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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

]]> http://whatremainsbaby.wordpress.com/2009/07/26/relative-happiness/feed/ 0 Chinese Chics Bleeding billboard Bleeding billboard http://whatremainsbaby.wordpress.com/2009/07/17/gener-roles-in-families/ http://whatremainsbaby.wordpress.com/2009/07/17/gener-roles-in-families/#comments Sat, 18 Jul 2009 03:26:04 +0000 Chinese Chics http://whatremainsbaby.wordpress.com/?p=237 ]]> 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.

]]> http://whatremainsbaby.wordpress.com/2009/07/17/gener-roles-in-families/feed/ 0 Chinese Chics http://whatremainsbaby.wordpress.com/2009/07/15/taste-the-ads/ http://whatremainsbaby.wordpress.com/2009/07/15/taste-the-ads/#comments Thu, 16 Jul 2009 03:37:17 +0000 Chinese Chics http://whatremainsbaby.wordpress.com/?p=205 ]]>

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!