Advertising

[brightbluegirl]

Advertising is ALWAYS geared towards some stereotype or another.

It hadn't quite occured to me that way, until I saw some blatantly sexist advertising on the way home from work yesterday, assuming that men are into sports, and women (yes, it's heterosexist, too) into decorating. Oh yes, and that men are stupid, and that women have to dupe their men into things, because honest communication is not par for the course. (all that in one little sign! A picture is worth a hundred stereotypes...)

I happen to enjoy decorating, but that's about the only stereotype that I fit in, for that particular ad.

So I got all ruffled, for a second, but then I stopped to think about it, and it occurred to me that Advertising is ALWAYS Geared Towards Some Stereotype or Another.

It IS possible to advertise with no stereotyping or bigotry, but that involves either having NO actors, or NO words, or actually putting some thought into it, though.

Advertising based on the quality of the product, for example, is subverted by it's medium, if the medium includes a stereotype. So a cleanser shown next to a sparkling sink, is a fine example of a stereotype-free ad based solely on the quality of the product. However, if a female hand is shown holding the cleanser, the stereotype exists within the ad.

(If a male hand is shown holding the cleanser, it's often placed in a "lab coat", showing another stereotype ("men who use this cleanser are doing so for experimental purposes, men are authority figures", etc), or there is also a female within the ad, doing some sort of "nagging woman makes whipped man do work around the house" impersonation.)

So, if our society really is going towards a more "politically correct" environment, why not just go with the stereotype free ad??

Because stereotypes sell.

Because you can make MORE people buy something, if you convince them that they're less worthy for not having it. If they think they'll be part of the "in" crowd, or otherwise fit into the stereotyped group they WANT to fit in, they'll buy in to the image more than if you just inform them about the quality of the product.

Our society is all about image. I know that, you know that, I've had long conversations on that with many people. That's not new.

But image is all about perception. And perception links directly into all those boxes we put in our brains labelled "freak" "nerd" "intellectual" "sexy" "minority of your choice" "white guy" "american" "canadian" "iranian" and etc.

And advertising is all about making your perception of yourself require that you buy more things in order to stay within the stereotype you're 'endorsing', or to reach the stereotype you wish to 'endorse'.

(Of course, our society is only paying a basic lip service to a more socially conscious environment anyway. Women still get punished for passing the glass ceiling, there are still far more poor single mothers than poor single fathers, white people in North America are afraid of black men, war occurs in the middle east, anarchism = terrorism, women are over emotional, emotions are sissy, and simon cowell can tell women they're too big. And capitalism is the true ruler here, so of course advertising will continue to use stereotypes to sell as much as possible - that's the law, isn't it?)

What's really scary though, is seeing an ad and KNOWING that it's geared towards you.

And I ask you - since when is an educated happily partnered monogamous 30 year old body modified software testing female anarchist a large enough group to advertise to?

I really ought to read No Logo.

Comments

So true....

[a-narchist.livejournal.com]

Your specific group doesn't have to be large to be able to advertise to. You are point A, encompassing a number of individual subgroups to make the whole that is you as an individual group (confusing no?). The product is targeted to be sold to group Z(xiii). The advertisers just have to get you to associate yourself with the stereo type in very broad terms to begin with and then gradually focus the boundries of the stereotype until you find yourself associating with things that, had you been asked about at the beginning, you would not include yourself in. At some point, you either get close enough to group Z(xiii) that you decide that the product (or image) is something you need, or you withdraw from the downward spiral and see what you were being drawn into. Then you can reject the stereotype and examine the product on merit alone. Not that most people do.

Don't worry though, even though advertisers have long years of practice and have this kind of thing down to a very fine art, you still see through and reject ads like it was going out of style. Not that style means that much, but you know what I'm trying to say. I hope.

[pfloide.livejournal.com]

Part of this, it seems to me, is that advertising in its modern form is strongly geared toward imagistic communication. You can find old-fashioned ads from a certain period that are full of long-winded sentences (mostly in newspapers like the New York Times), but they seem less persuasive. Modern advertising isn't aimed at convincing people that the product is superior, so much as entraining positive emotional associations with it (either that the product brings bliss, or that it dispels nagging insecurities).

xTo communicate a powerful message subconsciously, they probably can't afford to challenge stereotypes even if they want to - people will be more affected by noticing a challenged default assumption, and less affected by the product image. It would be like using big words you need to look up in a printed ad - you'd be so preoccupied with the word, the message would be lost, or simply because you spend so much time thinking about it, it can't successfully implant assumptions. Much of hypnosis and neurolinguistic programming depends on getting people to accept hidden assumptions just in order to parse and understand the message. Stereotypes are like a vocabulary of assumptions advertisers can draw on.

And any group at all can be a target market nowadays, particularly with internet advertising. That's why they collect detailed personal information about you whenever they can ("they" being ad agencies in this case). Given a portfolio, they can (a) gather demographics to create marketing campaigns, and (b) serve up a custom-made menu of ads to you personally. Notice that in order to describe what you are *as market* you had to use a bunch of somewhat independent adjectives: each one defines a significant market segment - it's only the overlap that's small.

And yes, you should read No Logo.

[robotics-girl.livejournal.com]

is that advertising in its modern form is strongly geared toward imagistic communication. You can find old-fashioned ads from a certain period that are full of long-winded sentences (mostly in newspapers like the New York Times), but they seem less persuasive.

This is because of the "intrinsic" proof held within the genre of photography. Even still it has a seeing is believing quality to it, it, in theory records only what it see's without bias. We know this to be true yet still are hard pressed to question it's authenticity. I suspect why it is so widely used as a form of persuasive communication... oh that and our culture is extremely ocular centric.

[pfloide.livejournal.com]

Yeah - partly "seeing is believing", and also, I think, partly that people think less about images. They just become an impression that your mind automatically recalls when you see a product in the store ("Oh - the one with the smiling woman - she's sexy...") and even if it has no other effect, it calls your attention to the product. If you're not paying attention, it also causes associations of certain emotions or ideas. With pictures, they can cause this effect without requiring you to pay attention.

Part of the reason this effect is so strong, though, is just what you said - people tend to just accept what they see as a picture more easily than, say, something they read as words. It just seems more real.

[robotics-girl.livejournal.com]

feminism has touched on this a lot. But in most cases they only touch on the feminine end. This was important in the early stages of feminism but now i think it's equally important to also deal the with stereotyps and boxes men are expected to fit into. The box in some cases seems much broader for men though i suspect in reality it is not. Today we were talking about technology as related to the body and look at a bunch of work by feminist artists. all were talking about the virtual woman, the constructed woman, the woman without subjectivity. THis of course they were arguing is a cultural construct of a media saturated culture which strives to create a virtual or hyper reality to sell stuff, ideas and images. They didn't once touch on the lack of subjectivity afforded to men in this scenario. I think in the beginnings of feminism it wasn't so bad, partly because of the lack of the media machine, though now, i guess in the name of equality or something it seems to be happening to men in as much of an insidious way as it happened to women. You noticed it looking at the ads but you are exceptional, a lot of people will notice the objectification of women right away now a days but fail to recognize those same constraints on masculinity.

blah
verbal vomit for the day.

[blowtorch-betty.livejournal.com]

I could kiss you right now.

It's so nice to see other people saying the things that are in my head.

I can't believe you haven't read that book! Fences and Windows, the follow up, is really good too.

Have you read Nickle and Dimed? I could go on but I'll spare you.

[freakykitten.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I mean, we HAVE No Logo, I just haven't gotten around to reading it. I'll probably start on the weekend!

[bethie8888.livejournal.com]

I never considered the lab coat stereotype but how true...