Seductive Advertising In Advertising

Riding in the backseat of the car, I am observing the world without noticing. Billboards are passing, the radio is playing, and storefronts are prominent. Ubiquitous advertisements meet the eye and this acquaintance is influential at the most influencing time of one’s adolescent life. The marketer’s goal is to find new and creative ways to advertise to young adults. By making ads bigger, brighter, and more animated in order to reach them in the schoolhouse, through textbooks, and technology. As this is business as usual for marketers, these persuasive communication techniques unconsciously, psychologically, and cognitively effect the minds of the younger generation. Not only influencing them, but also blinding them to the bottom line and selling a product at any cost. Sadly, this practice robs youth of their innocence.

In her essay “Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body,” Susan Bordo manages to recognize an underlying fundamental change in society’s attitude towards advertisements and specifically sees that unfold in the growing shift towards male sexually oriented advertisements with a focus on feministic qualities. Furthermore, since Bordo wrote this essay in the 1990s, the advancements in technology have caused growing ideological differences between generations as their responses to things like social media and advertisements elicit contrasting reactions. The Millennials, also known as Generation Y, have been born into the various outlets of social media and have become accustomed to a greater sense of comfort with the Internet as they share all of their life stories and photos with other human beings. On the other hand, Generation X and the Baby Boomers were born into an era that didn’t depend on technology to perform everyday tasks. As a result, their mindsets make them reluctant to the changes in technology, which inadvertently makes them more uncomfortable to any massive changes in social media. By using sexually oriented advertisements, Kraft Foods and Axe, effectively display differing ideological differences between Generation X and Generation Y. In conjunction, Bordo’s elements of the gaze, objectification, and the rocks and leaners pose allow us to better understand the construction of the advertisements and the role they play on influencing each targeted generation.

Television commercials, newspaper sales magazines, and online promotional videos are all created each day with one goal in mind; to promote a product or products and to gain a sale. However, in recent commercial advertisings, companies are creating ads that leave the viewer(s) teary eyed and with a more profound idea of how we can make society or ourselves better; all without forcing a product to the viewer. The focus of my research is on the Always Campaign Commercial: Like A Girl, which aired during the 2015 Super Bowl. The purpose of this research is to understand what the commercial itself is portraying while not focusing on the slogan ‘Like A Girl’. For the purpose of this research, I have studied video clips from the creation and behind the scenes of the commercial, the actors within the commercial, articles and editorial videos with feedback about this commercial, as well as studied similar commercials that released around this same time.

No longer is the land of advertisement showing only beautiful women in the media, but now handsome men are also dominating the scene. Yet as Glind says, “despite the apparent similarities, there are in fact profound differences in the ways in which men’s and women’s bodies are represented sexually, (160). Although both groups are now being sexualised in the media there are differences in the way they are coached to perform and the overall impression leads to a acute presentation of masculinity and femininity. In this essay I would like to explore the sexualization on men in the media and how it regards certain races and characteristics as attractive and how it influences the ideals of an attractive body.

Yet as much as “sex sells” to some consumers is also turns customers away. Both members of the public and academic critics of advertising sometimes consider that advertising steps over the line of decency and appropriateness in its representations. A survey in the United Kingdom found that two thirds of women thought that advertisers were taking the sexual approach to selling products too far. Especially when companies, like Diesel, use this approach even though their product has nothing to do with sex itself.

“Pseudofeminist”, means that it woos it’s female viewers. The ad is saying that the product shows dominance and it does so by inverting the actualities of women’s lot through homer of imperceptible details. For example, in this marriage it is the wife, and not the husband, who gets to keep her name. The women in this instance is showing dominance by not changing her name.

Why did a thirty-second mobile app game advertisement catch so many people’s attention during the 2015 Super Bowl? The thirty-second advertisement for the game called, “Game of War” which featured Kate Upton, pulled several eyes towards the screen. This advertisement used many ways to draw America’s attention, one of them being by using a women’s sexual figure to promote the recognition of the game. Additionally, they also use gender, media and advertising to promote fame and this is a clever way for the use of advertising companies. Advertising companies now seem to be using attractive woman and men as their strategy to promote sales because they can use the women’s sexual figure and the men’s powerful subject to lure people’s interest.

Persuasion is the most important aspect of advertising. The elements used to persuade audiences are known as ethos, logos, and pathos. Ethos establishes credibility or authority, pathos evokes emotions, and logos appeals to logic. In advertising, pathos is the most common appeal. The advertisement selected for this analysis is designed to target smokers through the use of ethos, pathos, and logos. In the Quit.org commercial, pathos is the most present of the three appeals. The effectiveness of this advertisement stands out because of its concern for the well-being of all viewers, especially smokers, and its reliance on emotional reciprocation between those in the commercial and its viewers.

Although some argue that advertisements do not reflect society, I believe that idealized female figure in advertisements, from the Cultural Revolution to modern China, can not only reflect changes of real social value but also suggest core value of society itself, based on women’s physical appearance and level of control in ads.

How are commercial ads changing the way we perceive and consume products? Our technological world is ever evolving and in order to preserve their stance in this evolution companies must adjust the way they advocate their products. During Super Bowl XLIX Always released a revolutionary commercial investigating how we identify with the phrase “like a girl”. The “like a girl” campaign was not only groundbreaking because it was the first feminine product to land a spot during the Super Bowl but it also created a movement from a video.

I would trigger conversations by talking to people about subliminal advertisements and the expansion of hidden messages within the entertainment industry. I would focus on how in culture, subliminal market immense in 1957, through movies, music, and commercials. The significance of subliminal advertisements, affects the unconscious mind of people, without people even noticing that messages change their course of actions. Subsequently, some of people’s favorite movies can manipulate and motivate them into conveying coercion actions. Subliminal topic is currently in society to modify political, religion, and social platforms of people's’ state of mind, or to promote a product. In a 1957 movie, the movie advertised the word “hungry, eat popcorn,” and “drink Coca-Cola” to influence people to drink Coca-Cola and eat popcorn frequently. As a result, the rise of consumption and the company's profit increased, simply just by promoting the two products within the movie. I am confounded on how I never realized that subliminal advertising was implemented into our entertainment market. I am positive, people will be astonished based on these intriguing facts. All along, society was oblivious and brainwashed via to the marketing field. Overall, it can probably lead people into boycotting several brands, or artists from purchasing their products or music albums.

Persuasion can be used as one of the most influential ways to convince people to do anything. A key way to using persuasion is to influence the audience; there is always a catch. The persuader intends to influence the persuadee to their means to an end or goal. Companies use persuasion in many around the world. Persuasion is worldwide, companies are not the only ones that use it. Children use persuasion daily to convince their parents as well as students with their professors. As previously mentioned, the act of persuading will always have an end goal. More importantly, there is a process to persuasion especially in advertising.

There have been studies showing how subject’s mood and behavior changed when exposed to subliminal messages. These studies have looked at if subliminal messages could influence our desires (Benoit & Tomas, 1992). Advertising agencies really benefit from subliminal messages because of the affects they cause. In a study by Talbot and Duberstein (1991), they revealed that subjects who are exposed to subliminal food messages were more likely to eat than subjects who were not. This research can help other people to know what to watch and what not to watch. This literature review will look at how subliminal messages in advertising (such as commercials, billboards, magazine ads, etc.) can change our behavior and/or mood and it will also look at how this could affect our eating habits. This is an important question because we are exposed to it all the time and we need to know how it’s affecting our lives.

Advertisements are way for companies to market their products in magazines, commercials, public art, etc. Lancome is a high end makeup and skincare brand originated in Paris, France. Herbal Essences is an affordable hair product brand found in most drug stores and is based out of New York City. Both advertisements sell the concept of beauty as luxury. However, their views on luxury differ: advertisement number one focuses on beauty as relaxed and exotic, while advertisement number two focuses on beauty as wealth and power. Luxury is a condition of abundance or great ease and comfort.

Advertising has become an integral part of our society. In the world of advertising, many tactics and strategies are used to lure consumers into purchasing a product or delivering a message. Producers try various ways to attract people’s attention, and persuasive advertising is one of the many methods they use to promote ideas that can earn them consumers’ trust and loyalty as well as to advertise for their products. In persuasive advertising, advertisers try to apply the appropriate use of persuasive tools to appeal to the consumer and get their message through. The BMW advertisement of texting and driving uses pathos, or the emotion of regret, and the use of this emotion is being applied effectively because regret is associated with all car accidents especially those due to texting and driving.