Old Navy: Advertising Strategy Analysis

Since the emergence of advertising in American culture one thing that has remained constant is the visible truth that men and women are portrayed differently. In consideration to the evolution of man kind gender roles have evolved immensely throughout time, although advertisements have not kept up with this process of evolution. Companies to this day use their tactics and skills to reach out to specific genders such as pretty fonts with a stylish message, while advertisements towards men portray the character as strong and intimidating. The typical viewer can easily spot the difference in the portrayal of genders. Men are portrayed this way because the viewers look up to these characters, they want to be

What does an ad say about a society? When viewing a product advertisement, many people never stop to think why the ad and product appeals to them. However, when a more critical look is taken, it’s easy to see precisely how ads are carefully tailored to appeal to trending values of a targeted demographic, and how that makes it easy to examine the society of those whom the ad is targeted at. In the analytic writing Advertisements R Us, Melissa Rubin provides an excellent example of this, as she crafts a logical and clear analysis of a 1950’s Coca-Cola magazine ad which thoroughly explains how advertisements can reveal quite a great deal about the society in which they were created.

Advertising has come a long way in terms of advancement with the enlightenment of the new technological age we live in now. In James Twitchell’s essay “What We Are to Advertisers,” the author explains that mass production means mass marketing, and mass marketing means the creation of mass stereotypes. Generally, the use of stereotypical profiling in our society not only exists in regards to race, social class, personality type, and gender but also holds a special meaning in advertising circles as well. To advertisers, stereotyping has become an effective means to pitch their products according to the personality profiles they have concocted for us and are most times eerily accurate. For instance, according to advertisers, the daytime

What is it that drives commercials towards their target audience? Commercials can be for a certain age, race, and sometimes even a certain gender. Pop culture has influenced the minority groups and shed light to women 's rights or so it was thought. Lisa Shaffer a fellow student feels otherwise and believes that Pop culture has only defended traditional values and does little to challenge those who already have power . Commercials bring in gender norms and in Steve Craig’s article, “Men’s Men and Women’s Women” he speaks on four particular TV ads directed towards a particular gender. What is interesting is it shows a false image of the opposite sex to the audience being portrayed toward their preferences. It is the image the audience wants to see that appeals to them. This is all in an attempt to sell their products and take advantage of our desires and anxieties. Craig shows commercials brings gender norms that produce the ideas of what a man’s man and a woman’s woman which is why he would agree with Shaffer because it promotes an old way of thinking.

Contemporary visual media contributes to the social construction of gender in that the way that men and women are portrayed in advertising is vastly different.

What is it that drives commercials towards their target audience? Commercials can be aimed toward certain age, race, along with certain gender groups. Pop culture has influenced minority groups and shed light on women 's rights or so it may seem. Lisa Shaffer a fellow student feels otherwise and believes that Pop culture has only defended traditional values and does little to challenge those who already have power . Commercials bring in gender norms and in Steve Craig’s article, “Men’s Men and Women’s Women” he speaks on four particular TV ads directed towards male and female audiences. Interestingly enough these tv ads deliver a false image of the opposite sex to the audience catering to their preferences. It is the image of what the audience wants to see that appeals to them. This is all in an attempt to sell products and take advantage of our desires and anxieties. Craig shows how commercials bring gender norms that produce the stigmas of a man’s man and a woman’s woman, which makes it apparent that he would agree with Shaffer because it promotes an old way of thinking.

A quite common misconception of advertising is that only women are sexually objectified to sell a product, when in most cases men are just as sexually glorified. Men are shown in an array of different types of ads such as ones for cologne, razors, alcohol, etcetera. Depending on the product being sold there is a very distinguishable type of man being shown. Classy men in suits, manly guys with large muscles and excessive facial hair, or men surrounded by varying amounts of beautiful women. These three general types of males are depicted this way because that is generally how most men strive to be.

Cunard Line Ltd. is a cruise line that represents luxury and class providing four to five star cruise ship options. Their overall target market is mature adults with mid to very high income-levels. A lot of the marketing efforts put forth by Cunard were going towards tactical efforts and the promotion of individual ships as opposed to the promotion of the entire brand. Although most of the ads portrayed the same look and had an individually tailored paragraph and/or photo. Set

From TV commercials and product placement to billboards and posters, thousands of advertisements bombard the average American every day. To be effective, an ad must attract the consumer’s attention, maintain the public’s interest, create or stimulate desire, and create a call for action. These advertisements can be small enough to fit on a three-inch screen or large enough to cover the side of a building. But no matter what the size, in this world of ever-shrinking attention spans and patience levels, ads have to be efficient in portraying their ideas. In order to successfully depict certain ideas, advertisements rely on shortcuts. These shortcuts usually involve stereotypes. In the media, stereotypes are inevitable because the audience

Roughly 25 percent of Boomers, or 20 million of the generation's 80 million members, are expected to possess what life-stage expert Geoff Meredith terms an "age accepting" mentality by 2008. This is anticipated to spur the rise of more realistic marketing images aimed at the generation, which continues to be overlooked in fashion ad campaigns that cater mostly to young shoppers. Indeed, he observed, "Baby Boomers look at today's ads and say 'That's not me."'

Trimble (2014) states that ‘With online video quickly becoming a key means for people to satisfy their information a entertainment needs, small businesses that fail to include it in their internet marketing strategies will do so at peril.’ But this is not true only to small businesses, Larger businesses that don’t take advantage of this, will lack the presence that other business have by implementing this advertising strategies.

“Sex sells” is probably one of the most used catch phrases that every generation understands starting in their adolescents. With the right to freedom of information and availability of the internet access, there cannot be limits set on adolescent’s exposure to such media marketing. This becomes a challenge as every generation seems to be getting more active and savvy in their use of technology, earlier and earlier. However, the phenomenon of barely clothed men is new even to the younger generations today as it corresponded with the recent normalization of gay culture in the mass media as suggested by Parasecoli. Further, the author confirms that “the enthrallment with the body image, previously imposed mostly on women, is now becoming a common feature in identification processes” (p. 284). Seeing a man in an overtly sexual ad, even when the product that is being sold is unrelated to sex, has become a common

Advertising is a form of communication used to encourage or persuade an audience to continue or take some new action. But when advertisers produce an ad, they have many different variables that come into play if they want to successfully persuade consumers. The first most important step they have to figure out is, what type of audience they are trying to target. They then create images and intend to appeal specifically to the values, hopes, and desires of that particular audience. This is why someone would rather pick the well-known Malboro cowboy ads over the new female cigarettes of Virginia Slims. Each of these ads targets a specific audience;

There have been many advertising techniques over the past 50 years or so, but one of these changes is the adaption of ads to the shifting mind sets of people over time. An example of this previous statement is Folgers® Coffee. In the 1960s Folgers® launched an entire series of commercials which were demeaning towards women. The husbands in the commercials always had something witty and humiliating to say about the wives’ coffee, in one of the commercials the husband even goes on to say that the secretaries at his office made better coffee; the wives, sad and defeated, talked to a friend about the problem, prompting the friend to suggest she use Folgers®. The commercial always ended with the husbands’ approval and the wives feeling satisfied for attending to their husbands’ needs and wants.

In the marketer’s eyes, in order to attract people’s attention on what they want is to first segregate the commercial in to which type of person the product is going to be sold to, then break it down in an obvious way – showing major differences in the general public’s interests, sorting ‘the consumer’ down to a more focused group of people; as if one were looking past a continuous stream of red squares, then notice’s a blue square, he or she will notice the blue square standing out from the red squares; the blue square being the advertisement that fits to that person’s personality. For example if there was a commercial for a truck produced by a typical American organization, the advertisement shows masculinity and manliness in extensive ways, with mud, heavy weights, and other things. With a Victoria’s Secret advertisement, the milieu is very sensual and scandalous, showing light colors such as pink or white, all while having a soft, fluffy tone to it. There is no escape in gender roles and profiling when it comes to marketing; people who want to sell their product will use the most effective means necessary, no matter if it is morally sound or not . If companies were to have general broadened commercials, then summarize a product and ends up not narrowing down to specific consumer needs, then in most cases it would not interest the customer and could quite possibly render the purpose utterly useless.