Burger King ‘Super Seven Incher’ – 2009
With the ever growing and competitive world, there is often a need to stand out; both individually and as a company. Hence, advertising budgets have been on a rise. Considering the growing access to media and the soaring number of children that now have access to information, advertising has come under increasing scrutiny.
Back in June 2009, Burger King released a print advertisement in Singapore in promotion of a limited edition sandwich. What seems to be a promotion for a large-sized sandwich turns out to have such an explicit underlying meaning. Slammed as “distasteful” and unappetizing due to its obvious references to fellatio, many people spoke up against the advertisement and asked for it to be taken down. Why, you ask? Let’s take a look. (See Appendix A – Figure 1)
Appendix A: Figure 1
The advertisement in discussion is a print advertisement for a limited time promotion of the ‘Super Seven Incher’. This advertisement was put up at public locations such as the MRT and the Burger King outlets across Singapore – a society known around the world for its well-regulated government controls of social conduct and media. The main purpose of this advertisement was to shock, push boundaries and be the topic of discussion amongst the target audience during the limited time that the sandwich was available for.
At first glance, the image of the “mind-blowing” sandwich near the agape mouth of a wide-eyed, red-lipsticked woman who seemed to be in a ‘spotlight’ accompanied by a suggestive tagline that was outstanding both in typeface and size stating: “It’ll blow your mind away.”
The strong sexual references will only be understood by people with prior knowledge of sexual acts, which leads to...
... middle of paper ...
...be effective as Lauren Kuziner, a spokesperson for Burger King, said in a statement that it has generated positive consumer sales around this limited time product offer in that market through this campaign.
There have been some changes in the images of women. Indeed, a "new women" has emerged in commercials in recent years. She is generally presented as super woman (one that can handle every aspect of her life thanks to her purchase of something), or as the liberated woman, who owes her independence and self-esteem to the products she uses. Unfortunately, these new images may not represent any real improvements in the general attitude but rather may have created a myth of progress, an illusion that reduces complex sociopolitical problems to mundane personal ones.
What’s the ultimate mystery? Why this was even approved for launch in Singapore in the first place.
Advertising is as old as civilization itself. They are forever interconnected. If one changes then so does the other. So as our society evolved dramatically by the influence of technology and social media, so did the way we advertised. With the power of technology, advertising gained the ability to be everywhere at once. These locations ranged from billboards, to projector screens that hang from skyscrapers, to even in your homes in the form of commercials. The evolution of advertising in the modern world is both somewhat disturbing and innovative at the same time.
Each time I drive on the freeway and see the advertising billboard for the “Chik-Fil-A” Restaurant, I smile. The billboard features cows in trying to convince a public to eat more chicken in many different ways. The billboard gets my attention due to its comical, but cleaver simplicity. This ad is one of the series of this restaurant advertising campaign. Most American public easily recognizes this campaign. This particular ad of three cows are holding a protest poster with hand written message saying to “EAT MOR CHIKIN” is clearly a promotion for the well known “Chik-Fil A” restaurant serving mostly chicken meals.
The documentary Killing Us Softly 4 discusses and examines the role of women in advertisements and the effects of the ads throughout history. The film begins by inspecting a variety of old ads. The speaker, Jean Kilbourne, then discusses and dissects each ad describing the messages of the advertisements and the subliminal meanings they evoke. The commercials from the past and now differ in some respects but they still suggest the same messages. These messages include but are not limited to the following: women are sexual objects, physical appearance is everything, and women are naturally inferior then men. Kilbourne discusses that because individuals are surrounded by media and advertisements everywhere they go, that these messages become real attitudes and mindsets in men and women. Women believe they must achieve a level of beauty similar to models they see in magazines and television commercials. On the other hand, men expect real women to have the same characteristics and look as beautiful as the women pictured in ads. However, even though women may diet and exercise, the reality...
The headline of the ad is “Decisions are easy. When I get into a fork in the road, I eat.” After viewing this ad, the sub thought to every idea, man or woman, is that her cool attitude toward food can be easily duplicated. With this idea, there is a relationship that is formed between sexuality roles and advertisements. From a young age, women are constantly being shaped and guided to the ideal weight of our society, which is being impersonated by women similar to the one in this advertisement. Her sexual stance, thin, short skirt, and her hand placement all show signs of sexual
For most companies, advertising can be a costly affair. On the one hand, customers are getting more information about new products, goods and services. While, on the other hand, it has to be effective, noticeable and remembered long enough to make potential customers into actual ones.
Analysis of an Advertising Campaign We are swarmed by advertising. Companies constantly battle to compete for the sale of their product. Adverts appear in every form of media including radio; television; Internet; billboards; newspaper; flyers and magazines. The advertiser wants us to buy their product above their competitors. The basic aim of advertising is to convince the target audience that their product is the best in the field and superior to the other products of similarity.
In the past few years, the sandwich market has gained incredible popularity in the American culture. As the fast food landscape continues to...
To sum up, it is often said that advertising is shaping women gender identity, and some have been argued that the statement is true, because of the higher amount of sexual references of women that advertisement show and the damages that occur on women’s personality and the public negative opinions of those women. As well, the negative effects that those kinds of advertisements cause to young generations and make them feel like they should simulate such things and are proud of what they are doing because famous actors are posting their pictures that way. Others deem this case as a personal freedom and absolutely unrelated to shaping women gender identity. On the contrast, they believe that, those sorts of advertisements are seriously teaching women how to stay healthy and be attractive, so they might have self-satisfaction after all.
Cultural or ideological meaning: The ad is extremely sexual. The female has her eyes and mouth wide open as if she is shocked of the size of the “burger.” The advertisement is clearly displaying an image that represents a female that is about to engage in oral sex with a male. “It’ll blow your mind away” and “super seven incher” phrases are used to send a sexual message. The word blow is referring to a man receiving oral sex and the phrase “super seven incher” is referring to a male’s penis. The ad is not only degrading females but is also degrading males, as it is suggesting that males who have large penises are more desirable, as the female is looking at the burger, which represents a penis accompanied by the phrase “ it just tastes better.”
Objectification of the female body has long plagued advertisements for products ranging from perfume to fast food, in which advertisers depict women in a sexual light, marketed towards appealing to the male gaze. While the passivity of this sexualized female role has recently shifted to accommodate more “active, desiring sexual subjects” (Gill 255), women who are “powerful and playful, rather than passive and victimized” (Gill 258), it is still remarkable to note how “the continued history and presence of women in decorative and sexual roles have generated much interest and controversy than similar portrayals of men” (Sheehan 101). Freeman and Merskin point out in “Having It His Way: The Construction of Masculinity in Fast-Food TV Advertising” that fast food commercials sometimes depict meat as synonymous with female flesh, both being “mutual objects of male desire” (Freeman and Merskin 470) and “objects of the camera’s implied heterosexual male gaze” (Freeman and Merskin 470). The issues presented within these representations of women are that they are unrealistic in strengthening the concept of power imbalances between the sexes and in reinforcing standards of beauty and fitness that are not easily attainable. By presenting the genders with an array of limits as such, the sexualization and normalization of “inequality, domination, and even violence” (Caputi 312) occur, allowing advertising to influence adolescents much like propaganda does, by “[reinforcing] or [modifying] the attitudes or behavior” (Portia 42) of its target groups to form uniform masses of consumers, ultimately disregarding any differences that make every individual unique, and encouraging its demographics to do the
Hershey’s and Quaker are two well established brands in the snack food world. The weight of their names carry a specific ethos; a persona that will influence the consumer to buy their product, as it is a name that the customer trusts. Two advertisements are analyzed, both found in a February 2007 edition of People magazine: Hershey’s Extra Dark Chocolate and Quaker True Delight print advertisements. The main connection between these two prints is rather apparent: they are both snack foods, and they contain dark chocolate. However, both prints, as they are introducing a new product line, paint a new image of their merchandise: this snack food is healthy, ergo this creation should be chosen over all other products. Hershey’s Extra Dark Chocolate utilizes a cause-and-effect strategy by outlining that consuming their dark chocolate will improve cardiovascular health, backed by the logic and ethos of a study performed by a well-known university. Quaker’s True Delights, however, emphasizes the fact that their product tastes fantastic and is low in calories, in addition to using their ethos of their brand. Ultimately, both products utilize their established persona to draw
It also includes examination of the theoretical and empirical studies in the field of advertising. Books, research papers, articles, reports, thesis etc. were systematically studied to develop the following review of literature. The review included extensive use of Proquest, Google scholar, Inflibnet and IIM- A library. The review of theoretical literature and empirical literature helped develop the below mentioned conceptual framework. This structure underlines the sequence of steps, which were undertaken for the review of literature. The first step was to understand the concept of advertising. The second step focused on understanding the effects of advertising. Scan of literature helped in identify the types of effects advertisements are known to create. The third step involved understanding the extent to which organisations are committing their resources to advertising. As logic dictates that measurement of effectiveness is more significant where the resources committed are more, the final step involved study of effectiveness measures.
Advertising has had a powerful impact on today’s children. From songs, to logos. to characters, advertisers keep in mind their audiences. Competition is the force which causes advertisers to target children. Children are targeted through the catch phrases. animated characters, and toys in these competitive advertisements.
Advertising can mean many different things in today’s world. When advertising first was developed it was done by would of mouth and the classic flyer or poster, which is the traditional media. Then it moved up to using broadcast media such as radio to help capture a bigger audience. After that it moved towards the television where an even bigger audience could be reached. Lastly companies started to realize the shear amount of traffic that was generated by the Internet.
Advertising has been defined as the most powerful, persuasive, and manipulative tool that firms have to control consumers all over the world. It is a form of communication that typically attempts to persuade potential customers to purchase or to consume more of a particular brand of product or service. Its impacts created on the society throughout the years has been amazing, especially in this technology age. Influencing people’s habits, creating false needs, distorting the values and priorities of our society with sexism and feminism, advertising has become a poison snake ready to hunt his prey. However, on the other hand, advertising has had a positive effect as a help of the economy and society.