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Samantha, Rachael, yes: Women over 40 are, if not yet terminal, terminally uncool. That seems to be the sole reason that More magazine
has not been able to attract the kind of advertisers you would think
would sign up for a magazine with 1.3 million readers whose average
income is $93,000. Ironically, More's advertising staple of
processed food manufacturers has helped insulate them from the ad page
drop-off suffered by magazines that rely on luxury brands. But the
notions behind this de facto ad boycott are themselves antiquated and
based on decades-old thinking about consumers ... (Read the rest of this post, or the whole conversation, in DoubleX.)
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I can’t quite get my head around the piece about More magazine in today’s New York Times.
Apparently the fact that a magazine aimed at women over 40 is pulling
readers who are women over 40—and rich ones, at that—is off-putting to
advertisers. Silly me, I thought all advertisers cared about was money!
But even though “the average More reader makes about $93,000, around $30,000 more than the average for Vogue, Allure or Harper’s Bazaar,
according to Mediamark Research and Intelligence,” the ads it runs are
notably low end: “The July/August issue’s ads included Crystal Light,
Pringles, Coffee-Mate, packaged meals from Oscar Mayer, Bertolli, Tyson
and Marie Callender’s, and two liquor ads—for wines under $10. Oh, and
Friskies.” (Read the rest of this post, or the whole conversation, in DoubleX.)
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Generally, I try to avoid advertiser-created viral videos like the plague. Created by corporations, they tend to make me feel duped into watching them, whether they're any good or not. But I found a new series of viral videos by Tampax to be unusually amusing and surprisingly endearing.
At Zack16.com, 16-year-old Zack Johnson wakes up to find his penis has disappeared and been replaced by a vagina. Quelle horror!... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)
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The eternally awesomely grouchy Copyranter points to a provocative ad campaign
from the Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence. The pair of
arresting images features a "woman" as a) a punching bag and b) a slab
of meathook-hung carrion. The accompanying copy reads: "IT'S NOT
ACCEPTABLE TO TREAT A WOMAN LIKE ONE." Copyranter wonders: "Like what?
A woman?"
The ads are akin to PETA's shock-happy petsploitation ads... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)
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As part of an anti-domestic violence campaign in Portugal created by Amnesty International, liquid soap in bar and nightclub men's bathroom wall dispensers was replaced with a red soap that looked a lot like blood. The shock tactic was accompanied by a sticker warning that those who do not speak out against domestic violence are partners to the crime. "WASH YOUR HANDS OF IT," the copy howls. Purportedly, those who encountered the substance that resembled blood in color and consistency were hit with "a sense of shock and revulsion." While the campaign's creators claim "the initiative helped increase the level of empathy with the cause," how they came to that conclusion after freaking out drunk guys in Lisbon toilets, it doesn't specify.
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On the "How much do you love your favorite TV show?" spectrum, a person could fall anywhere from "Who loves television?" to "If my favorite show was about to be canceled, I would feel duty bound to go to the store, buy a specific product (Tabasco sauce, light bulbs and peanuts were the chosen items for Roswell, Friday Night Lights, and Jericho, respectively), pack it up to United State Postal Service standards, and then pay to have it sent to the head of the network, the person deciding my beloved program's fate." Dedicated fans of Chuck, NBC's critically acclaimed action-spy-comedy show on the verge of cancellation, are on the "We buy Tabasco" end of the spectrum, but they're being both more clever, calculating and cynical than the peanut purchasers. They're not sending anyone anything—they're buying Subway sandwiches. Why? Because Subway had a big product placement in a recent episode. See, Chuck fans do more than just watch, discuss, obsess and debate their show— they actively support their show's advertisers. Best fans ever?
Rather than communicate to executives that Chuck has a passionate fan base by buying useless junk, these fans are buying branded junk. They are demonstrating their willingness to be successfully advertised to. But the advertising isn't working in the old fashioned sense, i.e. making the audience want to buy the thing advertised, it's working because the audience wants something from NBC. The product these folks want isn't a six-inch on wheat, it's Chuck, and they're buying the subs to prove it. (How much do you think Subway cares about their motives?)
Even if the fans are manipulating the typical network-advertiser-consumer dynamic, NBC and Subway are getting what they want—people with open wallets—which is why the strategy could work. Of course, if it doesn't, Chuck fans will have bought a lot of mediocre sandwiches from a huge company hoping to convince another huge company that their sandwich-buying ability amounted to something valuable. That's much more ambitious, and potentially misguided, than sending peanuts.
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As of late, some blogs have made a sport out of calling out advertisers for being misogynist, but this one I really don't get. For some reason, Jossip (Jossip?) has deemed this IMO totally hilarious ad for U by Kotex misogynist. In it, a beaver uses a maxipad as a sleeping mask to drive home the point that users can "sleep easy with maximum protection." Of this joke, Jossip opines "this week misogyny ran rampant." Really? Now we're supposed to be offended by animatronic beavers wearing sleeping masks? "Nice to know the ad industry is opening its doors to vulgar 7th grade boys." Ugh, I say. Get over it! It's a beaver! It's a joke! (FYI, the campaign's been around for a while.) Does feminism mean we can't make beaver jokes? Maybe we American ladies could learn something from the Aussies.
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Time for a guessing game. What "things" are being discussed in the following text, excerpted from a forthcoming ad campaign, aimed explicitly at women?
"These things are the best invention since the push-up bra," one woman says. The other, admiring her bra-enhanced chest, responds, "I wouldn't go that far."
Cheeseburgers in a can? Blowguards? Mortgage-backed securities? Tropicana's new packaging? Take 5s? Nope! The correct answer is: Baked Lays. Well, at least it's true that Baked Lays aren't quite as awesome as push-up bras, what with them being salted cardboard and all. (Though the other kind of baked lays, Matthew McConaughey's presumed speciality, are obviously way awesomer than body-sculpting undergarments).
This snippet of dialogue comes from a print ad that is part of Frito-Lays new, big push to sell Baked Lays (and Baked Doritos, Cheetos, Tostitos, etc.) to women, who snack twice as much as men, just not on salty junk food, a situation that clearly needs rectifying. The Times has the skinny on the "thinking" that went into the new campaign. Some highlights:
Part of the strategy was to tone down the packaging and show off healthy ingredients in the snacks. ... Baked Lay's will no longer be in a shiny yellow bag, but in a matte beige bag that displays pictures of the ingredients like spices or ranch dressing. ... At the grocery store, Frito-Lay will pull all of its women-friendly snacks together at the end of the aisle where possible, Mr. Jones said. Often, he said, the chip aisle is disorganized and unappealing to women.
"The obvious is what's insulting to women," Freud said, like a pink package or something highlighting calories. ... Frito-Lay will introduce television, print and online advertising in early March, that features four cartoon women who are "fab, funny, fearlessly female," who talk about exercising, eating and men—something of an animated "Sex and the City."
I highly recommend reading the article in full because it taught me many, many astounding things besides the fact that ranch dressing is considered a healthy ingredient. Among them: Women feel guilty all the time, about everything, especially eating, but not if what they are eating comes in beige; ads mimicking Sex and the City are not too "obvious"; advertisers are now using "neuroscience" to make assertions about "women's brains" that are so hilariously banal and speciously scientific ("A memory and emotional center, the hippocampus, was proportionally larger in women, so [Lays' advertiser] concluded that women would look for characters they could empathize with.") I'm fairly certain Clueless's Cher Horowitz—"Sometimes you have to show a little skin. This reminds boys of being naked, and then they think of sex"—has gone into advertising.
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At the beginning of this year, Tropicana redesigned its packaging, replacing its decades old logo—the highly identifiable straw-impaled orange—with an artistically framed cup of juice and a sleek, vitaminwater-esque aesthetic. Orange juice drinkers and grocery store goers the country over were aghast, universally agreeing that that the makeover sucked, badly. Customers were so horrified that they complained to Tropicana directly, telling the company, according to the Times, that the new packaging was "'ugly' or ‘stupid,' and resembled ‘a generic bargain brand' or a ‘store brand.' "
Tropicana, heeding the advice of its "most loyal consumers" and recognizing that it had "underestimated the deep emotional bond" between juice drinkers and juice containers, decided to trash the new look and return to the old favorite. Yay! Victory for the people! They really told that Tropicana how to ... sell juice to them better?
The new packaging does stink and I'm glad to see it go, but there's something unsettling about consumers getting together to complain about a company's crappy ad campaign—no one should care this much about something created expressly to manipulate them. Beloved packaging is, it turns out, just like a beloved TV show: Some people will sign petitions, send letters and make phone calls to save them both. It renders the standard complaints about product placement incredibly quaint—how can anyone get aggravated when a show like 30 Rock maybe pushes McFlurries to its audience, when, in all likelihood, a certain segment of that audience would happily advise McDonald's on the best way to sell said ice cream, especially if the company was doing it wrong?
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Let's hear it for PETA. The "vegetarians have better sex" ad, featuring hot women enjoying sensual interludes with various veggies, has become a certifiable viral video after NBC refused to air it during the Super Bowl, deeming it too risqué. (See some of the editing suggestions from NBC here-I imagine Victoria Morgan, VP of advertising standards, never imagined that during her career she'd have to ask a potential advertiser to cut the segment showing someone "screwing herself with broccoli (fuzzy)".)
The thing is, they've done this before, with a "too sexy" ad featuring Alicia Silverstone. The ad was slated to run in Houston but was pulled "at the last minute" by Comcast. I half (hell, I'll bump it up to three-quarters) suspect that they purposely make the ads overly provocative. This way, they don't have to pay the insane Super Bowl ad fees, and they still get the buzz. An ad that's "banned" for being overtly sexy is far more likely to get traction than it might if it's slightly less salacious and sandwiched between the commercial heavyweights of the Super Bowl. And talk about false advertising: As Nina writes in an "Explainer" today, going veg doesn't guarantee a better sex life.
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On Monday, there was an outrage when Politico's Jonathan Martin reported that the Obama campaign was seeking a rape victim for an ad. Apparently, the campaign had contacted Kiersten Stewart (Martin misspelled her name as Steward) with the Family Violence Prevention Fund to help them find a victim for an ad relating to rape. According to the e-mail obtained by Politico, Stewart was unsure of the specifics regarding the ad.
At first, this made me queasy, too. A spokeswoman for rape? But then I thought about it. Why is this any different than using Gianna Jessen, an abortion survivor, to do an attack ad on Obama's position on the Born Alive Infant Protection Act in Illinois? Or using a POW who served with McCain to make an ad saying that he is unfit to lead?
Newsrooms have an ongoing debate about whether to name rape victims. The names are public record, but out of either respect or discomfort, newspapers decline to name them. But in the case of a political ad, the woman has a say in the matter. If the Obama campaign finds a woman to speak in its ad, she would have volunteered. If she wants to let herself be used this way, then who's to stop her? Many feminists have argued, after all, that shielding rape victims is misplaced chivalry and only compounds the shame.
The other difference here is that most of the testimonial ads are put out by independent groups, not by a political party or candidate. Jessen's ad was created by a group whose sole purpose is to reveal Obama's support of infanticide. No doubt this is something Jessen approves of—she's involved with the group. In Obama's case, he is asking a rape victim to talk about just one issue on his platform. Who knows if she supports all, or even most of, his positions. Planned Parenthood aired an ad today featuring a rape victim. There was no similar reaction. In Obama's case, the woman ends up speaking about rape but really serves as a spokesperson for Obama's campaign. In the Planned Parenthood situation, the woman talks about rape, but her speech doesn't have the same endorsement quality.
Obama's campaign wasn't wrong in seeking a rape victim for a political ad, but it does feel a little like exploitation. Then again, if she volunteered, no harm, no foul.
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Ewww, Nayeli, I agree with you entirely: Those ads are creepy. Worse than creepy, really: They're advertising the sexiness of violence against women. Duct-tape her! Sew up her mouth! Dominate that chick! The voting tag line reads as an afterthought to the main message that rape is just soooo hot. Maybe there's a secret plan to bring out the misogynists while suppressing the women's vote?
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Why are pro-voting ads so frequently creepy? When seemingly oblivious celebrities express their views on the candidates themselves, the results can be entertaining or mildly insightful. But for some reason all of the stars' charm and charisma gets lost when they start standing up for our electoral system. These ads for Declare Yourself, which feature a gagged and sobbing Jessica Alba, Christina Aguilera, and Andre 3000 among others, are particularly frightening to look at. By the ads' logic, if I don't vote I'm essentially submitting myself to a brutal vigilante silencing technique, like having my mouth stapled or bolted shut.
Declare Yourself isn't alone in its tendency to threaten and alienate its audience despite better intentions. The "Vote or Die" campaign that began in 2000 promotes its own violent message, particularly when organizer P. Diddy gets aggressive or weirdly personal about the issues. Aguilera is actually a double offender in the scary ad game, having already taped this eerie display (those eyes! that smile!) for Rock the Vote last May. Not that Madonna's original Rock the Vote ads or Gwyneth Paltrow's stilted plug for absentee ballots were any more appropriate or appealing.
It's obviously important to get the MTV set involved in this election, and perhaps there's nothing better than a good shock to get this point across. The Declare Yourself ads' literal "use it or lose it" message is certainly attention-grabbing, but do these violent images really make people want to vote? They just scare the heck out of me.
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Family values are in the news again today, but this time it's the Democrats who are taking the heat. McCain's latest ad attacks Obama on the subject of sex ed, misstating the senator's voting record in the process. Over nursery school music, viewers are told that Obama is "wrong for [their] family" on the grounds that he wants kids to learn about sex before they learn how to read.
I've stated here before that I think sex should be introduced early and often to the elementary school curriculum. Mine's an opinion many people disagree with, and Barack Obama happens to be one of them.
Obama himself has said, "Nobody's suggesting that kindergartners are going to be getting information about sex in the way that we think about it." What he did support (in 2003) was a bill in the Illinois state legislature that would have introduced "instruction on the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, including the prevention, transmission and spread of HIV" to pre-existing programs.
Yes, Mitt Romney, I do think there's a sex ed curriculum that's appropriate for 5-year-olds, and it has more to do with protecting them from other people's misguided actions than from their own. The only sex ed current students even have a chance of seeing before middle school is the kind that limits itself to a discussion of acceptable body language, peer respect, and personal space or "inappropriate touching," as Obama's own campaign once referred to it.
And for the record, child literacy has nothing to do with children's ability to handle sex ed, unless you consider that, as they learn to read, children become more aware and more likely to process conflicting or inaccurate messages about sex. If McCain is truly concerned that kids learn to read before learning about sex, maybe he should stick to the topic at hand (education reform) and refocus his efforts on improving early reading skills.
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Nayeli, I'm with you in favor of adorable underthings. Definitely worth the money for the personal confidence and the occasional zing in the eyes of one's date. (Someone I dated briefly liked to call me a "smartypanties.")
And yet at the same time, like Lucy and Amaka, I feel sickened by the culturewide commodification of sexuality—of intimate life and personal worth, really—especially when it's aimed at children (by which I mean anyone under 20! I'm old) who are still developing a sense of self.
As the Rolling Stones knew well, all consumer advertising peddles one basic thing: dissatisfaction. We're constantly being sold the idea that we could be happy if ... if we just fixed X problem by buying Y product. Soft-porn merchant Victoria's Secret, like Abercrombie & Fitch, is in the business of selling the belief that you should be sexier. Sure, they have a right to do it, and I even sometimes wear their underthings. But it is especially disgusting to peddle to young girls—and here I'm not targeting VS alone, but also MTV, Girls Gone Wild!, and the soft-core underage porn culture et al.—the feeling that she's really a ho in training, that her personal worth depends on arousing others' lust. That's selling the idea of being an object, not a subject—-a big difference, although sometimes hard to define.
There's a subtle line between liking to wear fancy panties ... and needing to see others drool over your bottom before you can feel worthwhile. One is powerful; the other's an eating disorder in waiting. One is finding power in enjoying yourself and your body in a mature and confident way ... and the other is a degraded manipulation of self by instincts out of whack and in thrall to others. Sometimes, of course, both are at work at once. Which is why we're having this discussion: figuring out which is which isn't so easy in the consumerized world in which we live.
There's a very odd overlap here between feminism, on the one hand, which wants women to take power without being pornified, and on the other, Christian activists who also want to resist the consumer culture's attempt to drag us around by our gonads and insecurities. At their best, both groups want to respect the individual as being more than just her body, as having a meaningful inner life. This resistance against personal degradation is also why feminists and Christian activists have a similarly uneasy alliance against sex trafficking.
I'll take any and all allies in standing up against personal commodification, whether "chosen" or forced. Christians talk about maintaining a meaningful inner life as having a relationship with God. The God-language can make some feminists gag, but I respect it—even though I don't necessarily agree with each and every one of God's self-appointed personal emissaries. Especially not when they think they know exactly what I should and shouldn't be doing with my smartypanties.
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I once tried to rationalize spending more than $40 on a set of unmentionables to my mother and less-fashion-inclined little sister.
"Look, if I don't have quality underwear, what else do I have?" I recall saying.
My sister told me I was being ridiculous, and that I was wasting my money. My mother suggested in no uncertain tones that the only thing my purchase would accomplish would be to secure my role as an eager-to-please trollop. "That underwear is only made to be seen," she said.
These women, whom I love dearly and who routinely purchase their undergarments in packs of 10, successfully shamed the pants off me.
I understand the source of complaints against lifestyle advertising like Victoria's Secret's, which perpetuates the idea that "sexiness" is mostly about showing off for someone else. Making purchases purely for the sake of seduction seems tacky and compliant. Futile, too, when, as my family was eager to remind me, I'm usually the only one who notices.
But that's just the point.
I'm well aware that buying into the whole "I can't live without this bra" line is completely offensive in a few very obvious ways. But honestly, I do enjoy spending money on and wearing underwear that I find appealing. And I don't think I'm being duped by advertisers. I'm a smart, successful, and informed woman who has managed to secure a disposable income, which I'll spend as I choose. I happen to enjoy knowing, privately, that beneath my day-old jeans and college sweatshirt are garments about which I'm more enthusiastic.
I suppose that if I were to press the issue with own my high-school-age sister, who is only now beginning to form opinions on the subject, I think she would agree with you, Lucy and Amaka, that sexiness is best characterized by confidence and good health. But confidence includes standing behind the consumer choices that make you happy.
As I read it, the Very Sexy campaign's demarcated punctuation speaks less to a lower standard for feminism than a greater appreciation for women who'd rather not feel sorry about dressing up for themselves.
I do agree, however, that the "Behind every very sexy woman is a Very Sexy ® Bra" catchphrase is a little off. Behind my very sexy bra is a very sexy woman. And that's not something for which I'm going to apologize. Period.
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I once walked into a Victoria's Secret when they were running some campaign or another, and a saleswoman waltzed right over to me and purred: "Hi there. Can I help you find some sexy little things?" I was tempted to tell her that what I would like were some frumpy big things, but instead I just said no and walked out. It was my fault, after all, for having entered in the first place. I've since avoided Victoria's Secret like the plague. When I took my 13-year-old sister shopping for a new bra a few weeks ago, she pouted when I refused to set foot inside.
That my sister, who is barely high-school aged, considered Victoria's Secret a prime shopping destination speaks to the company's marketing strategy. In 2004, Victoria's Secret launched its PINK line, which is marketed directly to tweens and teenage girls. PINK is that brand that makes those icky sweatpants with giant lettering that hordes of teenyboppers slum around in, as they bare their bellies and panties. PINK also appeals to this younger crowd by offering too-cute hoodies, fake college logos on their clothing, and free stuffed animals with purchases. To me, this is an obvious ploy to get young shoppers interested in the even raunchier stuff in the store sooner. Growing up Victoria, or something. Certainly a company has a right to push its clients into push-ups, but the approach strikes me as a little trashy.
Before I'm dubbed completely puritanical, none of this is to say I object to "sexy little things." I just take issue with a company whose chief mission is to sexify its shoppers, no matter their ages. Amaka exercised restraint when she neglected to mention the Very Sexy ® Bra's tagline: "The classic seduction begins with lingerie. Behind every very sexy woman is a Very Sexy ® Bra." I've done some seducing in my day, and I'm pleased to report that such a garment is not a necessity.
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The latest development in Victoria Secret's inspiring e-mail solicitation campaign comes in the form of a subject line: "The Bras You Can't Live Without. Period." My sister forwarded it to me with the accompanying note: "After reflecting on this subject line, I understand now why some portend that feminism is dead."
I'm struck by how resoundingly the death toll sounds, illustrated by the boldness of these lame advertising campaigns.
It's the "Period" addendum that gives the tagline its je ne sais quoi. Not that I am surprised, coming as it does from the same company that brought us such inventive names for their different bra lines as "Very Sexy". If the lingerie-seller's home page is any indication, in the world of VS, young college-bound girls hop off to campus wearing thigh-high rugby socks, a pair of underwear, a belly shirt ... and a cute pink hoodie. You know, because it is autumn after all, and it gets cold. So while your exposed buttocks and navel chill in the fall wind, you can be sure that you're covered from head to midstomach-ish; from toe to lower thigh. A VS girl is sexy and sensible, it seems.
I really wonder about Victoria Secret's vaguely dire world view. Take for example another VS subject line from February: "What is Sexy? TM ... New! Very Sexy ® Low-cut Push-up." Oh! I had been wondering what sexy was ... I thought it had something to do with confidence or being healthy. Thank you for clearing up my confusion. Question: What is sexy? Answer: You Spending Money on This Bra.TM
If they are going to shamelessly push their wares upon my person, I'd appreciate a little more creativity. Where are the days of subversive advertising? Is it me, or is Victoria's Secret doing a really sloppy job when it comes to fooling me into thinking a $40 bra will turn me into an impossibly hot Brazilian, accent not included?
Read more "XX Factor" entries on Victoria's Secret.
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Parody site of the day, via feministing: Guns for girls. "My Little Carbine" takes the cake for its pastiche of My Little Ponies with assault weapons. It's startling to me how perniciously traditional many children's TV ads still are. We didn't have a TV when I was a kid, and I sometimes think that one reason I didn't realize I was supposed to behave like a "girl" was that I never was held captive by ads like this stunner or this.
Sadly, the Disney Princess Poison Ring seems all too realistic a talisman, at least among eighth-graders; I'm fairly sure I must have worn one, metaphorically speaking, at some point.
via Feministing.