Gender stereotypes and roles have long been an issue within society. Today, people believe that gender stereotypes no longer exist, however, these preconceptions of desired gender attributes and roles strongly remain. Old Spice, a company producing men’s hygienic products, is known for its comedic advertising campaigns, focusing on references to traditionally desired masculine characteristics. Using gender stereotypes, they connect with the audience’s emotions and desires through humor and sex appeal, in order to convince them to buy Old Spice body wash. The Old Spice ad, “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” represents a clear demonstration of gender stereotypes, roles and the resulting issues of sexism and inequality in society, with an …show more content…
By sexualizing the advertisements, Old Spice has successfully found a way to appeal to the younger, modern generation of males, while also appealing to the desires of the female audience. Looking at the target audience of this ad, I feel it appeals to the emotional needs of women by giving them an ideal image of what a “real man” should look and smell like. For example, the man in the ad directly addresses the ladies in a sexy, self-confident voice, asking them to compare their man to him. The ad makes women want a fit, attractive man like the one in the ad, who will get them “two tickets to that thing they love” or give them expensive diamonds. All of these cues relate to gender stereotypes and masculine ideals that are linked to a woman’s satisfaction and desires. Thus, women are more likely to purchase Old Spice Body Wash for their man, in hopes that it will make them similar to the hyper masculine figure in the …show more content…
The man in the Old Spice ad represents male gender roles in society compared to female gender roles. Throughout the ad, it is implied that a “real man” works and provides things like money and diamonds for his female partner while the “ladies” he continuously refers to represent the female gendered role in the home. From an early age in traditional societies, many boys are taught to stray from displaying “feminine” characteristics as it was deemed less permissible and “beneath them” by society. This idea is reinforced in the advertisement when the man states, “Anything is possible when your man smells like Old Spice and not a lady”. Traditionally, society has enforced the notion of masculinity to prepare men for their role in the family and at work. Although traditional role expectations were narrower for boys than for girls, women were generally restricted to the household and cooking while men were expected to have a valued role in the workforce as the “breadwinner”. The advertisement also touches on this by implying that women are dependent on men to provide them with things like diamonds and tickets to their favorite show. In this sense, the ad implicitly portrays sexism and gender inequality that exist in society as women are stereotyped into roles that
I have examined and analyzed the COVERGIRL™ NatureLuxe advertisement that uses common feminine stereotypes. In this advertisement, COVERGIRL™, which runs in Seventeen magazines, targets women through their choices of colors, fonts, and images used. Certain stereotypes are used; such as, those who are more feminine tend to prefer lighter, happier colors, such as pink. Also, the use of a celebrity, who many young women look to as an icon, assists in the advertisement of the COVERGIRL™ product. COVERGIRL™, more than likely, is able to successfully market their lip-gloss product in the United States by using common gender stereotypes to show femininity and how those, mainly women, should be presented in today’s society.
Individuals since the beginning of time have always judged each other based on gender role preferences. Since we live in a digital era, those gender role messages from society can be strongly biased on both genders. Society has a way of also influencing individuals to accept its ideas on how men and women should live. Analyzing these commercials, we are going to see just how society is judging genders on their roles, behavior, and emotions.
Old Spice’s script has you believe they are addressing a female viewer; however, the product is not one that a woman would go about purchasing, and the ad was shown during the Superbowl, which has a predominately male viewership. The ad is attempting to give the male viewers and alternate perspective of things. Instead of addressing the men specifically, the ad causes the men to imagine what thoughts may frequently cross the mind of their female partners or other women they may commonly interact with. For example, the line “Anything is possible when your man smells like Old Spice and not a lady,” implants the fear into the male viewer’s mind that he may not smell masculine enough to appeal to his ideal woman. He now worries that she may indeed think he smells like a lady. However, if the viewer were to use Old Spice, the advertisement, through its final line of “Smell like a man, man,” assures him that he would no longer have to worry about how he smells; he would smell like a
The ad for TAG Body Spray is meant to entertain more than inform. The audience is supposed to view the ad as humorous and not take it as a promise of becoming a “ladies man.” However, it is meant to spark curiosity and hope in its intended user that this outcome could possibly happen, at least on a smaller scale. Once they see that the “average guy” in the picture is much like themselves they will latently feel that TAG could do the same for them. The fact that humor drives the ad ensures that the target audience will be entertained and most likely read the entire poster. TAG has successfully hit its target consumer, the young male. Most individuals in high school or college would be moved to buy this product.
... approach, selling men’s hygiene products, by appealing to a female audience. Though Old Spice targets and appeals to females, they do sell men’s hygiene products, thus, also attracting males and running an ad campaign that males can enjoy. The constant lack of shirt is just enough sex appeal to catch the audiences’ attention, without driving them away. The caricature of the perfect man easily enacting a variety of roles is entertaining for females and males. Additionally the commercial uses quick transitions and repetition to keep the audiences’ attention and to enforce the association of Old Spice with the ideal man. Old Spice sells their image as representing the perfect man, and hey if you can’t be him, well you can at least smell like him. With a humorous undertone and just enough sex appeal, the ad campaign is funny, attractive, appealing, and thus effective.
Since 1934, Old Spice has been branded one of the lead cleansing products for men. This company produces a variety of deodorants, shower gels & body sprays made for men. William Lightfoot Schultz created Old Spice to depict a “colonial theme” and this colonial trademark was symbolized by a sailing ship. The colonial sail ship, which traditionally depicts masculinity, was one of Old Spices original tactic in advertising. In recent times Old Spice has gained much attention for humor used in advertisements. The brand does this in order to persuade the audience to purchase their products. By displaying a positive image of vacation, sandy beaches, good scents, funny situations and attractive models Old Spice is trying to create a lasting image and draw attention to their brand so shoppers will remember them while shopping.
Scalding steam bellows swiftly out from the smartly tiled shower; screeching echoes of the shower curtain escapes deafeningly as a moist, attractive African-American man begins to descend with a white, constricted towel across his waist. The man begins to shout at the audience that Old Spice’s products will transform them from a mediocre, poorly dressed man into a magnificently attractive, cool, and powerful fellow. At first glance, Old Spice commercials are innocently selling hygiene products to the average consumer, but the commercials have a subliminal message for the audience — they will become improved once they use Old Spice’s product.
Common sense seems to dictate that commercials just advertise products. But in reality, advertising is a multi-headed beast that targets specific genders, races, ages, etc. In “Men’s Men & Women’s Women”, author Steve Craig focuses on one head of the beast: gender. Craig suggests that, “Advertisers . . . portray different images to men and women in order to exploit the different deep seated motivations and anxieties connected to gender identity.” In other words, advertisers manipulate consumers’ fantasies to sell their product. In this essay, I will be analyzing four different commercials that focuses on appealing to specific genders.
This advertisement’s intended audience is men ranging in the ages of 30’s and 40’s. In order to get this age group’s attention, the advertisement uses a fact that Blum discussed in her article, which is that testosterone rises in the competitive world of dating and settles down with a stable and supportive relationship (Blum 6). The Dove men’s deodorant advertisement takes into consideration this fact about testosterone, and caters to the preferred audience’s likely testosterone level by showing the man smiling with a child. The man is also wearing a wedding ring, and altogether this scene implies that he is in a healthy relationship with both his wife and child. The viewer seeing this relates to the advertisement and makes his purchase of the product based off of a simple placement of a man smiling at and holding a child. However, the advertisement still acknowledges that there is more testosterone than females in the consumers that they are trying to attract. The words “Tough on sweat, not on skin” put next to the scene of the father and son are bolded as opposed to the words that are more informative about the product. This adds to the ideas brought up by Blum about violence and an in-your-face attitude being more likely among men because they have more testosterone. In a Dove women’s deodorant advertisement you never see the word ‘tough’ but instead words like ‘soft’ and ‘smooth’. Men,
“Ads sell more than products. They sell values, they sell images, they sell concepts of love and sexuality, of success, and perhaps most important, normality.” Jean Kilbourne, a media critic, goes into great detail of this disgrace to modern society in her documentary, “Killing Us Softly 4: Advertising 's Image of Women.” Many people like Kilbourne could argue that women have falsely been depicted as a minority to men over the years. All different forms of advertising have been guilty of womanizing in this way at one time or another. Some of the largest companies have been caught displaying woman in a sexual and desirable way in order to sell products; some even make the woman seem weak or dependable on a male figure. While many companies are guilty of the form of advertisement described in Kilbourne’s video, a handful of corporations bring hope into our often sexist society. One particular Nike ad contradicts Kilbourne’s theory of worsening feminization by showing a ruthless, successful female athlete. However, when analyzed, an Old Spice ad suggests that women are subjective to men, proving Kilbourne’s theory to have some truth.
"Don't worry darling, you didn't burn the beer" (Schiltz Beer) ; "You mean a woman can open it"(Del Monte 1953), “Christmas Morning: She'll be happier with a Hoover"(Hoover Company). These quotes from vintage ads of the 1950’s and 60's give clear proof of the existence of sexism. Most American’s are very well aware and acquainted with the conflict residing with advertisements that are sexist toward women. As we know women were and still are expected to fill the role of a childbearing machine, twenty-four hour mother and wife, household maintainer and cook for the family. In the present time in society women are still expected to fill the roles previously mentioned and are now being portrayed as extremely attractive sex symbols by the media. What about men? Are they not victims of stereotypical advertisements as well?
The two concepts that I am going to talk about are the master trait and women as a minority group. According to our textbook, the master trait is defined as cutting across all other identities in life. We are always female or male at the end of the day. In the Tide commercial, as viewers we see how separate men are to women. A once enjoyable party turns into a charade that depicts women as happy go lucky to do house work. Although the master trait is something that is a normality to our society, when we solely view someone as male or female, we impose gender stereotypes that shouldn 't continue to exist. We see the negative connotations of gender enforced stereotypes when it comes to the Old Spice commercial. The glamorized depiction of the man makes it seem like the fairy tale we dreamed of is achievable just by using Old Spice. The second concept of women being a minority group comes into play in both commercials because women are on the back burner for both. Yes, the Tide commercial depicted the happenings of Kelly Ripa’s dinner party but as a whole women were still the minority because of the oppressed overtones within. In the Old Spice commercial, women play an invisible role because we aren’t seen at all in the commercial but it is more geared to us. Since we are “less stronger” than men, we need to get someone who all around suits us according to the
Feminism has been a social philosophy for quite a long time and over the last four decades the role of women and their rights has changed dramatically in the Western world. However, the female representation has stayed constant. Beauty, physique, sexuality, emotions and relationships have been the focus for female representations There is so much focus on physical beauty that other values seem to be excluded; this is not a realistic view of an everyday life for many women around the world. In perfume adverts especially, there are a lot of beautiful, thin, 'airbrushed women', who appear to seduce the man with their perfume. In this essay I will be studying the way the perfume advertisements use the representation of women in various forms including objectification, fragmentation and binding of the body.
Sex sells a common phrase which turns out to be very truthful and also the title of Rodger Streitmatter's book, Sex Sells! The Medias Journey from Repression to Obsession. It seems like no other human act drives "buying behavior" as much as sex appeal does. Therefore advertisers manipulate this human drive and than offer their products as a path of love, beauty and desirability which is their main purpose of advertising. In other words the main purpose of advertising is to sell products and what advertisers must do to get people to buy these products is to make products desirable to the chosen target consumers. The pioneering of bringing prurience to advertising was Calvin Klein, starting with women's jeans going then to men's underwear and ending up with perfume for both sexes at the end. Perfume advertising is a large contributor to sex appeal. In both ads for Opium and Dolce & Gabbana perfumes advertisers use sexual seduction and influence to sell their product. They use sex appeal to grab our attention and play with our fears and desires and they manipulate us by fulfilling our erotic fantasies and dreams.
The Paco Rabanne Invictus fragrance for men advert, published in 2013, seems to portray how a modern male should appear: strong, muscular, and heavily tattooed while women are perceived as relationship-oriented, and eye-candies: a lightweight drapery hides their private parts whilst revealing their forms. Thus, it reinforces gender stereotypes. As Buying Into Sexy points out sex sells, and people tend to be heavily exposed to adds as well as “music videos that feature plenty of sexual innuendo”. That is why humongous corporations “(create) a certain environment of images that we grow up in and that we become used to (in order to) shape what we know and what we understand about the world”, states Justin Lewis in Mickey Mouse Monopoly. So, how is the ideology of masculinity represented throughout this ad? The warrior-esque man is physically desirable, and irresistible to women. Even though the audiences are aware of the existed hyperbole, they might focus on the experienced feelings of smelling good.