Analysis of Two Advertisements
One of the massive international industries in the world is advertising. The money that it makes is inestimable because it successfully sells, and attains most the aims of their business. It promotes ideas and products to people using the media. A lot of people feel overwhelmed by the huge number of ads that bombard them everyday. It saturates every media around to meet its target. Adverts now appear not only on television; they also appear on radio, billboards, Internet, cell phones and numerous other ways. It can be argued that they have a profound effect on people’s appearance and our society.
Advertising in my view is a competitive industry. Advertisers are
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The industry creates and reinforces stereotypes of what it means to be a man and a woman. This would then create great confusion to both genders of how a person’s image should be. For example, advertisers have made men, as mentioned before, obsessed with their performance and women obsessed with their appearance.
The first advert I have chosen is targeted to a female audience. The feature of this particular advert shows a young woman staring back at the audience, smiling. It is a really close picture to her face, her hair neatly tied back, and her eyes have a slight glow. Her lips have a slight shine and her skin is perfectly clear. This instantly indicates that the model of this advertisement takes care of her looks and appearance. It is inviting the target audience, as if calling you in to a completely perfect world. Already, we can tell advertisers are concentrating on physical appearance and presenting the product as a cure for unattractiveness.
This advert is trying to sell ‘Maybeline Fresh Matte Foundation.’ Beside the model is a clear picture of the product. It is big enough and is well laid out across the page to be seen from distance. Effective colours have been used in the background to make this advert eye-catching; the background is baby blue and white. The writing is all written in navy.
A lot of quotations have been used as well to get more attention from the
Advertisers often emphasize sexuality and the importance of physical attractiveness in an attempt to sell products, but researchers are concerned that this places pressure on women to focus more on their appearances. As stated in an article from Body Image and Advertising, the average woman sees 400 to 600 advertisements per day and by the time she is 17 years old, she has received over 250,000 commercial messages through the media. While only 9% of advertisements have a direct statement about beauty, many more implicitly emphasize the importance of beauty- particularly those that target both women and girls. (HealthyPlace)
Gender role bias in advertisements has been so prevalent for so long that the untrained eye wouldn't even discern it. All the same, these biases, for the most part, put women in subordinate positions and men in dominant ones. This assumption on both the genders is unfair and demeaning. These ads portray women as subservient and play toys for men. Not only do the models depict an image nowhere near close to reality, but their bodies are scantily clad and what few clothes they are wearing are very revealing.
Everyday our lives are affected by advertising and media. Companies use advertising to take advantage of every aspect of people’s lives. As a result, a change needs to happen in advertising, for the negative impacts of advertising are hurting the cultural norms of society. Everyday companies use advertising as a tool to take advantage of the relationships of consumers.
Jean Kilbourne’s 2010 documentary Killing Us Softly 4 discusses the idea that the businesses of advertising and commercialism have promoted specific body ideals for women in our modern day society by the methods in which they market towards their target audiences, specifically how women are portrayed in their ads. Throughout the documentary, Kilbourne is extremely critical of the advertising industry, accusing it of misconduct. She argues that objectification and superficial, unreal portrayal of women in these advertisements lower women’s self-esteem. Women have many industries that try to gear their products towards them with apparel, beauty, and toiletries being amongst the most prominent. The majority of advertisements put out by companies
Advertising has been engrained in our lives since birth. It is something that is everywhere, whether be on a wall, on TV, or on a billboard on a busy highway. You might not think you are aware of its effects, but it triggers something subconsciously. Advertisement has been sexualized in a way that appeals and affects people in an unconscious level, it may also influence one’s view of gender roles. In the film Killing US Softly, Jean Kilbourne discusses how advertising has changed the way not only women, but also how man view themselves. A woman must look beautiful, be sexy and thin, while a man must be attractive, muscular and powerful to achieve the “perfect look” and in doing so, both gain acceptance.
Advertisements play a big part in our society and are significant for products to be seen to attract people’s attention and be persuaded to buy. They might not always be interested in purchasing anything but instead just taking a peak, especially when women are involved. As time goes by, more women are depicted as sexual icons in adverts. This is true in sports adverts with men portrayed as masculine and athletic, while women are characterised as sexy and lacking athletic potential even though they are well-known athletes. Many people such as Goffman (1979) suggested that advertising images transfers cultural ideals of both genders explicitly or subtly, by
Advertising’s role of creating gender stereotypes then follows children into their teenage years as adverts continue to have an effect on how children’s identities are constructed (Frith and Mueller 92). Advertisements continue to use visual images of men and women to persuade people to purchase certain products (Cortese 57). Advertisements take a product, remove the meaning associated to that product then insert a new meaning in order to create a new cultural meaning ( McFall 66). Advertisements create a new meaning of what it means to be attractive as women shown in advertisements stereotype beauty or attractiveness to be associated with young, slim and perfect flawless body shapes (Cortese 59. This is a problem as advertisements present unrealistic beauty norms by using intensive retouching tools to create perfectly proportionate models (Frith and Mueller 92). Although a very small portion of women actually have the body shapes shown in advertisements, women are
Advertisements can be defined as published papers or videos used to promote a product and to persuade customers to buy a certain product from a certain company. Whether people buy a product because of an advertisement or simply because of the brand, product sales have gone up ever since the firsts ads were seen around the 1920’s. While ads constantly use the same tactics to influence people, the tactics change based on the evolving society. For example, the 7 Up company have advertised their drinks since the 1930’s, but over time they have developed and adapted to the changing society.
At the current time advertising can be represented in many ways - as a business, a fundamental ingredient of entrepreneurship or as an alternative way of communicating (William F. 2004). Originating from ancient times, its main purpose is to sell a product. William F. (2004, 6) claims that “every consumer is exposed to hundreds or even thousands of advertisements every day”. We view advertisements everywhere: on TV, banners, Web-sites, in magazines, newspapers, on sport events or even printed on tea cups, and all this is done with an aim to attract our attention. However, there are some advertisements which are targeted on a particular group of people, depending on age, sex, interests or even religion. These advertisements are defined as
The purpose of this essay is to understand how over time advertisements have changed and evolved with the times. Also. Its purpose is to understand how companies advertised in the face of adversity. Companies change the way they advertise with the changing times. These companies have to know how to get the attention of the people they are focusing on, therefore they have to know what the people of the times want. If someone is willing to dig deep into an advertisement and read between the lines they are likely to find a lot more meaning than simply the words that are written or the pictures that are illustrated.
Women in advertisements have always been portrayed negatively due to degrading stereotypes, making them feel self-conscious and stopping them from doing things from fear of judgement. “Fear of judgement is stopping many of us from taking part in exercise. But as thousands of women up and down the country are proving, it really doesn’t have to” (This girl can, 2015). Advertisers are conscious that stereotypes are not an exact representation of women, but ads with sexy women sell, therefore they have no reason to change them. Advertisers love to use gender representation as according to Barthel (1988), they restructure adverts exploiting gender identity to attract people’s attention and
The overall tone of the picture is blue. The colors make the ad look frightening, which contributed for the artwork to be as frightening. The ad is absolutely a colorful ad. Each object is of different color and the background tone is bluish with a bit of a fading effect. The color plays a very crucial role in this ad. Since the theme is Halloween, the visuals are supposed to be in scary, gloomy tone and the color used precisely fits the needs. Colorful ads usually attract the views eye and make the complete look of the ad very trendy (Ciotte
Consumer advertising propels an unviable ideal of the feminine figure. The vast majority of advertising uses a feminine form whose key features (e.g. thinness, particular figure, unblemished complexion) that are incomparable to most real women 's bodies. This can create misleading expectations on the part of women and of society at large. The depiction of females in advertising is also highly stylized and this can significantly distort its viewers ' connection between what they see in the advertisement and what women actually experience and accomplish in reality.
The world is run by advertisements. Advertisements are an essential part of businesses and influences millions of people in their everyday choices. They are used to showcase certain products to the common people. A strong ad can result in many people purchasing a certain product while a weak advertisements can have the opposite effect. The first ad for this assignment is for a van with the funny message, “Picks up five times more woman than a Lamborghini”, and an image of guy having a good time with five attractive young ladies. The second ad is for the popular TV show Game of Thrones. The ad depicts a picture of a powerful dragon which is printed in the New York Times. Dragons have become the emblem of the show and has become the show’s most recognizable traits. The two advertisements chosen for this assignment do a good job of showcasing their product by using creative thinking and humor to reach an audience, and this distinguishes them from other ads.
In terms of women and sex appeal, the world of advertising has changed a considerable amount. Many of the advertisements which are seen in newspapers, magazines, and television fail to portray women in a more positive light. The image of females in numerous advertisements are merely viewed as fascinating "objects" while they are also being displayed in a fashion that is supposed to appeal only to men, i.e. exploitation of the body. Though these types of advertisements are very effective at selling their products to consumers, it seems as if the minds ' of women, especially younger women/teenage girls are being corrupted as they are pressured to live up to the ideal image: sexy and thin with a little extra curves.