Ad men
   
Transmissions
Published 08/26/2010

by Gwendolyn Ann Smith

http://www.ebar.com/columns/column.php?sec=transmissions&article=144

There is little that works better at gauging society's views on any given topic than looking at the ways companies opt to advertise their products. Indeed, ad agencies spend a lot of time and money crafting advertisements that will reach their intended audiences and really deliver the message in a way that will appeal to the largest number of people.

snip

Its commercial features CBS sportscaster Jim Nantz, and is called "Injury Report." In it, Nantz tells us the story of a young man being dragged along on a shopping trip with his female significant other. Nantz likens it to a spine removal, mocking this hapless fellow when he suggests a lavender-scented candle to his love, and tells him to "change out of that skirt." The upshot is that he could be watching football on his portable television instead of shopping for lingerie and house wares with his partner, and that would restore his masculinity.

I always found gender-advertising a little off-putting. Even as a child I was offended by commercials where there were only girls playing "house" and only boys playing with cars on a racetrack. Our society is set up from word go as a binary gender system and seems very inflexible even to this day with advertising. It's a system that is constantly perpetuated by itself.

And the sports/beer/cars/"real man" stuff is just nauseating. How many men out there feel they can't like certain things just because they feel their peers would call them a "->-bleeped-<-" if they did? Why, in the year 2010 are people still being judged as less of a man for simply liking certain things? Ugh.

Its obvious that most ads are not aimed at people my age.  So many of the ads I see convince me Not to buy their product or even go in their store/restaurant.

I find many ads disgusting and just plain wrong.  And they are paying for those ads.



Sarah L.