media: marketing

Alys sent in a photograph of the packaging at her local McDonald’s. It included pictures, not of Chicken Clubs and Big Macs, but of the raw ingredients that these foods are (theoretically) made of… with the notable exception of realistic images of animals. The materials, Alys writes, were…

…adorned with pictures of healthy whole foods, such as a tomato or a head of lettuce. That in itself is interesting — they are clearly attempting to cash in on the whole-foods-are-good-for-you mentality despite the fact that there is hardly anything more processed than fast food — but what I found particularly fascinating was the animals, or rather the lack thereof. My chicken club sandwich package featured not a live chicken, but two little origami chickens. Similarly, the bag the food came in had a tin chicken knick-knack thing. My husband’s hamburger package was even more ambiguous. It’s a little hard to read in the picture, but “two all beef patties” is represented not with a cow, or a picture of the patties, or even an origami cow, but with a spatula. Clearly MacDonalds realizes that while Americans want to be reminded that the ketchup on their sandwich originally came from a tomato — and that means it’s healthy! — they do not want to look into eyes of the live animal that sacrificed its life to provide the main focus of the meal.

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.

In their article, The Male Consumer as Loser, Michael Messner and Jeffrey Montez de Oca try to explain the recent rash of advertising featuring mediocre men.   These ads, and their film and television counterparts, skip the hunky-manly-hunk-dude in favor of less hunky men: young, heterosexual, usually white males who are short on cash, low on maturity, and have a penchant for irresponsibility. They dominate Judd Apatow “bromances” (e.g., Knocked Up), frequent TV sitcoms (e.g., The Drew Carey Show), and are used to sell everything from Mike’s Hard Lemonade to Twix candy bars. These are not studs. They are moderately good-looking, but small, skinny, chubby, or otherwise uncool compared to real hunks.

On the face of it, the mediocre man is a self-deprecating character who undermines idealized masculinity by being likeable despite being decidedly non-ideal.  Messner and Montez de Oca, however, show that the mediocre man, nevertheless, reproduces notions of men’s superiority over women.  The women in these narratives tend to be of two types: “sexy fantasy women” and “real women.”  The men bond over the unattainability of the sexy fantasy women and the burden of maintaining relationships with real women, their girlfriends, wives, and mothers.  The “real women’ are usually portrayed as bitches, harpies, and nags, while the “sexy fantasy women,” upon interaction, often turn out to be just as bad.

The viewers are meant to identify with the mediocre men, who revel in each others’ company, happy to be dudes free from the clutches of the women in their lives, even if they aren’t sleeping with supermodels.  The mediocre man may be kind of a loser, indeed, but he can thank God he’s a man. P.S.: Women suck.

Dmitriy T.M. sent in an example of the “mediocre man” narrative, the trailer from the movie, Hall Pass:

(Probably in the end they realize they love their naggy wives, but whatevs.)

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.

On today’s SportsCenter, ESPN closed out showing their “This is SportsCenter” commercials. As described on ESPN’s official YouTube, “This is SportsCenter” channel:

This is SportsCenter is the name of a series of comical television commercials run by ESPN to promote their SportsCenter sports news show. The ads are presented in a deadpan mockumentary style, lampooning various aspects of sports, and sports broadcasting. The commercials debuted in 1994.

As of tonight (December 24, 2010), ESPN’s YouTube channel profiles 77 of these short videos. Not every “This is SportsCenter” commercial is profiled, but I’m just going with what is up on this page now as the sample data set. I generally enjoy these commercials. Many of them are witty, and they are all short (around 30 seconds). Here are a few examples:

As can be seen, the commercials typically profile a famous athlete and/or a SportsCenter anchor, and on occasion a non-sports-related celebrity (e.g., Richard Simmons). In examining what athletes the commercials profile on ESPN’s YouTube page, a highly predictable trend emerges. Here are the individual athletes the commercials profile (note: when no athletes are profiled and only anchors, gender of anchors profiled noted instead):

1. Dwight Freeney (football; male)
2. Derek Jeeter (baseball; male)
3. Floyd Mayweather (boxing; male)
4. Tim Lincecum (baseball; male)
5. Wayne Gretzky (hockey; male)
6. Dwight Howard (basketball; male)
7. David St. Hubbins (musician; male)
8. Arnold Palmer (golf; male)
9. Oregon Duck (football; gender neutral)
10. Usain Bolt (track & field; male)
11. Larry Fitzgerald (football; male)
12. Matt Ryan (football; male)
13. Brett Favre (football; male)
14. Adrian Peterson (football; male)
15. Joe Mauer (baseball; male)
16. Adrian Peterson (football; male)
17. Manny Ramierz (baseball; male)
18. Josh Hamilton (baseball; male)
19. SportsCenter Anchors (all male)
20. Jimmie Johnson (car racing; male)
21. SportsCenter Anchors (all male)
22. Manny Ramirez (baseball; male)
23. David Ortiz & Jorge Posada (baseball; male)
24. David Wright (baseball; male)
25. Chad Ochocinco (football; male)
26. Chad Ochocinco (football; male)
27. Ladanian Tomlinson (football; male)
28. Chad Ochocinco (football; male)
29. Tony Romo (football; male)
30. Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, & Ray Allen (basketball; male)
31. Michael Phelps (swimming; male)
32. Ladanian Tomlinson (football; male)
33. Jim Kelly (football; male)
34. Dale Earnhardt Jr. (car racing; male)
35. Chad Ochocinco (football; male)
36. Stephen King (writer; male)
37. Michael Phelps (swimming; male)
38. Jimmy Rollins (baseball; male)
39. Richard Simmons (fitness pro; male)
40. Maria Sharapova (tennis; female)
41. Steve Smith (football; male)
42. Jose Reyes (baseball; male)
43. Pat Summit (basketball; female)
44. Dale Earnhardt Jr. (car racing; male)
45. Carmelo Anthony (basketball; male)
46. Chris Paul (basketball; male)
47. Keyshawn Johnson (football; male) & Kobe Bryant (basketball; male)
48. “Moving the Franchise” (all male anchors)
49. “Yahtzee” (male anchors)
50. Kerri Strug (gymnastics; female)
51. “Talent Search” (male anchors)
52. Globetrotters (basketball; male)
53. Dan O’Brien (track & field; male)
54. “Journalistic Integrity” (male anchors)
55. “Sportscaster Celebrities” (male anchors)
56. “Live on the Set” (predominantly male anchors; female anchor at end)
57. Michael Andretti (car racing; male)
58. Gordie Howe (hockey; male)
59. “Reading Lips” (all male anchors)
60. “Makeup Buddies” (all male anchors)
61. “Athletes Bribing” (multiple male athletes from different sports)
62. George Mikan (basketball; male)
63. Mary Lou Retton (gymnastics; female)
64. “Tour” (all male anchors)
65. “One Track Mind” (predominanty male anchors; female anchor at start)
66. “Shoot” (female anchor)
67. “Paws” (all male anchors)
68. “Serious Journalism” (all male anchors)
69. “Write Your Own Stuff” (all male anchors)
70. “Sweet Science” (predominantly male anchor; short appearances by a female anchor)
71. “Potty Talk” (male anchor)
72. “Memories” (all male anchors)
73. Keshawn Johnson (football; male) & Kobe Bryant (basketball; male)
74. Glenn Robinson (basketball; male)
75. Barry Melrose (hockey; male)
76. Landon Donovan (soccer; male)
77. Jimmie Johnson (car racing; male)

When going through the data set, we find that out of the 77 commercials, women only appear 8 times (10.4%), in some cases in relatively peripheral roles. When looking specifically at athletes, only 3 female athletes are profiled, all 3 of whom represent historically “acceptibly feminine” sports: Mary Lou Retton and Kerri Strug (both gymnasts) and Maria Sharapova (tennis). One commercial profiles Pat Summit, the famous women’s basketball coach from the University of Tennessee. All other commercials featuring athletes have males.

Examining the content of the commercials is also important. For instance, the commercial with Sharapova clearly relies on Sharapova’s status as a femininized beauty figure in athletics. And while all the commercials are “presented in deadpan mockumentary style,” the humor clearly calls upon dominant notions of heterosexual masculinity — take for example the commercials that mock femininity among males, such as those in which the male anchors share makeup and mock Richard Simmons as a conditioning coach.

The trends shown here are highly predictable. It is hardly surprising that males are over-represented numerically in the commercials, both as athletes and anchors. Likewise, it is unsurprising that the humor utilized in these commercials so often mocks femininity among males in the sporting world or uses female athletes as sexualized figures.

What we see here in ESPN’s “This is SportsCenter” commercials is the typical way that gender is constructed in sport — patriarchy is reified within an institution historically reserved for heterosexual males.

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David Mayeda is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies at Hawaii Pacific University.  His recent book publications include Celluloid Dreams: How Film Shapes America and Fighting for Acceptance: Mixed Martial Artists and Violence in American Society.  He also blogs at The Grumpy Sociologist.

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The cover of January Cosmo is as sexed-up as ever — on newsstands at least. But we got a copy of the version the mag sends to advertisers, and it’s significantly more chaste. What’s going on here?

Note the miraculous disappearance of “60 Sex Tips” and “Orgasm Virgins” — suddenly, Cosmo‘s appropriate for your grandma! Or your grandma’s favorite retailer — a tipster suggests that the cleaned-up cover is meant to be “more appropriate for conservative [advertising] clients, which the ad sales team is hoping to fool.” If so, they’re not doing a very good job — the table of contents in the ad-friendly version still lists both the sex tips and the orgasm piece as cover stories.

A spokesperson for Cosmo offered this terse comment in response to our queries: “It is common for magazines to have different versions of the cover.”  We decided to see if this was indeed common at other publications. Caroline Nuckolls at Teen Vogue told us the magazine usually has just one version of the cover — but of course, Teen Vogue has a cleaner image to start out with, and less to hide. So we called Maxim, known for its lad-mag raunch — a source there told us they too produce just one cover, which goes out to newsstands, subscribers, and advertisers alike. This isn’t to say that no magazine does what Cosmo‘s done, but it’s not an industry-wide standard.

Of course, it’s not a surprise that a publication feels it needs to put its best foot forward to attract ad dollars — still, creating whole new cover lines is a pretty big step. Which coveted advertising account merited such a drastic cleanup? Some high-fashion brand? (Current Cosmo advertisers include Dior and Chanel.) Mainstream car or consumer products companies? (January’s issue includes an ad for Chevrolet.) Maybe they’re gunning for that Candie’s account? Whatever the brand, Cosmo assumes the ad buyers don’t read very carefully, and don’t know that the mag’s been providing sex advice and orgasm pointers to eager middle-schoolers for decades.

Send an email to Anna North at annanorth@jezebel.com.

A set of stock photos on Hairpin must have hit a nerve because eight people — Renée Y., R. Walker, Amy E., Duff McDuffee, Lauren McG., Patricia P., Amy H., and Dmitriy T.M. — have sent it in.  The images appear, titled “Women Laughing Alone with Salad,” without comment.  Here’s a sampling:

These images resonate with readers, I think, because they are so damn familiar.  They are a good example of advertising in general.  They practically beg: “Please please please think it is fun to eat salad!”  And they insist: “Eating salad will make you haaaaappppppyyyyy!”  Much advertising today needs to convince you that the product will make you happy because we don’t need almost anything we buy.  Necessity lost out to desire in marketing a long time ago.

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.

Cross-posted at Jezebel.

Most of us are clear on the idea that patriarchies are defined by sexism: the valuing of men over women.  In our American patriarchy, however, this is matched and perhaps even superseded by something called androcentrism: the valuing of all-things-masculine over all-things-feminine.  We know we live in an androcentric society because masculinized things (playing sports, being a doctor, being self-sufficient) are imagined to be good for everyone (we encourage both our sons and daughters to do these things), but feminized things (playing with dolls, being a nurse, and staying at home to raise children) are considered to be good only for women.

This means that men are teased and ostracized for doing feminized things, as we have demonstrated in advertising for McCoy Crisps, Hungry Man, Solo, Chevy, dog food, Miller beer, beef jerky, cell phones, Dockers, the VW Beetle, and alcohol (see here, here, here and here).

This tendency towards androcentrism means, also, that companies can count on both women and men buying masculinized products, but only women buying feminized products.  It’s smart business, then, to masculinize everything.  In a New York Times article, for example, Patton reports that Mercedes masculinized its SLK in response to a finding that “too many” women were buying it, something that threatened to feminize the car:

Mercedes says that 52 percent of the registered owners of first-generation SLK’s are women and 48 percent are men; the company would prefer the figures to be more on the order of 60 percent men and 40 percent women…

The standard thinking in the industry is that lots of women will buy a car that appeals to men, but many men — certainly those who wish to avoid the girlie-men label — won’t buy one associated with women.

This logic helps explain the, admittedly tongue-in-cheek (I think), hyper-masculinization of the Honda Odyssey in this commercial, sent in by Nancy N. She writes:

The choice of the black car, the music, and lighting all direct the viewer to think, “this isn’t just a mini-van, this is a man-van, and you aren’t a pansy if you buy it.”   …[It is] “technology packed “… with distinctly harder edges. Overall, Honda is trying very hard to override the notion of a “mom car” to sell to a broader audience.

See also: “how to give the perfect man hug” and “how I sit on the bus”.  And for more examples of androcentrism, see our posts on the phenomenon in  sports (see here and here), cartoons, schools (see here and here), and Cosmo.

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.

This time of year Americans are incited to eat, eat, eat as much delicious holiday-themed food as possible, and then to lose, lose, lose the weight we gained with diet plans, gym memberships, appetite suppressing pills, and tummy tucks.  Somehow I don’t think it’s random that I received a coupon for a scale designed to measure the weight of my person as I exited Target this holiday season.

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.

I recently saw a great example of greenwashing — that is, marketing a product as eco-friendly based on questionable or rather superficial characteristics of the production process. This decal was on the front of a calendar, touting it as “eco-positive”:

What was eco-positive (a term that has no real meaning or standards) about it? Was it made from recycled paper? No. Maybe some statement about non-toxic ink? Nope. It’s eco-positive because they used the scraps from producing the calendar to make you a very special gift…two bookmarks tucked inside the calendar.

I’m all for using scrap material, but that alone seems to be a pretty minor detail upon which to then market the entire product as an  “eco-positive” one, especially given that paper scraps from manufacturing processes are often reused already (notice how often paper products say they’re recycled from “pre-consumer” waste).