Tuesday, May 5, 2015

excessive advertising to children for $$$

      Marketers will say anything and do anything just to get your attention. Marketing shows no mercy when it comes to generating money for a product, especially when it comes to advertising for children. After 1980 the FTC improvement act took away advertising regulations to children for TV stations. Therefor making television consumed by advertisements, targeting countless young children to want and waste pointless things just to turn a profit. this tactic is sickening to me. As ads and shows are filled with trash, Our children are growing up thinking it is ok to use violence  and be wasteful. This is destroying our country from the inside out as children are growing up thinking that that what they see on TV or in an advertisement is real and ok.


     When it comes to advertising to children there are some specific guidelines that the ad has to include in order to attract their target. marketers try to keep the ad very colorful and smooth along with introducing the "cool factor". Being the Newest is considered as being the coolest. the problem with that is that it is difficult for the consumer to financially keep up. In most it is the parent who is persuaded to by the child to buy the product. So there are also some parenting issues but that is not the point. Advertisements are everywhere especially in school. Kids are constantly bombarded with foods and drinks filled with sugar and preservatives.  The quick dollar the company makes is causing horrible health issues for the children who consume them later on down the road, like obesity and diabetes. My opinion, i think we the people should should rip up the FTC improvement act and actually try to make shows and products healthy for our children, adults, and environment.


















Thursday, April 30, 2015

sex sells. but takes a greater toll


Sex appeal in advertising has been known to be an extremely effective strategy to attract attention to your brand by using very attractive woman to flaunt their product, By sexually objectifying parts of the body and construing an idea that this product will bring you these beautiful woman or the bringing of power with this product. sex appeal alone can be the attention-getter in an ad. This type of advertising can cause some problems. 1, is that this is false advertising. and 2, this sets unreachable standards for woman that can take a great emotional and structural toll for woman.
Today we see a high amount of provocative and sexualized images in the advertisements we come across and view everyday.  The models that we see in the advertisements are always beautiful with great skin, perfect make up and very thin.  The ads always show the women in a sexual manner,     she will be positioned in a very sexual way, for instance with her legs open or she will have the male gaze. Her face and body language will look seductive; she’s ready to be viewed by a man. These kinds of advertisements are affecting women self-esteem today. Many women look at these ads and they feel they are not up to their standards. Some women do not feel beautiful enough.  The women in the ads are beautiful, but many of the images are altered to make them look perfect. Therefore making this type of perfection unrealistic. Advertising campaigns use a common technique called airbrushing, where computers digitally alter the images to look cleaner and sharper.  


How advertising affects women’s self esteem is a rising issue that seems to get worse every year. The models in advertising have a negative effect on women, but the ones who are affected the most are young teenage girls.  They see the images of very thin models, for instance in the Victoria’s Secret catalog and they want to look just like them.  This causes eating disorders, such as bulimia and anorexia.  They are two of the leading eating disorders upon women.Anorexia is very common among young girls between the ages 15-19 years old.  This is when the person does not eat in order to be very thin, they look abnormally thin, but they still believe they have not reached their goal and continue to get thinner.  Bulimia is when a person lacks control of their eating and they over eat. They eat excessively, but they cause themselves to vomit what they ate. I think that the amount of sexualized content on tv and in ads should be reduced. advertisers need to be more realistic in their ads so the girls who grow up to see them wont be emotional wrecks later on in life.  

Thursday, April 9, 2015

Midriffs

 Exploitation of the midriff has been a super strategy for most of styling commercials we see on television. The Midriff is the section of body between just below the breast and right above the pubic area. This section of body to normal Americans can be sexually stimulating to see. Most Americans are exposed to sexually explicit images and videos and young age, typically early teens 10-13. Sex is thrown around a lot on television shows and commercials now a days and it seems to be slowly being burned into our heads that being sexual and sexually attractive will bring power and acceptance. I came across a beer commercial that seemed to be a perfect example for this topic.


In this commercial we can see an extreme exploitation of the midriff along with chest and legs. this is a good example of what most American men find exceptionally suitable and attractive. she walks in the bar filled with men and instantly all eyes on her. she is given a beer but decides to open it her own way under her bra. all the men drop their jaws as she begins to down the beer. She pulled a very clever act that she obviously wanted to show. This is also a normal style in most commercials now a days. so what came first? Is this what we wanted to see all along or is this what we have been accustomed to. More importantly is this the kind of empowerment women are really trying to receive and work for? I think that the corruption in exploitation of womens body's for for extremal sales ans revenue in horrible. this also sets standards for common women that they need to extremely attractive. The sad part is that to reach this goal of being perfect will cost an extreme amount of money.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Long Chicken, Bigger is Better

Burger King aired this commercial on November 19th 2012 advertising that bigger chicken is better chicken. The commercial didn't last too long before being pulled off the air. Burger King along with many other food corporations have a manipulative advertising attack method that involves bringing in models or very attractive women to play role in that eating this food is good or rewarding. Many ads will use attractive woman to get the attention and sales of the male audience. But this tactic doesn't stop there, is also grabs the attention of woman. Some might reject it and some will fall into also buying the food either because its simply what the guy wants or she buys it for him, deep down hoping that her husband will look at her the same way he looked at the Burger King girl.  



Burger King claims to be the king of burgers and stepped up their game up by introducing the Long Chicken Burger.  In this specific video we breakdown that this random woman on a train notices a guy holding Burger Kings Long Chicken Sandwich. The guy catches her staring and exposes some more of his long chicken for her. Obviously this woman loves long chicken and she wants some more. After some flirtatious body language between the two, the guy is ready to give her his whole long chicken to her. But the mood is broken when suddenly she notices some guy sitting in the corner holding his small chicken.
     

So this video hits a lot of controversy on many levels on how sexually objectifying the commercial is. First Showing a woman will dance for you and be sexually attracted to you because you have a bigger than normal sandwich hanging out. Second, how this looks to our children and what they learn from it. Even though this commercial was intended for adults they advertise to all ages and It seems they made their sexual gestures in quick and slight motions to make it under the radar to children. But it obviously wasn’t enough because the commercial still raised a lot of attention. My opinion is this commercial is stupid but hilarious. I admit I even felt bad for the kid with the small chicken. I believe size matters.


Tuesday, February 24, 2015

AXE Body spray, female attractant? or repellent?

    

Cologne will speak for itself. If the scent smells good on the customer, he'll buy it. It's getting a potential customer to try the cologne in the first place that can be daunting. Each brand has to build its own personality and story. With so many types of cologne available, the actual scent of cologne is only one aspect when it comes to implementing advertising strategies that help boost sales. Today’s cologne marketing rarely focuses on an unusual scent or using interesting ingredients; instead, it relies on advertising of sexual appeal and career-boosting power to sell the fragrance as an accessory. Celebrity endorsements can also drive sales up by more than 20 percent, according to Harvard Business School in 2009. 


    
 Axe body spray specifically uses sexual attraction throughout the majority of their commercials to gain sales from men. This ultimately raises many controversies dealing with AXE regarding how they show woman’s reactions to the scent of AXE. AXE seems to project that its scent can be smelled from miles away by any woman. This scent is so sexually attracting that any woman who smells it will uncontrollably hunt the scent down to its origin. So let’s address red flag number one, this scene makes women look like animals and ultimately only in search for sex. Red flag number 2, AXE only used women in bikinis with attractive features along an athletic body type. This commercial along with many others clearly objectify woman for man’s pleasure.
AXE doesn’t only raise debates with women but also with regular house hold families. While Axe’s brand development manager Mike Dwyer says that Axe’s target market is young men 18-24, I suspect that just as with Victoria’s Secret’s PINK line, they know that it’s really being used by a much younger demographic AXE claims to attract the sales of men but sales demographics show that most of AXE’s sales are from middle school children from the ages of 13- 17. My next red flag, Is AXE aware that they are advertising sexual attraction and man hood to minors? More than likely... So why don’t they step up their game?? My guess is that AXE cologne is so cheap to buy it is probably really cheap to make. Good cologne will be expensive, but it will actually smell good. My last red flag is that sex takes maturity. 8 middle schoolchildren were hospitalized after inhaling to much AXE after some kids decided to use almost a whole can on each other while playing around. At the end of the commercial it states “use more , get more”. I disagree. I’m not sure why 11-year-old boys need a product that has a “smooth, sexy scent I think kids are already figuring out after adolescences that applying gallons of the stuff doesn't, in fact, make you “the rugged and mysterious guy she’d do almost anything to touch,” as the ads would have you believe. even when i was in middle school I had better taste in cologne...

Thursday, February 5, 2015

Mointain Dew, The Manly Drink of Champions.

       



         
             Mountain Dew is a carbonated soft drink brand produced and owned by PepsiCo. The original formula was invented in 1940 by Tennessee beverage bottlers Barney and Ally Hartman. Over the years, there has been a wide variety of mountain dew flavors that have been introduced to the market. "Mountain Dew" was originally Southern and/or Scots/Irish slang for moonshine (homemade whiskey). Early bottles carried the reference of drink by showing a cartoon-stylized hillbilly drinking from his bottle. Mountain Dew’s logo has changed over the years, but advertisements and sponsored events all over the United States, such as DEW TOUR, VANS WARPED TOUR, motocross and snowboarding events, have made it clear that Mountain Dew projects itself as a man’s drink of athletes and performers.

       In this particular video, the scenario is that there are some friends hanging out downstairs doing nothing. With boredom overwhelming them, one friend picks up a newly released mountain dew product “mountain dew kicks start" and begins to drink it. After drinking this amazing drink, life and excitement is brought back their lives. After one sip, the gloomy basement of virginity, morphs into the loud and fun dancing, club scene. The ad makes it appear that if not for the Mountain Dew then the start of this amazing night would not have been possible.

             After being exposed to Mountain Dew over many years, I can honestly say it is a good tasting and refreshing drink. Yet i have never had a sip of Mountain Dew and had a LSD experience in my basement. Nor did it lead me to greatness or a party. I can also admit that it is not just a man’s drink. It’s just a good tasting citrus flavored beverage. I could not find a legitimate poll on the percentage of men vs. women drinkers, but I feel that there are probably just as many women drinkers as there are men. It doesn't seem their advertising tactics don't reach out to women nor will they anytime soon. Maybe a pink Mountain Dew flavor could bring more feminine sales to PepsiCo.