Male Oriented Advertisising

Male Oriented Advertisising

Advertising plays an essential role in our society today.

On some levels, it shapes us into the people we are by implanting in

our minds certain ideas of what we should own. Advertising agencies

are out to strike a nerve or hotspot in our consumer driven minds

that will lead us to buy whatever product they may be selling. In

recent times we can see a rather disturbing and not so subtle

advertising strategy developing. Agencies are associating their

products with masculine homilies such as sex appeal and the male

competitive drive. The new trend among ads and commercials is to

question the consumer's masculinity and align their product with

masculinity.

Men are very concerned with their sex appeal and how women view

them. Many new ads are sending the message that their product

carries with it the essence of sexiness. A perfect example of this

is a "KOOL" cigarette ad in Playboy magazine. The ad depicts an

overly crowded bar packed with young attractive people. In the back

of the room there is a sign that says "BE KOOL," which jumps right

out due to its green lighting. Everyone in the bar is preoccupied

with conversations except one girl. She is a very beautiful twenty-

something brunette with a very seductive and hypnotic look on her

face. She is locked in a dead stare with a man's hand holding a KOOL

cigarette. The only part of the man showing is his hand and forearm

and it is clearly apparent that this girl is staring at it. The add

is basically saying that this girl singled this guy out of a packed

crowd just because he smokes KOOLs. The fact that she is staring at

his hand and not him is very interesting. The girl in the ad cares

nothing about the man holding the cigarette or any other men

surrounding her. She is simply entranced by the cigarette itself.

The ad agency is directly aligning its product with sex appeal. Not

only does this ad say "Smoking KOOL makes you look sexy," this ad

says "KOOL's ARE sexy."

Another ad that takes the exact same approach is a recent

Levi's television commercial. The commercial is about 30-45 seconds

long and it features numerous women that live in the same apartment

building. Each scene displays a different woman doing something

drastically destructive to their apartment. One woman even cuts into