The Brand Of A Brand Ambassador

We live in the generation of fashion and technology. Our wants fashionably override our needs in life. The Australian fashion industry has come to expect a huge splash from Sportsgirl at the Melbourne L’Oreal Fashion Festival, and 2005 set a new benchmark. Ideally, the business will come to the customer by promoting their brand through the launches

Jean Kilbourne is an advocate for women and is leading a movement to change the way women are viewed in advertising. She opens up the curtains to reveal the hard truth we choose to ignore or even are too obtuse to notice. Women are objectified, materialized, and over-sexualized in order to sell clothes, products, ideas and more. As a woman, I agree with the position Kilbourne presents throughout her documentary Killing Us Softly 4: The Advertising’s Image of Women (2010) and her TEDx Talk The Dangerous Ways Ads See Women (2014.) She demonstrates time and again that these advertisements are dangerous and lead to unrealistic expectations of women.

In “The Fashion Industry: Free to be an Individual” by Hannah Berry, Hannah emphasizes how social media especially advertisements pressure females to use certain product to in order to be considered beautiful. She also acknowledges the current effort of advertisement today to more realistically depicts of women. In addition, these advertisements use the modern women look to advertise products to increase women self-esteem and to encourage women to be comfortable with one’s image.

Consumers of an advertised product have been subjected to years of ads that portray men as Gods, so naturally that is what they look for in the newest ads. For example advertisements for protein shakes use men that have exceptional muscle tone and muscle mass. All the advertisement shows is that person drinking the shake and not all the hours they put in at the gym, or years of working out they have gone through to get to that size and tone.

The target audience is both males and females in their late teens to mid twenties. This company gets the male side of the equation by getting their attention and interest drawn to an attractive woman scantly clad

Since its beginning, the brand been characterised by its gender defying designs, mixing masculinity and femininity in a very contemporary way and creating the idea of a shared closet. “It’s not gender for me, it’s just clothing,” Jonathan Anderson said. “I feel that in a modern culture, if it’s about gender then it’s a very dated concept.” This had been particularly notable in his menswear collections due to society’s more typically conservative attitudes towards the way men dress. J.W. Anderson has been known to send male models wearing mini skorts, crop tops, leather dresses and ruffled knee-high boots down the runways. This uncompromising approach of avant-garde minimal androgyny is a solid USP and provides a niche within the ready-to-wear market. According to Anderson in an interview with The Business of Fashion; “I think the brand will always be about androgyny,” he continues. “I love the relationship between men and women — that coupling. Men with men, women with women, women and men, that kind of mixture of sex and sharing of garments — I think it’s normal. It’s about wearing clothes that tell a story and an emotion; it’s not so much about gender.”

The sexualisation of women in advertising has become a very prominent and controversial issue in today’s society. Many brands, products and campaigns we are presented with portray women as being available and willing sexual objects, who exist to cater to the male gender. Gucci is one such brand that does this, focusing on emphasizing the sexual appeal of the female gender in order to sell their products, because as advertisers know: ‘sex sells.’ This new cultural shift can however, be seen as politically regressive for women, as the ideology it brings negatively impacts how women are viewed by society and how they view themselves.

Recently American Eagle’s lingerie brand, Aerie, completely changed their advertising campaign to AerieReal. The AerieReal campaign consists of only un-retouched and no Photoshopped models. Before the AerieReal campaign, Aerie used models that were retouched and Photoshopped to make the models appear skinner and “more attractive”. The AerieReal campaign’s focus is to defy what other lingerie brands, such as Victoria’s Secret, sell in their advertisements. Aerie is trying to challenge the message of true beauty is only if you are skinny by saying that “The real you is sexy”. Aerie is accomplishing this by changing their advertisements in the hopes that girls will grow up to be socialized with a more positive and inclusive message, defy gender roles associated with women, and lastly, confront stereotypes of white and colored women.

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.

Advertisers have been using masculinity and femininity to sell since the early 1900’s and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down. This is a controversial topic and has been heavily discussed within recent years.

This is Beyonce’s fragrance so it makes sense that Beyonce is the model for it. Since Beyonce is a worldwide phenomenon that many people look up to, she really grabs the audience’s attention by being in the ad. Not only is Beyonce a brand of her own, she is also a very attractive woman. Beyonce attracts men with this ad because she is Beyonce and the sexy glance that she is giving. She also lures women in with this glance because they see Beyonce looking like Beyonce and they think that if they get the same perfume that Beyonce uses, they will be sexy like she is. She is using ethos by including herself in this ad which shows that this product is a reliable and credible because Beyonce herself is using the product and being her own spokesperson/advocate for the product. This is personal branding which really works well for this ad because this is Beyonce’s product and it shows just how reliable this product

Although it is not expected that women be marketed to in the exact fashion that men are, it is understandable that a woman would like to be treated as more of an equal. When asked about her opinion on marketing to different genders, Shelley Rider stated, “although a talented professional should be capable of successfully marketing to both sexes, it is vital to a company that both sexes are represented in a board room where decisions are made. From my experience in marketing athletic apparel for Champion, I have found that the most successful and effective marketing strategies come from groups with both men and women present.”

With this new line of clothes, women are able to be first with not only athletic ability, but daily life.

Recognizing a person as being female or male is an essential part in our ability in the ways we associate with man or woman. Goffman’s theory, I absolutely believe it is still active in today’s society. Advertisements are everywhere, whether it being in magazines, commercials, billboard signs and many other places something is trying to be sold in order for the public to see and sell their product. The way advertisements portray models give the impression of what femininity and masculinity should be.

In society today, everything has a name for it. If the product doesn’t have a well-known name, it goes by name that a well-known product that is similar goes by. Branding has made its impact on society and it’s never going to go away. In this situation, all we can do from here is analyze more and more until we fully understand its presence in society and its effects. Branding has its biggest effects on consumerism, which makes us question consumerisms power in society. Has our society become one big, replicated consumer or can a consumer or even a person still be unique and individual? Branding creates competition amongst companies throughout the world and creates a competition for the consumers. Not only, it also creates issues, creates