS.com perhaps said it best:
"The people who created this ad are either living in a land far removed from current day culture, are completely clueless or, conversely, have a seriously twisted sense of humor. This ad for the Hasbro Super Soaker Oozinator features a gun that when pumped a few times shoots a white globular substance all over the faces and bodies of those in the ad. Sound familiar? We thought so. While we're sure it's fun to pump something until it shoots a bunch of gooey stuff, we can't help but imagine how this thing got created, reviewed and approved without a lot of snickering."WARNING: Viewer Discretion Is Advised.

Not exactly kid friendly, right? Even if your mind isn't in the gutter there is something clearly disturbing about this ad. The Oozinator and its advertisements were quickly pulled, most likely after several thousand calls from outraged parents.

I wonder what the storyboard looked like for this ad.

The biggest failure was not that this was a terrible product idea but rather, that the marketing team couldn't anticipate their target audience's reaction to this product and ad campaign. Parents buy kid's toys for kids. So not only does the ad have to appeal and be understood by children but it also has to be viewed through the adult consumer's perspective. The sad thing is this product idea could fly simply because it is a kid's toy and kid's toys are sometimes slimy/gooey/gross. A successful ad campaign may rename the product, the Galactic Slime Blaster. Instead of shooting unarmed children in the chest in the ad they could make it a space themed ad where the slime blasters blast evil aliens and stick them to the walls with goo in a comic fashion. This product was so bad that the few Oozinators that are in existence sell for hundreds of dollars as gag gifts. Maybe this would sell better as an adult toy. That idea is on the house. Your welcome, Hasbro.

Save the Whales

Sea Shepherd is a highly visible and well branded nature conservation group that focuses on protecting sea life around the world.

Sea Shepherd Logo/Flag:


They have often been criticized for the extreme and sometimes militant tactics they use against Japanese whaling vessels. Leader of the Sea Shepherd fleet Paul Watson was a former Greenpeace member and left because he felt Greenpeace's tactics were too passive. There is even a show on Animal Planet documenting the antarctic battles between Sea Shepherd and their sworn enemies the Japanese whalers. This militant dramatic style also plays out in their advertising which aims to be shocking and move you to act on those emotions.


"Predatory fishing also threatens life outside the oceans."

This ad is photo manipulated in order to show the effects of fishing on wildlife in a violent, shocking way. This is a slightly more uplifting and inspirational ad yet it doesn't stray from Sea Shepherds militant routes:





 
"Until they can defend themselves, we will do it for them."

This next ad raises an interesting point that really gets at the heart of Sea Shepherds specific mission:
To help protect our oceans.
And in the ad below they point out the simple fact that we treat some animals, especially cute, furry, hard to eat animals better than ugly, delicious, scaly animals. Perhaps because we don't live in the water we feel as though we are removed from the oceans and therefore we don't care about its inhabitants. Sea Shepherd's advertising mission is to make you think about your relationship with the ocean, and I believe their ads have done that successfully.

"Why do we treasure one species but slaughter another?"