It seems as if every day that goes by the marketing industry treats women as entertainment objects, and nothing more than that, with that being said, that could be one of the many reasons that women are looked down upon. This is an issue society has been facing for a while now and it’s becoming a problem within gender roles. Media has mostly concentrated on stereotypes based on women, making them seem like they are only useful as house wives and for sex.
Some companies also advertise males, making them the dominant sex which then leads the viewers to believe that they are in control of women. On the other hand, advertisers have the power of sending messages that can lead to multiple meanings, but the audience misinterprets who the ad is trying to appeal to. In the advertising industry, companies use a variety of techniques to appeal to a targeted audience by subconsciously capturing their interests and utilizing them in their ads.
In a Skyy Vodka Advertisement for example, a man is placed standing over a woman, meanwhile she is in between his legs lying on the ground. The woman is a very attractive blonde wearing nothing, but a rather revealing sky blue bikini and sunglasses. She is holding her sunglasses above her forehead showing off the reflection of the sky, while scrutinizing the man above her who one can predict is gazing back at her, he is wearing what seems to be a sophisticated navy blue suit, while he is holding two Champaign glasses, and a blue Skyy Vodka bottle.
The setting of the image is at the beach, with a deep blue ocean and light blue sky. This is one of the techniques used to capture attention to the Skyy bottle without having to intentionally expose it on the Ad; using color. While advertising have grown to play an important role in campaigning, it has become too indecorous. The Skyy Ad described above for example portrays women as simply being housewife’s, according to several stereotypes housewife’s just lounge around doing nothing.
That’s exactly what is shown on the ad the woman is just lying on the sand sunbathing. Not only are they being labeled housewife but they are also being illustrated as objects to look at in a seductive manner. I agree with Jean Kilbourne when she says “Sex in advertising is pornographic because it dehumanizes and objectifies people, especially women, and because it fetishizes products, imbues them with an erotic charge- which dooms us to disappointment since products never can fulfill our sexual desires or meet our emotional needs.
Especially because companies are using women to false advertise sex, claiming that by using their product they will get to have sex with attractive girls seen on the ad or females might even take it as discouraging and lose confidence in themselves, because they now feel the pressure to compete with the beauty of a supermodel on an ad. Another significant factor is how the ad gives the man complete power, by standing over the woman the way he is, makes him seem like he has total control over the woman.
Hence indicating the man is the dominant and she is the submissive, with the stance of the man and the positon of the woman basically empowering him. Likewise the apparel of the man gives off the suggestion that he is an important business man, while the woman is just a sexual item. The man appears to be a well born man trying to seduce a lower status women by offering her Skyy and it what seems to be she has given in by higher authority. Again giving off the illusion of dominate and submissive. Given that men are acquiring higher authority due to this ad women are also being influenced subconsciously.
When first glancing at the ad one may conclude that men are the main focus, but when looking more into depth one can conclude that women are also being allured to desire drinking Skyy Vodka. This Ad uses Shalini Shankar theory that neuro marketers are used for an interest that if they find ways to make an advertisement to catch the public’s attention, then they are most likely doing their job right. As soon as they catch people’s attention towards their product that they are trying to sell, they start to achieve in selling their product very quickly.
In this ad they are trying to catch the audience attention by targeting their audience and using their interest to gain appeal toward their product. For instance here their target of audience are mostly men but also women, but besides that the advertiser is trying to reach out to young adults more than he is trying to reach out to an older audience. One can predict they are trying to approach young adults, because of the setting in the beach, it can appeal to spring break or just beach parties.
Usually young adults are at parties and drinking on the beach during spring break or when in vacations from their job, so this can lead to believe they are appealing to them. If one observes the ad from a man’s prospective it can be inferred that men are the authority and they can charm any woman they desire by drinking Skyy Vodka, but if it is regarded from a woman’s perspective she may also feel like if she consumes Skyy Vodka she will look as attractive as the woman on the Ad and she will be able to attract classy men.
Thus having said all of this, advertising industries have many techniques of convincing people to buy their product. They will engage their targeted audience by age, gender, race, ethnicity, and a lot more, but in this case they only used age and gender. They even used colors to appeal to their product and gender minimizing, but despite that the Ad did a good job advertising and indulging its audience.