If you have ever criticized an ad campaign, commercial, or anything that’s even remotely related to marketing for pushing a bigoted viewpoint, you will undoubtedly have come up against the argument that of course the reason the product is being marketed that way is because it’s more profitable. A company would never do anything to compromise its profits!

Which is, of course, bullshit. Many people have demonstrated how such campaigns hurt profit margins, rather than help them. The response is, of course, “but it doesn’t make sense for companies to put bigoted agendas over profits (and therefore they must have some secret knowledge about why it’s more profitable to discriminate against non-privileged groups)”. Before now I had never really had a good response to that argument (I was too busy being shocked at the leap of faith required to continue to believe that marketing is doing the best thing in the face of pretty damning evidence). But, thankfully, BetaCandy has recently blogged about her experiences learning to be a screenwriter, which has given rise to a discussion about how a non-profitable system perpetuates itself among industries that are supposed to be driven by profit.

In her post Why discriminate if it doesn’t profit?, she takes on the mindset that explains why the “profits come first” argument is, in fact, a myth:

The question this brings to mind is: why would they discriminate against a group when there’s more profit to be made by doing the right thing? That’s a good question, and one that deserves an answer.

n comments on the above-linked entry, I explained that I think it boils down to ego. Even greed is fueled by ego – it’s the ego that wants more than enough so it feels safe or better than its neighbors. It’s the ego that wants to feel important, unique, successful. Eliminating entire clumps of humanity from the “race” your ego thinks it’s in is a quick way to get rid of competition. It’s the same question you have to ask about store owners and restaurateurs who refused to serve African-American patrons whose money was as green as everyone else’s. They sacrificed profit, and for what? Ego.

But that’s not necessarily the only answer. Laziness is also a factor.

I would highly recommend reading the full post.

Wow, a man refrains from violating the terms of his relationship agreement with his wife? Totally worthy of a reward. Give that man a cookie Klondike! <insert massive eyeroll here>

Actual analysis of Klondike’s latest series of commercials can be found over at The Hathor Legacy, in sbg’s post, Normal Behavior Rewarded as Extraordinary.

Dove and Axe — which send diametrically opposed messages about women to their target audiences — are both made by Unilever. This video juxtaposes the two campaigns in order to raise awareness of the connection between the two.

Via The Hathor Legacy.

I swear I don’t go looking for these kinds of things, they find me all on their own. I went to VoodooPC’s website to check their tech support hours (in the hopes of me getting my laptop back this century…) and I saw the above image.

When you mouse over it you get this lovely text:

Do I even have to do an image and textual analysis of this for everyone to understand what’s wrong with a North American company (recently bought out by HP, mind you) capitalizing on the fetishization of Asian culture in order to sell its product? Okay, then.

Honestly, if I didn’t have so many things to do already I’d be sorely tempted to make a satire of the above ad using Christianity. The laptop as Jesus, anyone?

About half a year ago I wrote about the infamous Burger King commercial and I haven’t stopped getting shit about it. Even more so because it’s apparently on the air again. Most of them I just delete, but there has been one sitting in my moderation queue for more than a week now.

daisy wrote:

As a married women, I saw this commercial and asked what my husband thought. He had a laugh and I asked how he wasn’t offended. He simply said, why do guys play football, wrestle with friends, or eat huge burgers. Boys will be boys. He left me with that thought and I agreed. This commercial is targetted at men, let them enjoy it, and let them eat their meat.

I probably should have let it pass without comment, but the whole “let them eat their meat” was borderline minimizing, as the implication is “you shouldn’t bother raising issue about this kind of issue.”

But, then, today I was reading an entry by Jill of Feministe on PETA’s politics where she discusses the connection between meat and masculinity. Ariel, who is not only a vegan but has done research into the intersection of vegetarianism and feminism, would probably the better candidate to discuss this issue, but I’ll do my best to convey more clearly this time why this issue is an issue not because of the burgers, but rather because it’s perpetuating a destructive view of masculinity.

Read the rest…

Okay, so a while ago onebrownwoman has this awesome post critiquing the Diwali Barbie. This week, she posts a link to Oriental Barbie but doesn’t have time to comment on it.

Here’s what the page says about this lovely “Doll of the World”:

Oriental Barbie® doll is dainty and elegant in this beautiful costume reflecting the influence of the Orient. Her long, slender yellow dress is trimmed in red, and complemented by a red and golden-flowered jacket. Her lustrous black hair falls gently over her shoulders, and is pulled back to display her lovely face.

Compared to what’s said about some of the other barbies — Thai Barbie is “[a]s beautiful and exotic as the land she represents,” and “Chinese Barbie® exudes the simplistic grace of the Chinese culture.” — that blurb isn’t so bad. The only Asian stereotype that seems to be played up is the “dainty” part. Although it does seem that the American clothing tends to be called an “ensemble” while the non-American clothing tends to get labelled a “costume” (the Asian barbies seem to have their outfits almost exclusively labelled “costumes”).

Let me tell you what other barbies are in this list: India Barbie, Japanese Barbie, Korean Barbie, Malaysian Barbie, Chinese Barbie, Japanese Barbie 2nd Edition, India Barbie 2nd Edition, and Thai Barbie. Aside from there being an India rather than an Indian barbie (done to avoid confusion with the Native American barbies in another part of the collection?), what strikes y’all here? If you said that all of the other barbies come from an actual country and the Oriental Barbie is a blatant representation of the racist stereotypes that the West has lumped onto those they term “orientals” then you win!

I would argue that the term “oriental” is problematic no matter where in the world it is being used, but in America especially, is considered offensive and derogatory when being used on people. Though the doll is technically an inanimate object, she is being used to represent a human being so the usage, therefore, becomes derogatory.

More than that, the “Dolls of the World” series are being used to represent cultures. As I mentioned above, there is no “oriental” culture outside of what Western imperialists in the past lumped together under the heading of “east of us” — what the word really stands for is “exotic” and “Other”, with a focus on Asia and Asia Minor.

Now, it’s important to note that this barbie was not produced during some dark age in American history. It was the beginning of what the Barbie Collector Showcase website labels as the “Dolls of the World: Asia” line, with the date 1981 under it. The collection, by the way, ends with Malaysian Barbie in 1998.

Via Woman of (an)Other Color. Image from Sandys Doll Room.

The recently published How to Make Money Like a Pornstar comic has been the subject of some controversy on the blogsphere. The comic was given to Karen Healey, a well-known feminist comic’s blogger, (I Can’t BELIEVE They Sent This To Me )as well as to Kevin Church, another well known comics blogger (Review: How To Make Money Like A Porn Star). Their reviews are pretty negative, and have recieved some attention from other comic bloggers (see links at bottom of post).

Church followed up his review with one discussing possibly fake Amazon.com reviews (Marketing Conspiracy Theory Machine Go!). His sentiment is echoed by simargl_wings (Pass me the tinhat….), but with added controversy: discussion of the Wikipedia Entry for the comic.

I’ve stuck my nose into Wikipedia’s business exactly one other time. An attempt to make the VAWA article comply with Wikipedia’s NPOV policy. Since the controversy is still going on (check the talk page and the history), I wasn’t the least bit successful. This time I didn’t try to modify the page in question, but rather stuck an NPOV tag on it and addressed the issue in the talk page.

Wikipedia can be a great resource for non-controversial subjects, but the nature of it is that anyone can modify a page for any reason. And that includes advertising — even though it is against the rules.

Read the rest…

Sorry I haven’t been posting. I actually have a few in mind, but it’s the end of semester crunch right now so I’ve been immersing myself in Japanese.

A small study done by University of Florida professors recently was highlighted by MSNBC because of an award it won. Although the study itself is not proof of anything on its own, it seems to have opened up the debate on the assumptions of marketing and will hopefully bring to light other research done on this matter.

To this end, I’d like to highlight a new to me blog called Marketing to Women Online. Holly has written a piece called Do Women Respond to Sexual Ads? where she says:

We’ve certainly seen how different genders react differently to advertising messages. What women want and are attracted to can be different from what men want and are attracted to. This is not true in every case, but depending on the subject matter, the differences can be striking.

Sex is one such subject matter. I’ve written before about studies on how men and women react differently to sex in advertising.

Now there is another study with similar results. Do fashion magazine ads that ooze with pictures of sexy seductive women work? Especially magazines ads aimed almost 100% at women?

Via The Hathor Legacy (another great blog new to the blogroll).

I recently saw a commercial for the Sony Bravia which billed itself as “The World’s First Television for Men and Women.”

At first, I thought they were advertising something like this, but after checking out the web site it turns out that it’s just a marketing campaign for a high-end HDTV.

I’m trying to figure out what the advertisers were thinking this one. I’ve narrowed it down to the following possibilities:

• They noticed that purchasers of HDTVs were disproportionately male, and saw women as an untapped market; however, they were worried that a women-centered ad campaign would lose more male buyers.
• They’re looking to provide the stereotypical man with justifications to his stereotypical partner for the purchasing decision.

Given the blatant sexism of the advertisement, I’m leaning toward the latter.

Read the rest…

No, Burger King (BK) does not have the monopoly on awful advertising. Not by a long shot. But this new commercial combines sexism, racism, and probably a whole lot of other -isms that my mind wants to blank out into one nasty little package. I just… yeah. Didn’t Carl’s Jr. try this one before? And Jack in the Box? And, like, didn’t it fail? Miserably?

Shame on me for trying to apply Earth Logic to Marketing! I should know better, really. But, in all seriousness, this commercial is just plain bad. I don’t mean to pick on Burger King (well, I sort of do), but it’s making the rounds on ther internet (elsewise I never would have seen it, me being in Japan and all), and I can’t help but put my two cents in. Two cents that should be studying my kanji, but, hey, I got all but the hardest combinations right when my study partner quizzed me. I deserve a break.

So, without further ado, let’s begin with the analysis.

Read the rest…

Looking random shit up on GameFaqs during a study break (and this is only the second day of classes, people! Studying > me), I came across this GameStop ad. I really do think it speaks for itself.

Way back when I did the first instalment of this series, I quoted a description of a GameStop commercial that an employee had seen while working in the shop. The long and the short was that it was an ad for trade-ins featuring guys getting hit by women (representing video games) while on their way to trade them in for women who packed a bigger punch. The employee describes the women as “scantily clad” and, thinking of most video game heroines, I don’t think that’s an exaggeration.

These women clearly fit into the idea of “girl power” that’s been floating around the entertainment industry for the past 10+ years. They are valued for their “strength,” as evidenced by how hard they can punch their player being proportional to how valued they are (he trades them in for women who can hit harder). They are women who can, and do kick ass. But, is this “power” that of a true kind or is the phenomenon of women kicking ass a way to co-opt female power and bring it back firmly under men’s control?

Read the rest…

Instead of finishing my rant on another one of those stupid “gifts for her” list, writing on gender in Indigo Prophecy, or finishing the essay I want to submit to She’s Such a Geek, I’ve been hit with the creative writing bug. I don’t question this, and neither should you. Plus, Buffy will be happy that I finally finished this round of editing on CoS.

But this isn’t about me and my laziness, this is about the new miracle drug, Panexa:

IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR WOMEN

Pregnant women, or women who plan to become pregnant, should avoid taking PANEXAor handling broken tablets. Or intact tablets. Women considering some day becoming pregnant, who have ever been pregnant, who have had a pregnant friend or pet, or who have seen other pregnant women, naked or otherwise, should also follow these precautions:Do not handle PANEXA tablets, containers, or related literature. If a PANEXA product nears your field of vision, avert your eyes. Try not to say the word “PANEXA.” If you do happen to pronounce the syllables, spit thrice and soak your hands in iodine. If you hear the words spoken, live or via recorded medium, cover your ears and immediately see a specialist to try and staunch the bleeding. Try not to think too hard about PANEXA. In fact, don’t ever even think about it at all. Pretend you never heard of PANEXA, and never will. Drop this magazine immediately, and get the hell out of here as fast as you fucking can. Go on, get out of here. You’ll thank me.

If you should be aware of a pregnant woman who has handled PANEXA, attempt to warn the peoples of earth of the mind-numbing horror that is about to unfold. Also, drink plenty of liquids.

If that’s not a poignant critique on legal drug culture, I don’t know what is.

Here I was, trying to read Pandagon because I haven’t checked it out in a couple of weeks. I was minding my own business, looking forward to get my dose of snark against sexism, and WHAM. I was assaulted by the above ad.

This, my friends, is one of the reasons I ceased calling myself a Democrat or liberal a long time ago. You’d expect that a supposedly minority-friendly group would be above reducing women to role of “sexy” date for someone. Or, at least, that they’d shy away from a tit shot and/or use a male model. But then you’d expect wrong.

So, I was surfing around this hot new feminist gaming blog, New Game Plus, which lead me to a link to Game Politics but before I actually could read any of the content, I was confronted by the above ad.

Two obviously female lips, pressed up against each other, with the male-fantasy threesome buzzword “times two”. Excellent. The 3 in “3D gaming” doesn’t look so innocuous to me, either, given the context and the fact that gaming marketing is still largely aimed at adolescent males who are seen as being slaves to their overwhelming hormones.

This ad truly disugsts me, although it sadly doesn’t surprise me. My mother bought one of Alienware’s gaming PCs, for crying out loud! This shit demeans her, it demeans me, and it demeans women and men everywhere – gamers or not.

Feministe has just reinforced how much I never want ads on my blog. I had the dubious pleasure of seeing this ad on the side of the blog; one of the three from blogads that Feministe runs. Normally I don’t pay attention to them, but this one caught my eye (it’s a moving gif) and I had to say I was angry and disappointed when I read the text.

Can someone tell me how buying into the beauty myth and mandatory makeup culture is empowering in any way, shape, or form? Thanks.

In my first installment of my Girls & Game Ads series, I commented on a disturbing phenomenon in the portrayal of men versus women:

Another thing evident in this particular line-up is something I’ve noticed as another feature of video game advertising: images of women tend to have the large boobs as a focus (either by showing lots of skin or by having skin-tight costumes), while images of men tend to focus on the face, or show a heavily armoured (or clothed) man. While there are obviously exceptions to this (armoured/small breasted women, scantily-clothed men, etc), I posit that this dichotomy is one that is typical in advertisements for the gaming industry.

Enter GQ and its “Man of the Year” winners. With AOL News’ tagline Aniston Joins the Guys one would expect the cover to show a confident, strong Aniston with a focus on her head/face. But GQ, unfortunately, has chosen to take the same approach to the portrayal of men and women as I described above.

Read the rest…

Via feminist LJ.

I was starting to feel bad about dragging my feet in support of NOW (National Organization for Women), but not anymore. Well, I’ll let my letter speak for itself [link added]:

I’m a young feminist who has been aware of NOW for quite some time, but I haven’t made the decision whether to join yet. I was browsing through your catalogue and seriously considering buying a few items until I happened upon your “We do it for Money” shirt. I noticed that it was made by American Apparel and, frankly, I would like to know why NOW, a feminist organization, supports a company that exploits young women in a softcore porn-esque advertising campaign, has more than one sexual harassment suit filed against the CEO, and is known for it’s anti-union bullying.

I also added the following links to the bottom of the e-mail:

For information on AA’s advertising practices:

• Images from AA itself
• Exchange between a feminist and AA: Part 1 | Part 2

Info on the sexual harassment lawsuits:

• Article on Dov Charney

I’ll post a reply when (if) I get one, but until I have a darn good explanation and/or they pull their support of American Apparel, they aren’t getting one red cent of my money, nor an iota of my support.

Update [2005/10/22]: I received a reply from Olga Vives, Executive Vice President.

Thank you for your comments. We are discontinuing the American Apparel
shirts. Looking for a comparable shirt.

My reply[link added]:

Thank you for your prompt response.

If you haven’t already, I suggest considering No Sweat Apparel as one alternative to AA’s gear.

I look forward to seeing the AA shirts replaced with those from a better company.

I’ll keep an eye on the site. Hopefully they’ll replace the shirts soon, ’cause some of them really were cute. Now if only I could find a really nice looking “This is what a feminist looks like” shirt…

All I have to say is, yum:

Via Pandagon.