Victoria's Secret Parody

Advertisements are everywhere; while driving you may see them on a billboard, while watching tv, looking through your phone, and even while watching your favorite youtuber. Advertisements have been around so long that the techniques behind them are down to a science. Advertisements have been around for so long that they are as apart of our culture as much as television or music. Many times, advertisements will use certain strategies in order to sell their product. The most common being Aristotle’s three modes of persuasion ethos, logos, and pathos. Ethos is an appeal to someone’s ethics, their character, it is used to convince the audience of the author’s credibility. The third appeal, pathos, is an appeal to the audiences’ emotion. These strategies have been proven to work very well, so what if an advertisement implemented many of these strategies and still received backlash or wasn’t well received. Well, Pepsi found themselves in that position with their advertisement featuring Kendall Jenner. The advertisement used appeals to pathos, ethos, and even implemented many parts of North American culture, so why did it receive so much backlash? By analyzing pathos, and ethos, I will determine why it received much backlash despite having everything a commercial should.

In an article written by The Onion, the writers chose to parody the method in which products are marketed towards consumers through use of common satirical strategies such as paradoxes, stylistic devices, sarcastic diction, and hyperboles. The product that is described is a shoe insert which supposedly enables the soles of one’s foot to “heal your entire body as you walk.” The piece satirizes the overzealous nature behind the ads presented by companies, the authors are quick to utilize satirical strategies in order to illustrate advertisements as overly exaggerated.

I remember the first time I ever stepped foot into a Victoria’s Secret, I was fifteen years old. I was mesmerized by the bright pink and white walls. The signature PINK dogs scattered all over the PINK side of the store. The cosmetics section was sparkling in the distance and the signature fragrances filled the air. I remember the feeling of finally being grown up, here I was shopping for fragrances and bras in the same store that my Mom and Aunt bought theirs at. When you are fifteen there is nothing else in the world that matters more than feeling grown up, you are no longer a kid and there is a whole new world for you to explore. Talking to women, most have the same first experience at the store, in fact it is nearly the closest thing to magic some young girls will experience in this era of their lives. This unfortunately, is not going to be about that coming of age experience this paper is a whole lot deeper than any fifteen year old girl buying her first grown up bra could ever imagine. Victoria’s Secret a common name in households with women from young adulthood to mature womanhood. What is Victoria’s actual “secret” you may ask? That would be a whole behind the scenes world of global fair trade issues and sweatshops.

Viral sharing is the act of mass circulation of a particular meme, video or message on social media (Wilson 2005, p.1). Nelson-Field, Riebe and Sharp (2013, p. 13) describe the way an individual’s emotional response drives the process of viral content. They found emotions, but in particular extreme emotions, play an important role towards the selection of content that is most shared. A study by Nelson-Field, Riebe and Newstead (2013 p. 208-209) analysed 800 videos using a list of emotions developed to capture both low and high arousal while accounting for both positive and negative themes to determine the characteristics that resulted in content becoming viral. The results determined that low arousal videos and videos containing positive content accounted for three quarters of the videos studied. Additionally, there was no significant correlation between viral sharing and positive or negative content. However, videos that evoke high emotions are shared on a larger scale than videos drawing a low emotional response. Surprisingly, non-commercial material was as successful as commercial videos in creating viral sharing (Nelson-Field, Riebe and Newstead 2013 p. 210). Content on Facebook that is effective in drawing a strong emotional response is shared more widely and quickly, proving to have a stronger impact

In this article “Sexist Humor in Facebook...” Strain, Saucier, & Martens (2015) aim at unveiling the perception of sexism, sexist humor and relationship with sexist humor and gender norms. The author aims to understand whether there are differences between the perceptions of sexist humor that targets men, compared to that targets women.

The meanings and perceptions that viewers take from television commercials are subjective. The purpose of a commercial and the way the audience understands a commercial has a lot to do with the personality of the individual watching. Race, gender, socioeconomic status, age, and religion are all factors which contribute to how given audiences understand pop culture and Television. Audience ethnography is a tool used by television critics to describe and understand how different groups construct meaning from television texts and mediums. This tool is useful because it helps producers connect to their audience and allows them to assume what their implied viewers

Imagine a collection so wild, so versatile, so sexy, every body shape becomes perfect. The Victoria’s Secret Brand founded by Roy Raymond has taken over millions of store in the U.S. world and can be seen through many commercials, billboards, and magazine advertisements. The Company specializes in lingerie, intimate apparels, swimwear, sleepwear, beauty products, and etcetera. The brand was created for women to feel beautiful, sexy and confident behind close door for personal reasons and to also feel upper class elite, because the brand itself is known for having high quality material and being very expensive. “The world’s best bras. The sexiest lingerie. The most beautiful supermodels. Discover what’s hot now.” (Victoria’s Secret Ads) is an

Increasingly, we are witnessing a new phenomenon of parodies that serve as brands, labels, taglines, logos for a commercial gain. Such as, Black Bear Roastery pokes fun at the coffee giant, Starbucks' dark roast by cheekily selling its own dark roast under the label “Charbucks”. A bar owner names his kitschy establishment the “Velvet Elvis” – rings a bell? Mr. Presley definitely did not find that funny. “The South Butt” merchandise sold by a college student with the tagline “Never Stop Relaxing” has irked VF Corporation owner of the brand “The North Face” that uses the tagline “Never Stop Exploring”. Heard of Gucci Goo diapers and Chewy Vuiton dog toys? Yes, they exist in the real world. A Vermont non-conformist shouting out to people “Eat

Satire, as the Oxford dictionary defines it, is a genre of literature, in which vices, foolishness, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, corporations, government or society itself, into improvement. And although satire is usually meant to be humorous, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, used to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society. Thus I contend that to uphold the role they play in society cartoonists should absolutely be prepared to criticize what society sees as normal and accepted.

Recently, Victoria's Secret launched a worldwide advertisement for Collegiate clothing, attempting to appeal to female college students but instead succeeded in doing little more than belittling women. John Berger’s book, Ways of Seeing elaborates on how publicity methods speak to consumers in an emotional and spiritual level to lure the consumer into believing they need a specific product to look a certain way. He describes publicity as being its own language and essentially “working on a natural appetite for pleasure,” (Berger 132) offering an ideal image of oneself. In relation to Berger’s Ways of Seeing, the Victoria's Secret Collegiate advertisement uses Berger’s concepts of publicity by depicting light complected women wearing college gear and being primarily concerned with their appearance rather than their education, promoting an unrealistic expectation or ideal of women in college.

In the past years, women were frowned upon whenever they portrayed sexuality in the way they dressed, acted or presented themselves to men. Now the times have drastically changed, the way society presents women in social media, television commercials, and even celebrities, all tend to glorify the sex appeal. Victoria Secret and Fredrick’s of Hollywood are two prominent companies that revolve around promoting woman’s sexuality. While analyzing both company’s websites, I found various similarities regarding color schemes, products, and marketing strategies. Victoria’s Secret is a multimillion dollar company that was founded in 1977, originally it was designed to be a high-end store where men could purchase women’s lingerie and undergarments for their wives without feeling uncomforted.

We both researched for a suitable academic piece of disgusting in the seminar on the topic of satire. The “limits of satire” was the academic piece we selected to build our seminar discussion around. We gave the seminar the title of “ Satire does it help the audience engage with social issues or is it a bit of fun” with the aim to trigger a meaningful and balanced discussion about satire been a form of protest delivered via creative media methods.

While celebrities in commercials have less than two minutes to recite their lines, Youtubers have the ability to dedicate lengthy videos to describe why each product worked and why their audience should buy it — this unlimited amount of broadcasting time gives Youtubers the opportunity to share personal anecdotes to gain the trust of their viewers. Dulce Candy welcomes her viewers to trust her opinion by discussing her oral issues, as well the insecurities she faced going through adolescence with braces. In Jack Solomon’s essay “Masters of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising,” he asserts that the effectiveness of advertising can transform products into symbols of belonging and inclusiveness (Solomon 545). Although Solomon’s essay does not use Youtube as a lens to describe this method of marketing, Youtubers exemplify this tactic in many videos. When Dulce Candy shares her personal struggles with her viewers, she is acting as an inclusive friend, making her audience feel as if they belong on her channel. This inclusiveness that Solomon describes is what makes Youtube a successful marketing platform, because viewers have the opportunity to familiarize themselves with these Youtubers and feel as if they are truly connecting with the reviewers in a real relationship. In terms of marketing effectiveness, when Dulce Candy discusses how the

Advertising tells us about our society: our society is dominated by a belief in magic. It is magic systems whereby material goods have the immense power of transformation it also discuss cooperation marketing strategy explicitly and puffery brings their audience into the world of fantasy. A perfect example of these analyzes would be the Budweiser advertisement. These radio ads evoke excitement, and it provokes the needs of affiliation. These announcers are usually men’s who play the role of a comedian. In this instance, we would use the radio outlet. In movies, commercial and on billboards, advertisers use technique such as close shot angles and attractive females and males to highlight the idea of belonging to a social group is fun and by buying their product you will be amongst the cool crowd. The message surrounded by alcohol is fun, sexy, desirable and harmless. Alcohol is

Bill Wasik’s book And Then There’s This, capitalizes on a number of common trends in today’s world of media. While Wasik touches on a number of different stories and events that were viral sensations there is one specific claim he states that I find to be very prevalent among current social media platforms. Wasik claims, “What spreads we then imitate, amplify, anatomize, satirize; and some of what we thereby create spreads as well, providing us with data to analyze and giving other meme-makers one more example to emulate.” (81) This quote is relatable to the vast majority of current viral hits that are consuming parody/comedy social media accounts. A specific viral hit that has undoubtedly plummeted into Internet success is Dr. Phil’s “Cash