One day there will be an ad on the moon.

Scary!

I used to think that I knew a lot about advertising as of yesterday. I had a pretty good idea of how it worked, the purpose and the methods that advertisers used to get our attention. Then I saw this great PBS program called "The Persuaders" which explored even more in depth into the world that is advertising.

After finishing the videos, my attitude towards advertising changed in a way that I'm not sure I felt comfortable with. The film went in depth into the advertising mecca and talked to corporate ad marketers and asked them about ad campaigns, emotional branding, methods of selling, subconscious messaging, and what it took to win the loyalty of customers. The topics alone took me by surprise in terms of how much thought and money go into these campaigns. Even the quantity of ads shocked me as I had never really thought about how many ads we are exposed to each and every day. Needless to say this made me a bit, you could say paranoid, about being manipulated by these forces.

Hypocritical owl!

The thing I found the most interesting was the section on subconscious marketing and the relentless attitudes that advertising agencies exude when planing these campaigns. There was even a gentleman in the film who had a job as a Marketing Guru, and he used psychology to map out the alleged desires and thoughts of consumers. It almost seemed as if these companies were trying to turn humans into living math problems that when solved, hopefully yields a large sum of money. I do believe this is normal though and that as a society, we have developed to a point where if nothing happens for 2 seconds in any aspect of life, we freak out. We are so fast paced and so relaxed in our thinking that companies have to go through all this effort in order to get some elbow room in an attention span that is already to crowded as it is. That being said, I really can't completely blame consumers or producers for our country's economic, environmental, political, or moral problems, because both are trying to pursue a way to make their life "better."But I do know that because of our human desire for material possession, we are only going to make things even more crowded. This scene from Fight Club displays my feelings towards advertising just perfectly.

As far as Song's advertising strategy goes, I believe that it would fit quite nicely in today's culture instead of 2004's. The ad campaign was very creative and fresh, but it may have been ahead of it's time. The ideas Song had felt very new age to me, something our generation might be interested in instead of a generation that wasn't as individualistic as our generation, and thats the feel I get from their promotions. They have this charm about them that seems fun, lighthearted, relevant, hip, and modern. Their colors are wild compared to other flight companies and their food is supposedly organic, showing that they are supporters of healthy lifestyles. These are all cool features, but sometimes it feels like simplicity might be the better strategy.

Script? No thanks, I'll just wing it.

If the title has you confused, the script I'm referring to is the one for the world famous musical: Life. It's not something that you have to see on Broadway or even have to reserve seats for because it's a production that all of society is a part of. Everyone has a role that they play, and and that is the Gender Role.

In the book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Sociologist Ervin Goffman compared social interaction within our society to that of a theater, saying that everyday people are actors performing in a play, and that everyone plays some sort of social role when they are around other people. There are roles to be played, fronts to be put on, and props that are used. In the context of gender, people have to decide if they want to read the script that they know conforms best to stereotypical society, or of they want to be the authors of their own script and risk being labeled as a social deviant.

Which role do we take?

The ideas of how gender codes work in Goffman's book closely relate to that in a film called The Codes of Gender by Sut Jhally in that they both have a similar concept of how gender is acted out in American Culture. The summary of Goffman's book supports the Codes of gender in terms of what is acceptable and what is not in our society. We see that like a play, when actors deviate from the gender script, such as a man who likes to cook and clean, he gets labeled as gay or queer for participating in a front or scene usually reserved for women in our society, and the same thing applies to females. In Groffman's analysis, sometimes people don't want to conform to certain roles of gender and they decide to break abandon their current role and take upon a new role with new lines, props, and characteristics. If that is to much for some, there is always the opportunity to remove your social mask when nobody is around or if you are with a group that shares your same code. 

Society makes this seem weird. 

Association with a specific gender starts at a a very young age and is influenced by parents, institutions, friends, and the mass media. We are quickly put in a gender box and are told that that is our role and that breaking it will not be accepted. Both Jhally's and Groffman's views are supportive of this stage like reality that we all live in and both seem to agree on how individuals express, change, inhibit, and hide their ideas of how one should behave in public. 


Personally, I grew up in a family with a lot of girls, and because of that, I happen to be different than most men my age. I am more emotional, have a decent sense of how to do household work, and I happen to like TLC's What Not To Wear. I don't really like sports and I know when a girl has had their hair done. So, I may not be the worlds idea of what the manly man should be like, but that doesn't mean that I'm gay ( Although some people think I am.) I just happen to to be not be the modern stereotypical macho man, but I'm cool with that. But if you want a Hollywood example of what a REAL man looks like *sarcasm* just watch this clip from the Boondock Saints 2! 

    

Does she come with the product?

When I was younger, I would always ask my day why there were almost naked chicks in ads posing in front of cars, well dressed men, guns, ect., and he would always tell me the same thing every time is asked. "Absolutely Nothing" he said, "But I doesn't matter because you stared at that ad a few seconds longer than you would have if there was no girl there." It wasn't until I got a bit older that I realized what he meant.

 Unfortunately, that mindset has gotten a bit out of control and Jean Kilbourne's Killing Us Softly and Sut Jhally's The Codes of Gender only convinces me further that pop culture, business profit, morals, and lifestyles have been blended into a dangerous way. Advertisers still continue to display women in humiliating ways, not allowing their strength or independence to be displayed such as in this ad here for a fancy clothing line.

Woman has been "saved"

In this picture we see six men and one girl (a common theme in clothing ads nowadays, and most of the time they are in poses that suggest gang rape.) She has no clothes on, is white, thin and pale. She is also clutching onto what appears to be the alpha male of the picture/ group, the one holding one of the most phallic objects of power: a gun. This image is also a scene of man's ability to kill others males in the name of power and in doing so, becoming the center of the woman's innocent and passive affection. Her eyes and posture suggest a sense of innocence, longing, naivety, and lack of balance and stability.
The woman has been deprived of everything that could make her an individual and instead is reduced to an co-dependent organism.

In tearms of an ad featuring a strong, independent, confident woman, I could not find one. The all take women and their bodies and sexualize them in ways I couldn't even think were possible. It seems that this generation has had the concept of what women should be like nailed into our heads and we can't even see that we are allowing corporate agenda chasers pull us around on the leash of fashion, youth, and pop culture. I could rant for hours about some of the things I have seen and learned in the past few days, but i'll save it for another time. Instead, ill show you this image and hopefully leave you all on a humorous note. (Not implying reverse discrimination here. Its just funny)

LOLZ! 

So after learning about the Frith Analysis, I am going to reassess the reason why the old spice commercials are so popular. Since there are quite a few old spice commercials, I am going to choose this particular image to analyze:

Creepy right?

So now that we have had a nice look at this ad, lets answer the first question in the frith method: What is the surface meaning in this picture? Well, the first thing that we notice is that there is a guy on who appears to have half of his body missing with another guy living inside him. The bigger guy looks a bit nerdy and overweight and the other guy looks like a rockstar.

Alright, next thing we need to look at is what the advertiser's intended meaning was in this ad. What are they trying to tell us? To put it bluntly, old spice is telling guys that if they use old spice body wash, they too can smell the way that men are supposed to smell, because old spice magically unleashes this inner "man". 

The last thing that we need to look at is the cultural setting behind the message. Starting with the surroundings of the add, we see the two men standing in what appears to be a fancy library or place of knowledge, a place usually popular among middle/upper-class intellectuals. This setting is also one of prestige, something most humans desire to attain more of.

 In the center of the frame, we see the two men. Or is it one man? Judging by the slogan, it appears that it is just the ONE man, and that the other is the man that is waiting to be unleashed from the prison that is the bigger, nerdier man. Looking at them both, they both are polar opposites of what is perceived as cool in our society. The first guy is overweight, wears glasses, plays the saxophone, and carries a messenger bag with pins and superhero logos from his favorite comic books. He is the uncool one, the unsexy one, and the unmanly one. 

On the other end of the spectrum, we see what a "real" man is supposed to like. He is fit, muscular, tattooed, wild, and judging by the lipstick marks and female undergarment hanging from his double necked electric guitar, sexy. This is the American rockstar that all little boys wanted to be when they grew up, and that gives this particular advertisement it's allure. When guys see this ad, this image tries to connect with their inner rockstar spirit, and if rock and roll is not their cup of coffee, then there is also this ad in manly, no fear soldier form.  

Personally, I find this ad a bit shallow. Who says playing the saxophone is not sexy?! Have they never heard of the sexy sax man?      

Yay! I get to build a website!

You can learn to play these!

Even though I have zero website building skills, I get to learn how to make one thanks to COMM 352! My subject matter for this project will be drumming oriented, with the emphasis  on how to pick a drum set, styles of playing, tutorials on different techniques and playing styles, and a possible a music gallery of me playing a range of drum genres. As a drummer, I had and still have moments where I could have more information or examples of particular products or actual demonstrations to answer my questions. I want my site to have pictures, videos, and music files, so that way guests can focus less on reading and scanning for information, and spend more time observing and learning all the drum basics at one source. So psyched!

Hello, Ladies...I am not the old spice guy.

One of the men of the Old Spice world

Hello world of blogging! I am back from my Christmas Break adventures to bring you information regarding my favorite add campaign, the Old Spice Campaign! There are not that many people that I have meet that have not seen an old spice commercial featuring Terry Crews, Isaiah Mustafa, or Fabio Lanzoni, and most would agree that they are total attention grabbers.


 Each commercial features one of these three men explaining why old spice body wash is the best body wash on the market. In Terry's commercials, he yells at the audience and tells them that Old Spice Oder Blocker Body Wash is so powerful that it can block out the sun. But then it gets to cold, so it makes another sun; DOUBLE SUN POWER!!!! Then the screen explodes!

The real appeal for these commercials though is just how absurd they are. They are so detached from reality that it is literally funny. I actually went to the store the next day and purchased the stuff just because the ads were so funny, not because I thought the product worked or was even good. Even if my mom thinks that they are just plain stupid, you just can't help but grin when you hear that old spice whistle tune on TV.

The product definitely targets both young men and women simultaneously; the men love it because it appeals to our desire to be loved by the ladies, and it appeals to women because of of the men who advertise the product. All of these are reasons why I love the spice! The video down below provides a montage of the best of Terry Crew's, Isaiah Mustafa's, and Fabio Lanzoni's Old Spice commercials. Enjoy!