media: marketing

Joanna S. sent us a link to an application designed by Jonathan McIntosh where one can “re-mix” toy commercials aimed at boys versus girls.  You choose the visuals of one and the sounds of another, and have fun watching the wackiness.  We can’t embed the fun results, but you might enjoy visiting and playing a few for fun.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Dan Dickerman sent in two great videos that juxtapose nicely. The first is an advertisement for Chrysler, featuring Eminem, that focuses on how Detroit is the “Motor City,” a place that knows cars, now and always. To contrast is a Daily Show interview with Paul Clemens about his book covering the disassembling of car plants in Detroit and the moving of car and car part production from American to elsewhere and out of the hands of American companies into the hands of companies owned by citizens of other countries. Together, they show the often vast discrepancy between the simple public brand and the complex corporate reality of many car companies.

The commercial:

Clemens on The Daily Show:

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Nicole S. sent in this great example of the way that differences in bodies are used to infer a wide-range of non-anatomical differences between boys and girls (or, in this case, the other way around).

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Sent in by Liz Yockey, who signed it for GroupOn, it is kind of interesting that all the site thinks it needs to know about you is your sex and your age to send you local coupons that suit you.

Are you just like every other n-something f or m you know?  Are we so predictable?  Perhaps marketers know better than we.  What do you think?

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

We’ve discussed American Indian mascots, advertising featuring anachronistic caricatures of American Indians, the ice skater who appropriated aboriginal culture, the lie at the heart of the famous crying Indian PSA, and the stunning irony that is Avatar, but we’ve never directly addressed the use and appropriation of the idea of the Eskimo.  The term refers to the Inuit and Yupik people in Eastern Russia, Alaska, Canada, and Greenland.

Russell Potter, a professor of English at Rhode Island College, collected a few vintage advertisements featuring the idea of the Eskimo.  He argues that they fall roughly into two camps: cheerful adorable Eskimo and the Eskimo as primitive and backwards.

These first two for apples and ginger ale fall into the first category:

But this ad presents the “Esquimaux” as “dull” and Grape Nuts as civilized:

Building on Potter’s collection, Adrienne at Native Appropriations posted some more contemporary uses of the Eskimo.

Eskimo Joe’s (Stillwater, OK) uses an image of an Eskimo looking downright ridiculous and very much like his dog:

Any child of the ’80s probably remembers the Lisa Frank Eskimo girl (which Adrienne points out looks decidely anglo):

And this ad seems to suggest that even decapitated walruses speak better English than Eskimos:

Here’s another example of the childlike Eskimo, tweeted to us by @Matthew_Kneale:

All of these ads turn Eskimos into (cute but inferior) childlike figures or (deficient and inferior) backwards adults, or some combination of the two.  For a population with essentially no contact with the Inuit or the Yupik, the idea that they are real human beings can become lost.  When real members of a group are invisible, imaginary representatives can be demonized or romanticized as we see fit.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Harmony sent along a set of photographs of a fitness starter kit, a pink one for “ladies” and a green one for, um, “people.”  In any case, putting aside the women-are-women and men-are-people thing for a minute, she also noted that the pink one was breast cancer-themed.  So here is, explicitly, what so many breast cancer awareness-themed items imply: pink = women = breast cancer awareness = boobies = women = pink = pink = pink.  The items, by cultural definition, exclude men from caring about breast cancer.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Most Americans, when asked if they are affected by advertising, will say “not really.” They say they skip the print ads in magazine, ignore the ones on the street, mute TV commercials, and are generally too savvy to be swayed by their messages.

Here’s some data illustrating the not-me phenomenon. The Kaiser Family Foundation asked 15- to 17-year-olds whether they and their friends were influenced by sexual content on TV.

Seventy-two percent of teens say that sexual content on TV affects their friends “a lot” or “somewhat”:

But only 22 percent say that sexual content on TV affects them “a lot” or “somewhat”:

Advertisers know that most Americans are wrong about whether advertising affects them.  That’s why they spent $117 billion in 2009 trying to convince you to buy their product. It works. So it must be affecting somebody, right?

Images borrowed from Strasburger’s Children, Adolescents, and the Media.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Heather Downs, an Assistant Professor at Jacksonville University, pointed out a post by Sadie Stein at Jezebel about a recent graphic from the USA Today Snapshots feature; we’re pleased to repost it here, with some additional comments from me below.

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Women just love, love, love housework! Says a survey. Conducted by cleaning product.

Apparently under the impression that we also believe cigarettes are soothing to the throat and little kids love laxatives, Scrubbing Bubbles (or rather, the impartial survey they commissioned) informs us (via USA Today) that an overwhelming percentage of women in every age group “enjoy the dirty work of keeping their house clean.”

Now, I know there are indeed women — and men, for that matter — who do indeed find satisfaction in the tangible rewards of cleaning (although I can’t pretend to be one of them.) But…why is this survey for and about women exclusively? Maybe because it comes from the same universe in which women — exclusively — scrub and sweep and swiffer with expressions of cheerful serenity in pastel-hued V-necks.

That said, in their defense, at least as of 1978, the bubbles themselves seem to have been masculine. And do not appear to be perverts:

[Via: Scrubbing Bubbles Says: All women are cleaning ladies (Mislabeled)]

Send an email to Sadie Stein, the author of this post, at Sadie@jezebel.com.

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Aside from the gendered element, it’s also a great example of the conflation of marketing-type materials with the surrounding, presumably non-advertising, material. Without having to buy advertising space, Scrubbing Bubbles gets a mention next to an item that says women think cleaning is awesome!

Also see how excited Kelly Ripa is to do laundry and product placement on Days of Our Lives.