Saturday, November 26, 2011

Why are classic boring advertisements always aimed at women?

Have you ever noticed how these days the quality of advertising has improved?

The commercial break often is more entertaining than the TV-shows that are interrupted by them. It’s because marketers feel like people have become so overexposed to advertising that people have become extremely hard to influence.

To respond to this marketers have adopted a new vision on their customers. They no longer see their customers as people that need to buy their products. They see their customers as people that need to enjoy their brand and products. They try to make as intelligent, original and entertaining advertising as they can in order to influence their potential customers.

Have you ever noticed how about 95% of this new original, creative and entertaining advertising is directed to men (or both men and women)?

Have you ever noticed how about 95% of the old classic boring advertising is directed at women?

Marketing actions directed to women are usually clearly made by marketers that seem to assume that their customers are a brainless herd that needs to be directed in the right direction, their direction.

It often excels in a lack of originality. If you’ve seen one advertisement for washing products you’ve seen them all. If it’s something you haven’t seen a zillion times before, it usually is because it wants to give you something new to be insecure about. ‘You may not smell how much your house stinks, but other people do.’ ‘Have you ever thought about how ugly your armpits are?’

On top of that advertisements that are aimed at women, usually have a woman that you are supposed to want to be. In Italy where everybody has brown hair, this woman you should aspire, usually is a blonde. In Asia, Africa and Latin-America she usually is fair-skinned. So the message of these advertisements is: ‘you may not ever be able to be blonde like me, but you do can have a house that smells like mine’ or ‘you won’t ever be white like me, but you do can get lovely armpits like mine.’ One of the few examples of a diverse advertising campaign is the Ikea-catalog, Ikea, coming from the country with all the natural blondes.

Advertising directed at women often assumes women are stupid. It encourages old insecurities and creates new ones. The marketing industry is not dominated by men. There are nearly just as many men as women in it. In companies aimed at women there usually are more women than men working in the marketing department.

So the problem isn’t that men use marketing to make women feel down so they can more easily suppress them. The problem is that there are too many women and men in the marketing industry that see (other) women as idiots. The problem is that there aren’t enough women and men that are brave enough to create a marketing strategy aimed at making women enjoy their brand.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Victoria's Secret

I have written this post because I am participating in the FFB round-up of this month. I had written a post earlier that I find better suited for the round-up, but you’re supposed to submit only recent blogposts (I think), so I have decided to join the club of people that nag about Victoria’s Secret.

I feel like Victoria’s Secret often is depicted as the enemy of women. It has turned into the symbol of how women are objectified, but I find this extremely exaggerated.

First of all, they have advertisements and catwalk shows with women in lingerie, because it’s a lingerie brand. I don’t know how else you’re going to show lingerie.

Secondly, they indeed use only beautiful women, but so do all other fashion/beauty brands and 90% of all non-fashion/beauty brands.

They could also indeed use more different body types, but they don’t make bras for different body types. Their bras only go up to DD. I don’t think they don’t make these, because they hate women with big breasts. I think it’s more likely because bigger breast have different needs. A larger version of a good bra for an A-cup is not a good bra for an F-cup, because it wouldn’t offer enough support. Bras for big breasts are another product and it requires another expertise, an expertise that Victoria’s Secret doesn’t have.

It also is true that only a few women can still feel comfortable with their own body after watching a Victoria’s Secret advertisement, but removing beautiful women from the streetview is not the right way to make women feel satisfied with their own bodies. You can’t blame beautiful women for making you feel ugly. There will always be people that are more beautiful than you and you should just get over that.

Victoria’s Secret sometimes is accused of exploiting their angels. These angels are usually already high-earning models. They don’t need to do a Victoria’s Secret runway show. They can easily say no. Compared to runway shows of other brands, Victoria’s Secret probably is one of the best employees. Other fashion brands use underaged models. Other fashion brands prefer models with a certain ‘aesthetic’ that you can only achieve by not eating. If a model doesn’t speak English it’s not a problem, because than she won’t be able to say she doesn’t want to do something or to complain she hasn’t been paid. That is what I call exploiting.

The Victoria’s Secret angels also are criticized for objectifying themselves, but I think if women want to walk around in their underwear it’s not wrong as long as it is their own decision. Some women want to wear a veil and some women want to wear mini-skirts and if you would ever have talked to either of them, you would know that both these women usually are blessed with an incredibly big mouth. What women wear says nothing about how much they submit themselves to men. It says something about where they draw the line on how much of their body they want to show to the world.

If you want to read the blogpost I had written earlier on fashion and sexuality, you can read it here.