Cross Cultural Differences in Advertisements

In the first class, Dr. Strangelove talked about many interesting things about erotic advertising. He used terms that are not usually used in a regular classroom. It was interesting to see people’s reaction to these languages especially from the Chinese friends who sat beside me. We were giggling, and blushing. In China, sex is rarely discussed in public and erotic posters are rare. It was shocking when I came to Canada where the use of sex to sell product was so common. I tried to compare two different commercials for the similar product but targets at two different cultures.

The first commercial is the average western culture beer commercial. The woman is nude and shaking as if she is having sex. Then we can see men grabbing the beer. Finally the slogan comes up, “Share One With a Friend,  Or Two.” The commercial implies that woman is like a beer. By having the beer, the man will have a good time with woman. There are a lot of sexual connotations in the commercial.

While the second commercial is very conservative. This is the first North Korean beer commercial.  Instead of using sex to appeal to the audiences, it uses scientific facts to educate the audiences. The commercial shows the formula to make a beer. It also says beer is nutritious.

Yung Kyun Choi and Gordon E. Miracle argue that national culture has a significant effects on advertising techniques in the Journal of Advertising. They said that the US and North Korea has two different cultures. In the individualist culture, individual goals are emphasized over groups goals, social ties between individuals tend to be loose and communication is relatively direct. Members of the individualist culture are relatively more concerned with the clarity in conversation.  In contrast, in collectivist cultures, people are relatively more concerned with issues of face management, and this concern leads to their relatively greater use of indirect communication compared with people from individualistic cultures. This is why the two advertisements use two different techniques in ads.

The Evolution of Sexist Ads

Dr. Strangelove said in class that “we live in a world that is sex crazed but strangely unerotic.” Although there are a lot of sexualities in the media but these sexualities are very conservative. Sexuality is defined by the few elites in the society and they are afraid to step out of the boundaries. Dr. Strangelove also argues that controversial issues such as gay marriage is rarely portrayed in the advertisements because the corporations do not want to be labeled as gay.

In the 1960s and 1960s, ads portrayed woman as one whose sole function was to create a Technicolor home for her husband and family.

Miller, Michele and Ford, John from Old Dominion University argues that today, sexism is more align with sexist, and the implication of sexuality in the advertising and the media. In recent years, advertisers have venture into controversial territory with their use of female sexual images and a focus on distinct body parts, positioning, language, and sex role portrayals. In this advertisement, the head is not shown so the identity of the woman is not important. The audience only cares about her body and the message on her body. This is to deny her as a human being.

Every generation recreate and redefine sexuality. YouTube is a new medium allows people to express their ideas freely. It is a democratic platform where everyone can be heard in an unregulated space, unfiltered content not confined by market need and target demographic. YouTube might redefine sexuality and gender roles in the media by expressing what people truly feels.

Women’s Body Figure = Artists & Designers’ Choice

Dr.Strangelove mentioned the trend in class that there are more and more figures of women body getting used by artists and designers.

It is hard for normal people to evaluate the quality, market value & meaning behind a piece of art work or a design of furniture; however, there is one thing we are sure about: Women’s body figures are eye-catching wherever they are, even if sometimes those design look weird or not practical for daily use. The following pictures may somehow give us some ideas of how far they may get to.

Apparently, it is hard to tell how comfortable the women-inspired chair is, but since it can catch us attention. That is enough. You can say that its designer is creative. You may think he is a master of women Arts; however, the most important fact we should be aware is that his name, Fabio Novembre from Italy, is becoming well-known. Wow, who cares if the chair is comfortable or not ! He successfully sold himself by taking advantage of the women body-inspired chair ! That is the magic of using women’s body figures. Even though it may not help increase sales directly, but it can at least attract many people’s attention. In today’s information society, it is important but hard to get a product outstanding; nevertheless, women’s body figure is an effective way to sell, isn’t it?

Women and Cars

It seems women and cars are always related to each other. Some men will even treat their cars as “the second wives.” We can always see gorgeous girls in auto shows, race contest and ads campaign, but why? Why are these two always so closed to each other. The answer for that question could be various, but we find that two factors could be the reasons behind.

First, cars’ designs vs. women’s body figures. Don’ you think every car’s unique design is just like women’s body shape? Don’t you think today’s sharp and very aerodynamic outlooking of cars is the perfect match for the S curves of women’s body? That’s why we can frequently see many stunning car model standing beside those good-looking super cars in any auto shows, and that’s why we can constantly find beauties’ appearances in the ads campaign.

Second, it is quite a common sense that most male are interested in electronics like cell phones, PCs and robots, mechanical products like cars, yachts and even jets; plus all hot and sexy beautiful women. It seems for most men, owning a great looking sports car is just like having a gorgeous girl friend. A equal mark can be put between those two. That’s why those racing teams will always have so many hot girls around during the racing match. Maybe the feeling of conquering the top speed and being no.1 is just like conquering the best-looking girl.

Women’s Body figure = Ads Campaign’s Favourite

Sometimes the appropriate use of women-bodies may not only increase sales, but can further strengthen brand loyalties and do more meaningful contribution fight against some of the misconception we obtain from the dominant mass-media. Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign is just a perfect example for that.

Dove started launching this Real Beauty campaign in 2004 to try changing & widening the distorted and severely narrowed stereotypical definition of the beauty.

According to the campaign’s mission statement from dove’s website,

The campaign is actually inspired by a major global study called The Real Truth About Beauty. It proves that in nowadays society, the definition of beauty has become limiting and unattainable, as if only thin, young and blond were beautiful. Dove found the current, narrow definition of beauty was having a profound effect on the self-esteem of women:

-only 2% women around the world describe themselves as beautiful.

-81% of women in U.S strongly agree that “the media and advertising set an unrealistic standard of beauty that most women can’t ever achieve.

That’s why the mission started with using real women, not professional models, of various shapes, ages and sizes to provoke discussion & debate of today’s typecast beauty images.

Somebody says that Dove’s campaign is a failure, because it does not effectively change the definition of beauty in the mainstream society; however, I think Dove’s campaign is successful. Its sales and market share keeps growing after that due to the strengthened brand loyalty. Most of all, it somehow brings confidence to a number of women worldwide. Dove obviously set a perfect example for other companies about how to effectively use women body to do marketing and achieve a win-win situation.

What Is More Attractive, TV or Her?

This Panasonic TV commercial, as a typical erotic ads, is probably one of the best examples which can reflect the use of sex reference.

In the commercial, the environment and decoration around the man is so similar to that of the woman, which consequently creates a misconception for both the audience and the man that they are in the same room. That actually indicates the most important point Panasonic want to sell — the clarity and definition of the TV; however, this selling point is hard to be presented properly in a commercial. How to solve this problem? It is easy. The answer is sex reference. The woman’s words and body language successfully generates the interest from the man by creating the temptation. Moreover, it also catches the attention of audiences. As a result, both the audience and the man think the image in the TV as a real woman. The true meaning of the woman’s words is that if you want to feel her, go get the TV! However, ask yourself, is the TV really more attractive than the woman in there?

Of course, TV is an electronic product. Its main potential target consumers are male group. That’s why the commercial tries to uses women’s body and behaviors to attempt men’s interest. The following commercial finds its cutting edge from a reversed angle compared the former ads we just watched. It shows that a sexy woman is chasing a Weiner Schnitzel hotdog. Her demand & eagerness for its product is taken to be referred as women’s sex need.

Sex Does Value A Lot!

So far we can see that sex values and gender roles do value a lot because they do help selling. Both male and female have mutual demand. That is where those commercials’ ideas coming from. In those erotic ads, the sex values and gender roles have been maximized.

Relative Happiness

Are you becoming more happier or less happier?

This is a matter of how you measure happiness. In terms of an individual’s measure of happiness, I would say I am happy because I am alive and healthy. Other people may say that they are happy because they own more, but I believe that at the base of the measure of happiness is to be alive and healthy so that people can enjoy what they own.

In terms of a societal measure of happiness, every society has a constant measure of happiness, which may be different from an individual’s. But in general, every society highly values the quality of life, education, health care, less disparity and so on.

Being safe is everybody’s wish for his/her family members. In most Asian countries like China, South Korea and Japan, when someone leaves home their family members would tell him/her to drive carefully or be safe on the road. I see the same thing happen in Canada, too, that people would tell their beloved family and friends to have a safe journey. In order to keep the citizens safe from accidents, every country spends a lot of time and money on its transportation infrastructure. In New Zealand a heavy rain after summer brought the highest death toll on its roads. After the accidents people designed this big billboard, aims to tell drivers to drive slowly. Whenever it rains, the little boy on the billboard bleeds.

Gender Roles in Families

On July 15 we were shown a series of Walmart commercials which main motif keeps to be the same over the years: family together. Below is a similar example to what we saw.

This is a very typical Walmart commercial. Look at the way Walmart advertises, it is not difficult to find out one of its important features: the ads are always narrated by a mother. Why does it matter? Certainly gender roles and stereotypes affect family interactions. In tradition, women do not work, and they are always the child bearer, and besides that, the housekeeper. Men are the boss in every household because they are the bread winner in the family. So women are economically and psychologically dependent on men. They must cook, keep the house clean and please their husbands so that they can keep their marriage. They must take good care of their husbands and children if they have any; this is very true in many cultures. So mothers are the biggest potential consumers for Walmart. By raising up a mother’s voice, Walmart’s commercial gets other mothers’ attention, and then it ends up with a big smile on everybody’s face, but who are the happiest and most satisfied? The mothers. It is not only because they can save money and live better, but also because Walmart products promise family togetherness.

It is the culture that modes people into certain scripts so that people fit in the society. Women are not born to be obedient, they become so because the society forces them to fit in. Yes, THE SOCIETY which men rule.

However, as Feminist’s voice has become louder and louder, people’s attitudes and stereotype gender roles have been, to certain extend, changed. To give an example, please watch the Heineken commercial of the following.

Women want beauty, and men want fun. This is true in human nature. In the video the women are dressing fancy clothes, behaving socially, standing rigidly and distant from each other, admiring a fancy closet which may symbolize money and vanity fair. On the contrary, the men are wearing just polo shirts and they seem to be close friends, hugging each other and being excited about a walk-in fridge that is full of Heineken, which may represent having fun together. Compared with the first video, the second commercial has somewhat reflected a societal change in stereotyped gender roles, that more and more women work, and they tend to be  more ambitious social climbers.

It is not uncommon to see a woman leader nowadays. According to an online database, there are 14 countries which have female presidents and prime ministers currently in power, and those include Ireland, Finland, The Philippines, Mozambique, Germany, Liberia, Chile, India, Haiti, Argentina, Bangladesh, Gabon, Iceland and Lithuania.

In the American soap opera Gossip Girl we can also see female influence in the society, to be more accurate, in the elite. One of the characters I want to mention about is Anne Archibald, who is a wife and a mother. She manages to help her family business in every way to get promoted, for instance, she will urge her son Nate to propose to Blair, whose mother is an influential woman and has a big liaison network. Her husband, Howard Archibald, lives under her pressure because she always pushes him to do things he is not capable to, and then he loses himself in drugs to release the stress. Even though this soap opera is fictional, the story reflects a real problem or say phenomenon in the present days societies, that women’s status in a family has been profoundly changed, and the function of a family has been redefined.

Taste The Ads

Advertising is the official art of modern capitalist society. — Raymond Williams

There is no doubt that advertising is a strategy to increase sales, and the design is a key point. Good designs usually, if not always, lead to a leap in sales. Some people buy for the utility, and some buy for the style/design. However, it is well known that advertising is the most expensive category of TV programming. According to Dr. Strangelove, if we divide the total costs of advertising by the number of populations in one country, then we will get $800 per person in USA, compared to $40 per person in most other countries in the world.

Like many other couch potatoes, I substitute YouTube for television. For many days and years I wandered on YouTube randomly, and I found many great ads and one of them that impressed me the most is from Audi.

This is the best ad design ever. The message is clear and powerful, and the way Audi advertises is genius. Very different from Audi, a Porsche commercial gives the audience something to think.

Have you ever thought of the questions: How/Why do we consume? Happiness is the dominant frame for consumption. Nowadays people shop because shopping makes them happy and the products can give them happiness. The biggest potential car consumers are certainly males. In the Porsche ad it targets at every possible male, such as a little school boy. The strategy is called The Ideal Kid. The kid in an advertisement often appears to be more perfect, ie., a role model for the targeted audience of what they want to be like. The Porsche commercial thus spreads out the message for males: Porsche is the dream car for you!

Sex lessons

Do you have good skills in bed?

If you don’t, then you’ve got to watch a porno.

If you do, then you do have watched a lot of porns.

Yes, Dr. Strangelove said that pornography does educate people about sex techniques, and it is the function and purposes of the society. According to Fiona Attwood, “some new forms of pornography are developing to construct sexual display as a form of recreation, self-presentation and community building.” But by the way, don’t watch too much, because the more porns you watch, the more you get dissatisfied with your girlfriend’s body.

As far as I know, the most popular porns are made by Japanese and American. And next I am going to further discuss each of them.

Japan

I would say that pornography is one of the biggest industries in Japan. Japanese porns are heavily exported to Western countries because they have a unique feature that is very different from that of Western countries.

The porn industry occupies a notably different cultural role in Japan than it does in the US, with adult publications readily available in vending machines and elsewhere. (Japanese porn industry goes HD blue)

In Japanese tradition, men are the breadwinners and women are the homemakers. While men work hard to make money and do little housekeeping works, women need to take care of the house and the children, even if they have a job. In porn movies, Japanese still adopt their traditional gender roles, and they have certain features: 1. Men do not talk much; 2. The scene is set at when the man gets home from work; 3. The woman has sex with other man while the husband is out for work.

Another phenomena in Japan is family incest. In Japan, incest is not a crime unless rape has taken place, but the issue is still a taboo. Yet Japanese porn adopts this theme in order to sell to the market. However, Japanese porn can really improve your sex life, Britney Simpson said. No wonder Japanese produced porn is always so popular.

Bloomberg News reports that more than 1,000 Japanese adult film companies churned out about 17,000 titles last year. The largest adult-film websites are adding as many as 1,000 new customers a day. One of them, Soft on Demand, generates 160,000 in revenue each month, much of it from mobile sales. (Porn Business Booming in Japan)

Now porn has become a theme or means to promote… almost EVERYTHING!

Magazine

Doritos

USB

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United States

While Japanese are quite supportive for their porn industry, Americans either hate it or love it.

American Family Association (AFA) is an anti-pornography organization. It lays out five reasons to fight pornography.

1. Economics. Pornography consumption adds costs to police services, courts and jails, as well as the costs that cope with prostitution offenses.

2. Public safety and health. Pornography fosters and reinforces the probabilities of spreading AIDS virus or other sexually transmitted disease. Pornography would also increase sexual violence like rape and child molestation.

3. Mental health. It concerns with violence in pornography that may negatively affect children and adolescents. Children and adolescents who are exposed to violent porn would grow up with unrealistic and morbid ideas of what to expect from sexual relationships, and they would encounter unstable marriage/intimate relationships.

4. Morality. It concerns that pornography appeals to the prurient interests. And it is wrong to dehumanize women, for that women are sexually abused and used as objects for sale.

5. Religion. Pornography promotes not only unequal power, but also the behaviors and attitudes that are virtually forbidden.

Despite of these persuasive reasons, people still watch porn. Same theme is used in American music videos, such as Britney Spears’ Womanizer.

Some scholars have studied the social influence that porn brings. According to professor Todd D. Kendall, Internet access to pornography reduces rape incidents.

How could the Internet access to porn reduce rape incidents? It may be that rapists are just indoor looking for porn on the Internet, and it could be that porn gives rapists more visual fun and excitement when masturbating, or it could be that rapists find their true love on an online dating website. Anyway, porn has become a substitute for rape, which is a good thing for societies.

Gender Differences in Advertisements

Darren W. Dahl, Jaideep Sengupta, and Kathleen D. Vohs wrote a book on sex in advertising. The authors argued that there are differences in men’s and women’s sexual beliefs and motivations. The book portrays that male audiences have positive attitudes towards casual and recreation sex, whereas female audiences value the emotional intimacy and commitment that can surround the sexual relationship.

In advertisements that are targeted to men, the advertisement normally concentrates on power and sexual fun. Men are in dominant positions while women are passive and vulnerable.  In this SKYY advertisement, the woman is lying on the beach and the man is standing handing the bottle and the glass. The audience can feel that it is the man who has the control in the ads. His body is stiff and hard while the woman is soft and vulnerable. This is the general stereotype in the commercial media.

In advertisements that are targeted to woman, it concentrates on relationship and commitment. For example, consume a product to become a better mom or wife.  In this Venus advertisement that is target to woman. It pictures a wedding scenario, the woman used Venus to shave her leg so she would look perfect at her wedding.

These stereotypes happen all the times in the advertisement and they can affect the audience. Man would want to become stronger and dominant by consuming a product. While woman consumer a product to become perfect so she can have a better relationship.  These are the ideologies that the commercial media impose on us.

YouTube and Shanzaiism

For centuries the freedom of speech is in the control of the few elites including the government and major corporations.  Recently this has been changed, with the availability of YouTube, normal people can create and share videos with the masses. It is an unregulated and unfiltered platform that can threatens the corporate and government control of its audiences. Several countries has blocked access to YouTube since its inception, including China, Morocco, and Thailand. Some argues that YouTube culture is the driven force of Chinese Shanzai movies. Shangzai movies have low budget but achieve commercial success by making fun or borrowing elements from high-end Hollywood standard blockbuster movies. The first movie to do this is the “Crazy Stone”. With only around 500,000 Canadian dollar budget, “Crazy Stone” achieved 4 million-box-office revenue.

Shanzaiism is a philosophical term denoting a Chinese style of innovation with a peasant mind-set. It ranges from Shanzai products, Shangzai movie stars, Shangzai Olympic Torch Relay to Shangzai advertisement.  Some of these Shanzaiism is just for fun and a break from the mainstream media. Shanzaiism is a personal artistic expression that is non political. It is a challenge to the Chinese government control of culture. Both YouTube culture and Shanzaiism are an escape from the mainstream culture and tries to create something that is more personal to people’s life. Although both has criticism on piracy and and copy right issues but they continues to become more and more popular.

In this advertisement, Chinese shanzai phone maker HAFF-COMM promotes the new shanzai phone blockberry 9500 and has Obama’s figure appeared in this phone’s poster with a slogan “Obama has Blackberry, I have blockberry.”

Does Sex Sell?

Does sex sell? I thought it would be interesting to open this discussion with a personal story.

Last week, I was shopping at La Senza. I saw two men stopped in front of the La Senza store, stared at the poster with an attractive sexy woman on it, and then one of the men took a photo with the poster.

There might be many motives to why they took a photo with the photo but one of the obvious one is that they thought the woman in the poster looked very hot and sexy. Although they are not interested to buy the products in La Senza but the sexy picture grabbed their attention. Sex in advertising is to use sexual and erotic images to sell a particular product. Sex and advertising is a powerful combination. First, you have sex, a potent instinctual drive. A drive that ranks high among essential survivalist drives and motivation such as the need for safety, shelter, appetite, thirst and companionship. There’s truth in the old saying “Every species on Earth does two things well – eat and fuck.”

Sex sells has always been an effective advertisement technique. While men are wooed by the sexy advertisements, the women want the products so they can look just like the model by consuming the product . The illusion of advertisement creates a desire to possess. The hyperreal images make us dissatisfied with our own body. We start to consume commodities to satisfy our needs such as the needs to be sexy and attractive.

How the society sees women in the 19th century America

Today we were shown an example of Dior’s ring ad of the 1960s. It was the first ad which promoted masturbating. There is a nude woman in the poster, covering her private area with one of her own hand, which hand wears Dior’s ring. As Dr. Strangelove explained, what’s throwing out from the poster is that the nude body is saying:”I pleasure myself.” This poster is very daring and apparently Feminist.

The first wave of Feminism movement was in the 19th and early 20th century. At that time, there was a belief in America that all women would go insane at some point of her life, no matter if they were beautiful/intelligent or not, because wombs would wander around inside women bodies and cause psychological disorders (known as the “Wandering womb”).

Men do not have wombs so they were powerful, and they ruled. Women would be sent by their husbands to a house for treatment, and they were not allow to step outside their rooms.

Furthermore, women and men did not sleep in the same bed unless they wanted to have sex; they did not have sex unless they wanted to procreate. And women who were sexually active would be considered as whores. So my point is, in the late 19th and early 20th century, women were not only depressed, but also sexually dissatisfied.

About the Semiotic Democracy

On June 29′s lecture, Dr. Strangelove talked about Semiotic Democracy, which means the democracy of meaning. We, the audiences, decide the meaning of a symbol/ad according to our knowledge and cultural background. Instead of being passive to absorb the intended meanings that the producers make, audiences can determine the meaning freely of whatever is inside their minds at that moment.

Take this video for example.

Scene 1

As the singer’s voice raises, she appears in a shadowy figure, sitting in a couch beside the window and flirting with a paint brush. The audience knows immediately that she is Christina Aguilera, even though her face has not been exposed yet. She wears a long transparent robe and has a curly hairstyle like Monroe’s, which are pretty recognizable as Christina’s symbols. Not to mention that her voice is pretty distinguishable from other artists.

Scene 2

An anonymous man looks through a window to where the voice comes from, smoking and wondering. And as the video continues, the man even gets intrigued to peer furtively. When he sees a fine, sexy female figure, he moves forward to the window and uses a telescope and loosens his tie. Obviously, this man is just “thirsty” for sex.

Scene 3

It is when Christina applies lip gloss and mascara. According to Dr. Strangelove and the Semiotic Democracy, audiences would determine the meaning in an unmediated way. Lip gloss touching at Christina’s lips, and light flashing at the back… Isn’t that flirting and seductive? Well, male audiences may determine the lip gloss as a man’s penis, since men think about sex more than women.

In Western culture, sexuality and body exposure are very common. In traditional Asian culture people generally do not talk about sexuality in public, or people will be considered rude, dirty and uneducated. But nowadays people are getting more and more open to sex, because Western values have affected Asian values anyhow. Sexuality and hint of sex are seen in many advertisements now in Asia. Below is a banned South Korean noodle commercial.

The woman’s voice sounds like she is giving oral sex to a man. Even though there is no man or body exposure in the commercial, it was banned showing on television because of its hint and meaningful voice.

The last but not the least, I remembered that I read a Chinese magazine article many years ago, and it had a poll for all men across different cultures like Asian and White and Black. The poll asked men what they expected their female partner to do and to list 10 critera. One common in these cultures is that men hope their girlfriends to give them oral sex.

To start

Hello!

We are three Chinese students in Dr. Strangelove’s class CMN2173. This blog is one of our midterm project requirements, and the other is to make a 5-minute video. The purpose is to create a research source for erotic advertising on YouTube.

To start our project, we decided to do a study on cross-cultural values of sex-sell, societies’ reactions to erotic advertising, and changes that brings to stereotype gender roles.