by Catriona Mills

Dear Television Advertisers

Posted 16 June 2008 in by Catriona

Look, I know I’ve said this before, but—futile though it may be—I’m going to keep saying it.

These days—and I know this is a shock, but bear with me—these days, lots of people are women.

I know! But it’s true.

And—brace yourself, now—we actually have the franchise.

Some of us are even allowed to have money, and thus to exercise some degree of influence over the country’s economy.

So, bearing those points in mind, do you think maybe these factors—now that you’re aware of them, that is—might perhaps shift the way that you approach television advertising?

That would be great.

And if you could speak specifically to the people who are responsible for Mark Loves Sharon—whatever that is—I’d be really grateful.

Because I can’t even articulate the ways in which getting your kicks out of keeping bikini-clad women in otter enclosures is wrong.

Share your thoughts [20]

1

Matthew Smith wrote at Jun 17, 02:25 am

Well according to the Gruen Transfer, TV advert creators are mostly trying to create inner conflict so that the brand will be recognised. Apparently it doesn’t matter too much whether you associate the brand with misogyny or not. However we did learn last week that using a creepy guy who tries to steel your yogurt turns women off because they interpret it as a stalker.

2

Catriona wrote at Jun 17, 02:40 am

See, that’s an interesting point—except that I think misogyny does make a difference. It does to me. I can’t—and, of course, wouldn’t try to—stop Nick buying Lynx deodorant if that’s what he wants, but if he were to send me out with instructions to buy deodorant but no further details, I would deliberately not buy Lynx, because their ads are so repugnant.

I am willing to acknowledge that it’s likely not all viewers would respond as strongly to, for example, misogyny as I do, but I bet a fair proportion of them do.

What worries me a little is that I was taking to a colleague who was saying that her female students (and we’re talking largely late teens here) weren’t the slightest bit interested in feminism, because they felt it was a done deal.

Emancipated—end of story.

And then I look at the way advertising—and we all know what potential power advertising controls, and that power will only increase, if the trend towards valuing everything in economic terms continues—constructs the position of women in the workforce and the world, regularly denying the idea that women may, in fact, be capable of independent thought, and I despair.

A little.

Maybe I’m just watching the wrong shows—maybe I should be watching Ugly Betty or Grey’s Anatomy instead of CSI.

But then I’d probably just be back to that advertisement for sanitary products with the beaver in it.

3

Nick Caldwell wrote at Jun 17, 04:48 am

For the record, I no longer purchase Lynx-brand products. I’d rather smell like armpit, frankly.

4

Catriona wrote at Jun 17, 04:58 am

I’d noticed that! (Your non-buying of Lynx products, that is, not your tendency to smell like armpit.) I thought it was because I wouldn’t let you apply them in the house because they set off my allergies; I figured having to go out onto the back verandah to deodorise had finally struck you as time-consuming.

I didn’t realise it was a political boycotting.

5

Leigh wrote at Jun 17, 06:27 am

I had no idea what those Mark loves Sharon ads were about and by the sounds of it i dont want to know.

By the way, whenever i complain to Andrew about a specific ad he just looks at me and says “got you thinking about it though didnt it” hmmmm well yes but like you i am inclined not to buy their products so i cant see how that helps.

6

Nick Caldwell wrote at Jun 17, 08:26 am

Ah, well, yes, that too. The allergies, that is.

7

Catriona wrote at Jun 17, 08:27 am

I think the argument is, speaking generally, that you remember the name but forget the connotations—but like you, I don’t accept it.

I remember the name “Lynx,” but it just makes me boycott their products.

I think: “Lynx: they’re the ones with the aggressively, repugnantly misogynistic attitude, aren’t they?”

I don’t think: “Lynx: they’re the ones with the aggressively, repugnantly misogynistic attitude, aren’t they? I wonder if their product is any good?”

8

Tim wrote at Jun 17, 01:15 pm

But you are talking about Lynx. No such thing as bad publicity, etc.

9

Catriona wrote at Jun 17, 09:43 pm

I’m using Lynx as an example for a specific purpose. But surely the ultimate purpose of advertising is to induce people to buy the products or services on offer.

I’ll accept that there’s no such thing as bad publicity when it comes to, say, a Hollywood starlet (sort of), but not when it comes to consumer products on supermarket shelves.

Or else why, as Matt pointed out at the top of the comment thread, did the yoghurt company get rid of the stalkery ad?

10

Tim wrote at Jun 17, 11:42 pm

Okay, maybe some publicity can be bad. But yes, the ultimate purpose of advertising is to encourage purchases. However, people are more likely to purchase products they have heard of. I don’t like Lynx’s message, but if I was looking for a deodorant and saw a Lynx product next to a brand I’d never heard of, I would tend to feel an almost instinctive bias towards the Lynx product. I might override that with other biases, but I can’t deny that it’s there.

Similarly, I won’t be watching Mark Loves Sharon, but I’m more likely to talk about it than some show whose ads don’t offend me, and by talking about it I might mention it to someone who hadn’t yet heard of it but would want to watch it. Thus the circle of life continues.

(I miss those yoghurt ads — the woman was cute.)

11

Catriona wrote at Jun 17, 11:58 pm

I don’t remember the yoghurt ads—so I either never saw them or that was a case of ineffective advertising.

I’ll buy your point with Mark Loves Sharon: word of mouth, whether positive or negative, is bound to be helpful for something like a television programme. On the same lines, I don’t suppose that Andrew Bolt (if it is Bolt that I’m thinking of) did any harm to Californication with his rantings in The Courier-Mail about what pornographic rubbish it was. Quite the opposite, I would think.

I suppose what concerns me about Lynx (and other products, too, like the old—Toyota ads, I think they were?—with the professional women in tartier versions of their uniforms and the horrible old Pepsi ads, but Lynx is the one that always springs to mind), what concerns me about them is that they clearly believe that this is a viable marketing strategy, they’ve been following it for so long.

And they seem to be right.

And that breaks my heart: that there are so many people out there who apparently aren’t horrified by those kind of reactionary, misogynistic, and in some cases aggressive gender politics.

We’re going backwards, it seems to me.

12

Tim wrote at Jun 18, 12:52 pm

Yep.

13

Tim wrote at Jun 19, 08:42 am

Article about Lynx and Dove here.

14

Catriona wrote at Jun 19, 08:58 am

That’s interesting; I didn’t realise that they were part of the same organisation.

I don’t pay much attention to Dove’s ads, though—I remember the “Real Beauty” campaign, and I used to use Dove myself, but deodorants are one area where I genuinely don’t make purchases based on any kind of advertising (something in aerosol cans stops me breathing properly, and there are precious few pump sprays around. That’s why I went with Dove, but they’ve stopped making theirs, irritatingly.)

The idea that the Lynx ads are spoofs is absurd, though. They don’t work as spoofs; a spoof only works if it has some relationship to what it’s spoofing. (Now I sound like a Smurf.) But “the mating game”? You work with that abstract and broad a concept, with nothing concrete to tie your spoof to, and you have a remarkably ineffective result.

Plus, if it is about men doing anything to get noticed, that doesn’t explain why it’s only men in the advertisements who have any agency.

That didn’t used to be the case: at least in the old Lynx ad where the girl suggests a threesome, the women had some agency, but now they have none, which is why I suggested in an early post that Lynx seems to be suggesting their products work like Rohypnol. (An exaggeration, but for effect.)

Plus (again), I don’t see the “men doing anything to get noticed,” since the ads show no sense of competition among men. When was the last time a Lynx ad had more than one man in it?

Right, enough ranting. I said I wasn’t going to do this today!

15

heretic wrote at Jun 19, 11:34 am

Oddly enough, I hate the Brut ads more than the Lynx ads. The Brut ads are just so mind-bogglingly puerile. Many of the Lynx ads have struck me as being fairly tongue-in-cheek (you’re meant to laugh at the idea that women will swoon over cheap anti-stink). Plus… can you truly say that a guy’s chances of romantic success are not improved by not smelling bad? ;)

Most advertising for volume items has one basic goal: to make their brand name pop into your mind when you are buying that type of product. Top-of-mind recall. Hence why even negative responses may achieve what the advertisers wanted.

In any case, if you get into the gender politics of advertising, you also quickly realise that the white hetero male is the last and greatest whipping boy of the industry. For every ad with a girl in a bikini, there’s an ad with a WHM being belittled mentally, emotionally, sexually, etc. Advertisers can call men stupid, pathetic, fat, useless, impotent… whatever they like, there are no repercussions. Men are fair game.

If you get right down to it, advertising is offensive to everyone.

16

Catriona wrote at Jun 19, 11:55 am

That last point’s an interesting one, but I“m not sure I entirely agree with it. Part of it has to do with perceived power, I think: with the possibly exception of impotence, are you removing a person’s power by calling him pathetic, useless, or fat?

But the Lynx ads, to stick to my personal bete noire (stupid inability to do proper accents) really do remove any power that the women in them may have had.

And it’s a bit tricky, really, because while white heterosexual men may be whipping boys within advertisements, they’re not exactly lacking for power outside them.

The woman in an early ad. may perhaps have wanted to pole dance in her underwear with that hatrack—but she didn’t actually make a conscious choice. Her free will, the ads imply, is removed by the sheer power of Lynx.

I find that repulsive.

But, then, I found them a persistent but mildly nagging irritation before the one where the women exploded into each other—that’s really what made me think the people behind these concepts are the worst kind of misogynists.

Mind, I also hate the soup ad. that suggests if you eat your boyfriend’s thick-and-chunky soup you’ll grow back hair.

17

heretic wrote at Jun 23, 01:51 pm

are you removing a person’s power by calling him pathetic, useless, or fat?

Well I certainly think calling someone pathetic or useless is to belittle them, which essentially removes their power. Being called fat isn’t far behind in the current climate.

I’ve never really been able to understand the two girls slamming into each other ad. I mean, ok, so the idea is to demonstrate the idea of combining two things into one of the same thing. The entire product is stretching the bounds of bullshit to breaking point :) But the exploding girls… nah, doesn’t make sense. I’ve never observed anyone respond to attraction by running full tilt into someone else. The ad seems to rely on the idea the girls somehow know they won’t merely smash their head into some other crazy chick.

I guess my underlying thought about the Lynx ads is that they’re so stupid I can’t see them as serious sexual politics. Possibly I’m just tuning them out after years of them.

Oddly enough, when Ford did the exact same sort of ad with a ute I found that more irritating (the one where all the women in the town follow the ute). What annoyed me even more is they ran it in favour of the other version of the ad, where all the dogs in town followed the ute – which was clever and funny.

Removing free will is regularly done in advertising though. It’s often pseudo humourous; but basically just there to try to make people think a product is so damn good you will do anything for more of it (one of the ice cream companies is running the same thing at the moment – pavlovian response stuff). A bit like fast food ads trying to pummel us into submission – if they say it’s good often enough, maybe it’ll become true.

The soup ads are just wrong. Not least because totally alienating 50% of the population from your product isn’t smart. Mind you, they know their market. A bit like the dumb-as-fuck “free bars” ad with the slurring stoners (bears/boars/bars).

18

Catriona wrote at Jun 23, 09:45 pm

Actually, I think we’re more than 50% of the population, now.

The ute ads. were another irritation to me—they’re the ones I was trying to remember in comment 11. What irritated me with those was that all the women in question were ostensibly professional women: police officers, nurses, etc. But it was professional women reduced to pornographic stereotypes, because the uniforms were all cut to be skin-tight and low-cut.

But then I didn’t like the dog version, either, because I assumed “dog” was a metaphor. That second ad. felt to me as though the underlying statement was “this car will make you irresistible to women—but you might want to pick the attractive ones.”

It’s a fair point to say that the Lynx ads. are so ridiculous that they can’t be treated as serious sexual politics—but they’re so pervasive. And they’re really only the most blatant and repulsive of a whole raft of ads. that treat women the same way.

Consider, for example, the opposition between them and Solo ads. Solo ads. also remove free will, in a way—the protagonist will do anything to retrieve that can of Solo that he’s so foolishly let slip through his fingers. But what’s the end result? He appears as hyper-masculine: strong, powerful, active.

But with the Lynx ads., the end result is a suggestion that women, under the right conditions, will give up absolutely everything (even her sentience and, it is in the explosion one, her existence) in the sexual pursuit of a man, any man, even a complete stranger.

And that’s a perception of women that’s followed us around for millennia. I would have thought we were well past the idea that women are so vulnerable to their impulses, so frail in their “virtue,” so susceptible to suggestion—I wouldn’t be surprised if Lynx’s next ad. showed its women accompanied by chaperones.

Ultimately, I know these are advertisements, and I don’t have to pay any attention to them. But they are so pervasive. It seems as though more and more ads. are relying on these grotesque and antiquated gender politics—and I don’t think it’s just the ads.

19

heretic wrote at Jun 25, 02:44 pm

But then I didn’t like the dog version, either, because I assumed “dog” was a metaphor. That second ad. felt to me as though the underlying statement was “this car will make you irresistible to women—but you might want to pick the attractive ones.”

Interesting, that didn’t occur to me at all. Dogs and utes are just one of life’s perfect combinations. Dogs love utes. If you have a dog, you should get a ute for the dog ride in the back. So anyway, I thought it was a much better way to promote a ute – frankly dogs are far more likely to display the behaviour “mad desire to leap into ute” :)

I guess in combination with the other ad it got a bit questionable. But you know, I’m a dog person… :)

But with the Lynx ads., the end result is a suggestion that women, under the right conditions, will give up absolutely everything (even her sentience and, it is in the explosion one, her existence) in the sexual pursuit of a man, any man, even a complete stranger.

Is it better or worse when the object of desire is chocolate, shoes or clothes? Serious question – I’m curious to see what you think.

I’m sure all of those products get the same treatment, I’m just having trouble recalling specific examples. Umm, there was the ad with the horsey blonde from Sex in the City breaking a shop window for perfume… (yeah, I’m sure she has a name, but that would require research.. ;))

20

Catriona wrote at Jun 25, 09:19 pm

I’m a dog person, too—but I’m not a dog-and-ute person, so that natural symbiosis of the two didn’t immediately occur to me. My reading came exclusively from the fact that it was the second ad. in the series—if it hadn’t been preceded by the one with the parade of women, I don’t think I would have been inclined to read it metaphorically. But your reading makes sense; I’m willing to believe I might have been over-reading. It’s not unknown, after all.

Now the other products you list are a little trickier, because I can’t think of any specific examples. Anything involving any character/actor from Sex and the City (and I assume that’s Sarah Jessica Parker you’re referring to) goes straight over my head, because I have no interest in that show.

But, in the end, those might show the consumers (invariably women, I would have thought, in your examples) losing all impulse control in pursuit of a product, but they won’t have the same loss of agency, the same absolute disempowerment, as I’ve been objecting to in the Lynx ads.

They do often play on fairly absurd gender stereotypes: women will do anything for chocolate; women have to be forcibly restrained by their menfolk from endlessly buying shoes, etc.

But ultimately, those loss of impulse style ads—like breaking a shop window—are more analogous to the Solo ads: an overwhelming desire takes absolute control of the protagonist, but it’s in pursuit of their own specific wants.

But what I object to in the Lynx ads—and it hasn’t always been the case, as I pointed out in comment 14—is the loss of free will. The women in those ads are doing these things under the irresistible outside force of the scent. It has nothing to do with their own impulses.

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