Readers responded so positively to our post featuring the lego ad from the 1980s that was just so… human. The girl in the ad reminded us how hypergendered advertising has become. I offer the ad below in the same spirit (from Vintage Ads). Three people, who look like people, saying stuff about tires:
Comments 8
jelena grujic — January 16, 2010
Wonder on outcome of this advertisement - did it sell any? Advertisement have very simple and specific goal, to sell. We can analyze cultural references related to it, but unfortunately not by excluding the primer purpose of the whole scenario of add.
HP — January 16, 2010
Jelena, I wasn't old enough to buy tires when these ads ran, but I certainly remember the ad campaign. The TV ads consisted of Uni, Roy, and Al doing all kinds of crazy car stunts. The campaign ran for a quite a while, and I still remember it, so it must have been fairly successful.
Here's an interview with the Uniroyal Thrill Team from the Nov. 15 Tallahassee Evening Independent. "Uni," aka Kaye Kaiser, is rather pointedly described as a "divorcee" and former secretary, but the marital status and job history of the fellows go unremarked. Par for the course in 1973. There's a nice picture of the trio not wearing racing gear.
Oddly, there's very little on YouTube. I was hoping for a video of them driving, but all I could find was this, and they only show up very briefly near the end of the ad.
jelena grujic — January 16, 2010
It's so interesting what you say on USA 70's. Very left socialism of Yugoslavia payed lots of attention to the gender roles in social structure and public, and is often to hear that bigger gender segregation no a days is one the prices we pay for madly running away from the lefties.
But "we" thought that better gender times in our part of the world in 70's were due to socialism, not a reflection of the global norms! And this similarity is even more hard to understand when having mind further development of gender politics.
I guess all is more easy to observe when watching outside of the deeply rutted dualism we were raised on, left Vs. capitalism, and then became more obvious that actually idealism of the equality is not really a Vs. idealism of the human rights.
Sorry for going in totally different direction of the story, and if I was not very clear. I tried to summarize :)
Totally true, advertisers are going even behind of the mainstream stereotypes...
lektira — January 20, 2010
nice post man! keep good work