media: marketing

Brian Safi offers a fun tripartite typology of (mostly) gay men in advertising: (1) homoeroticism as simultaneously hilarious and disgusting in ads aimed at straight men, (2) coded gay cues in ads aimed at a general market, and (3) parallel ads, differing only slightly from each other, playing in straight and gay media. The second set of ads = especially hilarious. Enjoy.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

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.

At one time in history (vague, I know), elite sons would make their mark on the world, first, in battle.  Increasingly, however, in the U.S., elites use their privilege to avoid military service.  The most recent wars have been fought, disproportionately, by men and women from the working class.

The military knows this, as illustrated by this Army National Guard recruitment pamphlet sent in by Leafan R., who found it on the Rutgers University campus:

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

In 2000, at the University of Wisconsin – Madison (UW), Diallo Shabazz was my student.  He was a senior.  At the very beginning of his Frosh year, someone snapped this picture:

From that point forward, Diallo was featured in UW promotional materials again and again.  He became accustomed to seeing that smile everywhere.  Because diversity has become such a popular, even trendy thing for a college to have, many students of color find themselves used as representatives of their colleges disproportionately.

But Shabazz’s story takes a fascinating turn.  At the end of his senior year he paged through the next year’s application and didn’t see himself.  Hmmm.  Then, someone asked if he saw himself on the cover.  And he looked and didn’t see it and then he did.  Do you?

That’s Diallo behind the excited girl on the left.  Except Diallo had never been to a UW football game.  You might recognize his face, transposed, from the original picture.  Indeed, someone at UW had photoshopped Diallo into the image below in order to give the impression that attendance at the game was more diverse than it was.  No Diallo:

In that year 100,000 admission booklets went out with his face.  More insidiously, 100,000 admission booklets went out using his face to give the illusion of diversity at the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

Diallo sued.  He didn’t ask for a settlement.  He said that he wanted a “budgetary apology.”  He asked that, in compensation, the University put aside money for actual recruitment of minority students.  He won.  Ten million dollars was earmarked for diversity initiatives across the UW system.  The irony in the whole thing is that UW requested photos of Shabazz shaking administrators’ hands in reconciliation (i.e., photographic proof that everything was just fine).  Oh, and also, the Governor vetoed part of the earmark and many initiatives wore off with turnover.

What does this teach us?

First, notice that we have a commodification of diversity.  It is considered useful for selling an institution.

Second, if real diversity isn’t possible, cosmetic diversity will do.

Third, Shabazz himself was dismissed even as his image was used over and over.  Not only did they own the rights to his image and include him in many materials without the requirement that they ask or inform him, they literally took his image, cut it up, and used it to create a false picture.  When Shabazz complained, they first tried to blow him off.  So he wasn’t important to them, even as what he represented clearly was.

This suggests, fourth, that there was a real lack of a substantive dialog about and investment in race and diversity on the campus.  Talk: difficult.  Recruitment of minorities to a mostly white campus: tricky.  Addressing the systematic educational underinvestment in minorities prior to arriving at UW: expensive.  Retaining minorities in that environment: challenging.  Photoshop: easy.

Macon D., at Stuff White People Do, featured a similar situation in which Toronto’s Fun Guide (badly) photoshopped a black man onto their cover because their “goal was to depict the diversity of Toronto and its residents” (story here) (images also sent in by fds and Michael G.):

Original photo:

All of this puts into some perspective the recent Microsoft scandal that Jon S. and Dmitriy T. M. asked us to blog about.  If you were in the U.S. you would see the first image on the Microsoft webpage (with, as far as we know, real minorities) and, if you were in Poland, you would have seen the second image (with the black man replaced by a white man):

NEW! (Nov ’09):

Arturo Garcia pointed out that U.S. advertising for Couples Retreat included a black couple, but the advertising in the U.K. did not.

U.S. poster:

U.K. poster:

The willingness to play with the presence of minorities–both by photoshopping them in and out–suggests that companies are making strategic, not ethical, decisions about what kind of public face (forgive the pun) to put on.  All of this avoids any real engagement with diversity itself.  This is probably largely because diversity is a minefield.  It’s incredibly difficult to even figure out how to define it, let alone how to build it, or how to manage it once you have it (something that my current institution struggles with).  And yet, these are the things that we must do.  Otherwise all of these strategic moves, both towards and away from minorities, are suspect.

NEW! In our comments, Jackie and Jasmine drew our attention to another example.  This is from the University of Texas, Arlington:

See also our series on how people of color are included in advertising aimed primarily at white people, starting here.

If you’re really interested in these ideas, you might want to read MultiCultClassics, a blog specializing in how companies try to recruit minorities and present themselves as diverse institutions.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

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.

Depending on who you ask, the cash-for-clunkers program was a huge success or a huge failure, given that the demand was so enormous that it ran out of vouchers almost immediately.  It’s almost as if fuel efficiency is finally starting to matter to the U.S. consumer after a decade or so of SUV-worship.  However, this vintage ad for Volkswagen bus reveals that this is not the first time that U.S. car buyers have been concerned about efficiency:

Text:

The special paint job is to make it perfectly clear that our Station Wagon is only 9 inches longer than our Sedan.

Yet it carries almost 1 ton of anything you like. (Almost twice as much as you can get into wagons that are 4 feet longer.)

Or eight solid citizens, with luggage.

Or countless kids, with kid stuff.

The things you never think about are worth thinking about, too.

You never worry about freezing or boiling, the rear engine is air-cooled.

You can expect about 24 miles per gallon and about 30,000 miles on your tires.

And you can forget about going out of style next year, next year’s model will look the same.

The most expensive VW Station Wagon costs $2,655. It comes in red and white or gray and white or green and white.

And you won’t ever have to go around painting sedans on it to show how small it is.

Just Park.

Via Copyranter.

See also this ad for Volvo from 1974.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

The “Got Milk” campaign is funded by the California Milk Processor Board, a marketing organization funded collectively by California dairies.  In a recent comment thread, Adam linked to the clip below in which ABC does a segment about the awesomeness of milk.  It’s a great example of the way that the news media in not independent of business.

UPDATE! Abby, in the comments thread, linked to another great example:

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Hellman’s Mayonnaise, a brand owned by the multinational corporation Unilever, currently has an “eat local” campaign in Canada. As part of it, they put out this video (found at BrandFreak) highlighting how much food Canada imports:

Hellmann’s – It’s Time for Real from CRUSH on Vimeo.

What I find odd here is that Unilever owns a large number of food brands (as well as non-food ones), including Hellman’s, Wishbone, Ben & Jerry’s, Bertolli, Lipton, Knorr, and Slim-Fast (check here for some images of organic brands owned by Unilever). The Lipton web page notes that Lipton is “…making a big splash in the global beverages market…” The main Unilever food page announces,

We have the heritage and knowledge to move effortlessly between cuisines and countries.

So on the one hand, according to wikipedia,

The company promotes sustainability and started a sustainable agriculture programme in 1998.[7] In May 2007 it became the first tea company to commit to sourcing all its tea in a sustainable manner, employing the Rainforest Alliance, an international environmental NGO, to certify its tea estates in East Africa, as well as third-party suppliers in Africa and other parts of the world. It declared its aim to have all Lipton Yellow Label and PG Tips tea bags sold in Western Europe certified by 2010, followed by all Lipton tea bags globally by 2015.

Covalence, an ethical reputation ranking agency, placed Unilever at the top of its ranking based on positive versus negative news coverage for 2007.

Those are admirable goals by any standard, and food/globalization activists often push for that type of responsible corporate citizenship.

On the other hand…Unilever owns 400+ brands, many of which are dependent upon global sourcing and distribution; they in no way contribute to or encourage local eating, and if people really began eating locally, Unilever’s market share would suffer dramatically. And there are questions about how well it lives up to its sustainability goals.

We’ve seen these contradictions from Unilever before: the company owns both Axe and Dove, brands that are often marketed in ways that conflict with one another.

One way to look at this is that Unilever is making efforts to encourage sustainability and other policies that many critics would appreciate, within a global marketplace that constrains their efforts. The more cynical view is that such contradictory messages in effect allow corporations to “have it all.” Don’t care about sustainability, working conditions, and so on? Chances are you’re buying Unilever brands by default. But if you do care about such issues, you can feel good about buying at least some Unilever brands–those that have a marketing strategy designed to appeal to you. And doing so in no way threatens Unilever’s overall profitability.

So, readers, whatcha think?

Dmitriy T.M. sent us a link to an AdWeek post reporting that Miller Beer began advertising in Vietnam last week with this commercial:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG9H5_oKVd0[/youtube]

Some sociologists who study international relations apply the idea of the brand to nations.  Nations, they argue, can be seen as a product in a global marketplace. Australia, for example, is marketed as a rough and tumble place where we can get back to nature and find our true selves. Insofar as they can can control their brand, countries can draw tourism and increase demand for their exports (see here and here for Australian examples).

The ad above is an excellent example of Miller capitalizing on the American brand: “It’s American Time. It’s Miller Time.” Notice also that the ad is in English and doesn’t feature anyone that looks Vietnamese. The whiteness of the ad is purposeful. Miller is selling a specific version of “America” characterized by white people, urban life, sex-mixed socializing and, also, really bad music.

UPDATE!  In the comments, Adam linked to this ad which ran in the Phillipines:

You can also think of the California happy cows commercials as a form of state branding.

See here, here, and herefor posts showing the social construction of America as white.

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 posted in the past about how cigarettes have been marketed to women: as ways to lose weight, a form of personal liberation (more examples of this marketing theme here and here) as a way to calm down stressed moms, and doctor-approved methods of clearing up skin problems.

A while back Emily M. sent us a link to an article at the Onion A.V. Club that shows how men have been portrayed in cigarette ads. They provide a nice comparison to female-oriented marketing campaigns.

A recurring theme is that of a men as rugged individualists who go out and explore wild, remote, presumably dangerous places on their own. The Marlboro Man is the most familiar example, but Camel’s “where a man belongs” campaign also stressed this image:

Another major theme we see is cigarettes as facilitators of male bonding:

Other times we see men smoking as they do Really Intense Work:

Also see our post on Tiparillo cigarettes as a way to get hot women and Skoal use as male bonding that will get you out of a speeding ticket.

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.