Minus The Stereotypes

Recently in our advertising class we viewed this advertisement for the toy "Rose Petal Cottage".

As we can more or less see, it is filled with gender stereotypes for women. Everything from how the girl interacts with the toy house down to the song they play for the advertisement is more or less a stereotype of what women are supposed to like and do. Yet what if we were to remove the stereotypes and instead replace them with things that are far more empowering and fair to the genders? If we did what would it look like?

If the advertisement was rewritten to remove all the stereotypes, it would look extremely different. The color scheme would not be light pastels, they would be more solid colors and most likely primaries. The song also would not sound so sing-song, a better choice to remove stereotypes would be to simply have wordless background music. In the advertisement, to make it less stereotypical, instead of having just one girl, it should instead have a girl and a boy. Additionally in the advertisement the girl does a lot of stereotypical chores and duties for women in a household such as cooking, cleaning, taking care of the baby, and etc. To make it less stereotypical you would have the boy and girl do those chores together. You could also have the boy and girl do chores that are the reverse of their normal stereotype. For example, the boy would take care of the baby and the girl could fix up the house.

Breaking stereotypes is a rather difficult thing I believe. Not so much in terms of execution, but instead the beliefs of stereotypes that have been placed within everyone over their lifetimes. While I was writing this blog even I stopped myself at one point because I thought an idea was more for girls rather then guys. This point was at the part where I was writing role reversal chores for the guy and girl. I stopped at the point where I wrote that guys should take care of the baby, I thought that it was a little far for a guy to take care of a baby. Then I thought to myself that it definitely is not the case that I believe only girls should take care of the children in the family, in fact I believe if a father does not actually spend time with the kids that it's a tragedy and a crime almost. I stopped because of the stereotypes that have essentially been placed in me by society over my lifetime. So do take time to consider the idea that while maybe not consciously you believe in gender stereotypes, subconsciously in your choices you do.

Racism Presented to You by the Following Company

One topic that will continually be controversial in society and media is the issue of racism. Ethnicity is something that unfortunately is imbedded into a lot of things in our world whether we acknowledge it or not. Advertising in society is a great example of this. In countless ads race is used as a part of it, but is it okay to do this? Especially when certain ethnics are portrayed with rather negative stereotypes?


 I certainly believe that some advertisements are quite vile with how openly racist they are, but ultimately advertisements are not meant to be seen as guides of morality. Advertisements are meant to get people to notice their product or their message and for that message to stick to the viewer like glue. From a business standpoint I would say that using whatever means necessary to get your product to sell is fair game. It is not a question of whether it is right and decent, the question for advertisers is what works.
 

This advertisement was used in the election between Republican party member Bob Corker and Democratic party member Harold Ford. Harold Ford was going to be the first black senator in Tennessee if he won that election. So the Republican party came out with this ad against him. It more or less played on some of the stereotypes people had of blacks. The ad can be said to have been pretty much successful since Corker got a boost in his points at the poll once this ad came out. The ad was certainly effective, but it certainly was not positive.

Unfortunately racism and the use of it in advertisements has been around for a very long time, most likely since the very beginning when ads were first being used. Today racism is alive in well in our world. As a world have made plenty of strides in the right direction, but the ultimate goal is still far away. This too applies to advertisements in our society, we have definitely gone far away from advertisements like:

But we still have advertisements like:

Racism in advertising today is not quite so blatantly obvious with words, but they certainly achieve the effect with images. Since it is not the words that are racist but the image, I imagine companies have an easier time denying the fact they meant to be racist. Subtlety and the ability to deny any claims to racism is the ability that comes from only using images to imply racism in advertising.

Advertisers have always had one job and one job only: to sell the product or idea. This is not to say though that they are heartless monsters who simply want money, they are just doing what is necessary sometimes for the job. I believe advertisers do not have ethical responsibilities, rather I believe it is our society that has the responsibility. Racism and stereotypes are practically embraced by many in the world, because of this advertisers see that these are methods in which people can be reached and pulled in by their advertisements. If we want advertisements to be more racially responsible, change has to be made within our society.

In The Brand We Believe

If there is one thing an advertisement wants to do, it's to get you to believe in their brand. To think favorably upon what their brand does, provides, and sells. Companies set out to do this in all sorts of fashions to convince consumers that their brand is the most reliable and the one that they should definitely buy. For example if we compare the commercial for Oreos...

Compared to the commercial for Tropicana's orange juice...

In the Oreo commercial the company makes the brand very comical and humorous, showing the consumer that their brand is fun and so delicious that people would even begin to fight over what makes them so delicious. The Tropicana commercial shows the consumer how natural and pure their juice is. It shows how their product is the real deal, not something made from artificial ingredients.

Both of these commercials on food accomplish the same thing, they get the consumer to get behind what they are selling. While they are both advertising things for food, they do so in very different fashions, but they accomplish the same goal. This goal of course is to build a better reputation for their brand name. Through their advertisements they ultimately get people to place a bit more trust and belief that their brand is the best and that their brand is the only one you should buy.