Advertising In Advertising

Being in a spiralling economy, the automobile industry must step up their games to produce attractive advertisements. Creativity is crucial to attract potential buyers and gain more sales. To target specific prospects through ads, the automobile industry usually apply rhetoric concepts to enhance their product’s appeal in every way, and not just purely on the automobile designs. As men are the main target audience, car ads are usually being advertised as appealing and dangerous. Nevertheless, there are other important aspects to be highlighted as well, which can be perfectly marketed with certain rhetoric aspects. Although automobile ads always target the male audience, the industry also understands how partners or family can influence in purchase

Do you ever watch the Super Bowl for its commercials? Have you ever bought a more expensive product because you had seen its advertisement? If the answer is yes, then you might have been a victim of today’s marketers. Jean Kilbourne, the author of “Killing us Softly” stated in one of her lectures, “The influence of advertising is quick, cumulative and for the most part, subconscious, ads sell more products.” “Advertising has become much more widespread, powerful, and sophisticated.” According to Jean Kilbourne, “babies at six months can recognize corporate logos, and that is the age at which marketers are now starting to target our children.” Jean Kilbourne is a woman who grew up in the 1950s and worked in the media field in the 1960s. This paper will explain the methods used by marketers in today’s advertising. An advertisement contains one or more elements of aesthetics, humor, and sexual nature.

Sex has a distinguished place in culture. It is a constant theme and continues to increase as time goes on. Not only that, but sex has made its mark as an advertising tactic. However, this is not a new proposition. Sex in advertising emerged many decades ago and continues to claim its place. This presents a critical question. Does sex as an advertising tool sell? Research show that sexual appeals in advertising leaves a negative impression. Sex does not seem to be the optimal selling tactic. On the other hand, research has also found that sex does, in fact, sell by its stimulating and arousing effect. There are important factors to examine such as audience, where sex is implemented, how it affects brand recall, how advertising works, it's relevancy, and how it is used. Regardless if sex sells or not, it continues to remain a highlighted concept in advertising and culture.

Everyone has heard the phrase “sex sells.” It seems to be a major factor that drives people to buy. Advertisers manipulate this behavior by creating ads that showcase their products as a way to gain love, beauty, and desirability. Advertisers frequently use sex appeal with flirtatious images as an attention grabbing device to play with the public’s emotions. Because the public is a diverse group of individuals, it is difficult to target the masses by focusing on hobbies, sports, or flaws. Because of this, advertisers target sexuality, something everyone can relate to. In the February, 2016 issue of Cosmopolitan Magazine, they overtly demonstrate this. In an ad for Kinky Vodka, they represent multiple sexual innuendoes such as provocative body posing, stereotypical feminine colors, and seductive wording.

An important controversial issue that America faces today is the debate of sex in advertising. Edward A. McCabe and John Carroll are two authors that present opposing arguments about this issue. McCabe persuades the reader into thinking that sex in advertising is no big deal, while Carroll explains why this is a major problem in America. Sex ads are defined as any type of advertising that shows pictures of partial nudity with wording that relates to the body in a sexual way, usually portraying women. Sex in advertising has been around for a long time but has the industry become too sexually explicit?

Newspapers, Magazines, Television, Online… advertising is everywhere. Within the myriad of advertisements displayed in front of viewers every day, there are appeals. Society neglects and overlooks these marketing strategies that toy with their minds, resulting in skyrocketing purchases after the release of an advertisement. In “Advertising’s Fifteen Basic Appeals,” Jib Fowles identifies the appeals he believes are implemented in advertisements. These appeals include sexual innuendos, powerful images, or comforting displays which draw the audience into the desired product. After analyzing the ads within the Vogue January 2018 edition, an extremely popular fashion and lifestyle magazine, the demographics can be determined as a market with expensive taste. The graphics are extremely feminine and contain Fowles’s previously mentioned appeals, like the “need for prominence.” Although not all of the fifteen appeals apply to these advertisements, Fowles’s list is still valid and does not need revisions as the readership of Vogue magazine is just a small sample of the population. Through the appeals of each advertisement, this clear readership is developed, rather than using all of the Fowles’s appeals and not addressing the correct audience.

It gets the audience’s attention right away with a view of a beautiful young woman fixing her shoe on the side of the street. The music picks up it pace when she notices the male’s gaze and rapid camera angles as well as movements for both individuals gets the audience’s attentions due to the curiosity of her next moves on him. The audience’s desire rises as the beautiful women get more closer and sexually towards the man, playing to the fantasies of the audience of many young men. When the focus of the young man is finally revealed, that this whole time he had been daydreaming about a car, the message of the commercial becomes evident: purchase the Fiat 500 Abarth and young, modern day beautiful women will find you attractive and want you. The commercial plays towards the typical stereotypes of the “ideal” woman: flowing hair, large breasts, sculpted, thin body, and perfect skin. However, the young man is simply average looking. All of this works to play into the desires of the audience even more. Young men everywhere can identify with the average-looking man, they can see themselves in him. Therefore, the message of the commercial becomes, if the average young men in the audience purchases the Fiat 500 Abarth, the young women that they fantasize about will want

Authors, Michael Jacobson and Anne Mazur argue, in their article, “The Iron Maiden: How Advertising Portrays Women,” that advertisements underlines sexist concepts about the ideal female and men, ads exploit sexuality. Michael Jacobson and Anne Mazur’s purpose is to describe sexism and sexuality in marketing of women and men in advertisements. Michael Jacobson and Anne Mazur aims to convince their readers that sexism and sexuality in advertisement put impractical ideas of appearance and encourages concern and self-doubt. “Everywhere we turn, advertisements tell us what it means being a desirable man or woman (1)." Michael Jacobson and Anne Mazur’s skillfully use anecdotes, metaphor, and comparison techniques to create a strong, convincing article.

In John Berger’s Ways of Seeing he offers the idea that “to be a woman has been to be born...into the keeping of men.” He illustrates on page 46, that women are born to satisfy men, at least in terms of art for most European painters. He empathizes this point by pointing at nude portraits and oil paintings. I decided to analyze my own choice of advertisement to compare his theory in the modern world. I chose an American Apparel advertisement; the company has a history of invoking reactions from the public. The advertisement does not require much analysis to cause offense to the general viewer. American Apparel crosses the line in more ways than one. However, the advertisement I chose was rather tame in comparison to many others I considered.

Everyday we expose ourselves to thousands of advertisements in a wide variety of environments where ever we go; yet, we fail to realize the influence of the implications being sold to us on these advertisements, particularly about women. Advertisements don’t just sell products; they sell this notion that women are less of humans and more of objects, particularly in the sexual sense. It is important to understand that the advertising worlds’ constant sexual objectification of women has led to a change in sexual pathology in our society, by creating a culture that strives to be the unobtainable image of beauty we see on the cover of magazines. Even more specifically it is important to study the multiple influences that advertisements have

Subaru Canada is selling a new type of car advertisement which shows deviance to societal norms by changing the image of what people think is sexy. Sex sells is a long standing phrase that can be used to define the advertising industry and before this commercial was released many manufacturers marketed “sexy” car advertisements using Sports Illustrated swimsuit models or models of a similar stature. Subaru in lieu of the sexy bikini models has chosen to express their individuality by chosen a cultural representation to poke fun at traditional advertising.

The role of sex in advertising is debatable and most individuals, including industry experts, conclude that having the target audience of an advertisement comprehend the overall message being sent in an advertisement is the essential objective. In order for a message to get across, the advertisement must first get the attention of the target audience or market. After all, if advertisers are unable to get one’s attention they will not be able to send a message. There are many strategies that advertiser’s and marketers use to capture an audience’s attention. One such tactic used by many advertisers goes with the belief that sex sells in advertising. Sexuality is an influential motivator, and many advertisements use sexually explicit images

Advertising is an important form of communication between products and customers. How to get viewers’ attention is first thing need to consider for advertising. Sexual appeal is become very useful tool in advertising, and it use is increasing. The sex appeal has a very long history, the first sex appeal advertising was introduced in 1911 by Woodbury’s Facial Soap (Campaign,2014). Once this advertising is released it has caused an enormous controversy, it is considered so risqué and inappropriate by several readers, even their cancelled their subscriptions to the magazine immediately (O’Barr,2011) . However, by today’s sexually liberated standards, this advertising already is positively chaste. During the next 93 years, sex is become a

Advertisements work in such a way that we grow to envy those we are not; they exploit our perceived flaws by displaying a person who is the living and breathing version of who we wish to be. John Berger in his book, Ways of Seeing, explains that publicity works by convincing his reader that advertisements use envy to entice the public to buy products: “Publicity persuades us...by showing us people who have apparently been transformed and are, as a result, enviable” (131). Though Berger published his book in 1972, his arguments about envy and publicity still hold truth, perhaps now more than ever. Furthermore, the more present advertisements are in our everyday life, the more envious our society becomes. With the power of envy, those who fall under its spell become choiceless, and therefore powerless. Berger also argues in his book that there is a correlation between the number of advertisements we see and the less freedom Americans possess. However, Berger believes that capitalism hides this powerlessness with the illusion of choice: “Publicity helps to mask and compensate for all that is undemocratic within society” (149). This idea Berger has relates not only to the advertisement of products, but also to present-day politics. Withheld information creates power using envy which is used in both advertisements and the US government. As more envy is created with modern day technology, and we become more immersed into social media, the further we stray from democracy.

Sex? No, thank you; we are civilized, decent and socially appropriate for all ages. This is an applicable response for any advertising medium until the end of the 1990’s perhaps. Fast forward to the twenty-first century and this notion can be blatantly disregarded. There is no doubt that advertising plays is a proportional factor automobile sales and even if there this was not so, car manufacturers believe that marketing helps. During the year 2012 alone, BMW spent approximately 288 million dollars on advertising in the United States alone, according to www.statista.com. It’s safe to say that to brands like Bayerische Motoren Werke, this is definitely a big deal.