Mountain Dew Commerical

There is a lot to be said about this Mountain Dew ad that was pulled after many complaints. After talking about it in class, some interesting opinions about it came up. 

First, my opinion. I do believe this ad is racist. I believe as a human, despite your color, heritage, sex or gender etc, we are all held to a higher standard than what this ad shows. I do not believe racist slurs should be used by anyone, some people believe it's acceptable when used by those of the same race, but I very much disagree. This concept applies to this ad as well. Although a boundary-pushing African American man was the creator, it still does not make it okay to further promote racist stereotypes, even if it is about other African American men. In regards to the black men in the line up being Tyler the Creator's friends, this is an unfortunate accident that should have been considered. Those making this or any ad, must always consider creating a diverse cast in order to promote overall acceptance and to help eliminate extremely unhealthy stereotyping.

I am an avid believer in self-reflection. We must always consider our actions and the way they affect others and change them if needed. I heard a comment in class while talking about this commercial that really disappointed me. A fellow classmate said, almost verbatim, "Well, obviously he's going to have black friends." While discussing racism a racist comment came about without any flicker of regret. We all say things without thinking, but I really hope we can look at what we're saying and doing and change our actions when they are harmful. Racism, unfortunately, is one of the most difficult issues to tackle, and to do this we must always be conscious of how our words can promote the stereotypes we are trying to get rid of. 

Rose Petal Cottage

Rose Petal Cottage, a toy targeted to be sold to the parents of young girls, gives quite an interesting insight into how sexism makes its way into advertising. 

The lyrics to the peppy song explain why a little girl should want this toy:

Come on into my home sweet home,

Rose Petal Cottage, a place of my own,

It's a special place, come and be my guest,

Try 'em up and they're the best, best best!

Rose Petal Cottage a place of own,

I love when my laundry gets so clean,

Taking care of my home is a dream, dream, dream,

In Rose Petal Cottage, my home, a place of my very own!

The lyrics focus mainly on having "a place of my own". This could be construed either as beneficial or harmful to encouraging the blurred lines of gender stereotypes. On one hand, they are depicting little girls playing by themselves, without any boys present. This could show how women are capable of doing things on their own, without the help of a man. I argue though, that the commercial is referring more to little girls doing things without their parent's help, which really doesn't have a negative connotation at all. However, taking into consideration the context of the lyrics as well can be helpful in deciphering how destructive this commercial really is. The two lines that seem to provide a powerful insight into what the advertisers were marketing for are these, "I love when my laundry gets so clean, taking care of my home is a dream, dream dream." These lines are the disturbing ones to me. I enjoy clean laundry and a clean house because it's tidy and not cluttered, letting me relax. I don't enjoy actually performing these tasks, though. I don't know any woman, or man for that matter, who really does. This commercial is telling young girls that they should enjoy doing tasks that nobody likes. Why market this towards females? If everyone wants a clean house, but nobody wants to clean it, then why do the woman get stuck with this task? This is clearly the remnants of negative stereotypes that unfortunately are still being used in advertising very frequently. 

Day in the Life

A day in the life of an Airfrance consumer based on the print ad pictured below.

Christopher Stuart is head of marketing at Banana Republic in San Francisco. He’s in his early 30’s and is engaged. He wears a lot of Banana Republic, but he really loves to splurge on occasion and purchase items from Brooks Brothers and other high end brands. He is a person of habit. He likes to shop at specialty grocery stores and wears the same upscale cologne every day. Although he lives in San Francisco, he has a nice car as a status symbol. On the weekends he enjoys sports that don’t make him get dirty, he especially like tennis and golf. When he travels abroad he loves to try the local wines and swirls and sniffs like a true wine connoisseur. He has the new Iphone and a recent model Mac laptop and desktop. Christopher uses his television primarily for the news, but enjoys watching the occasional Oscar winning film or note-worthy documentary.

Environmental Campaign

These days, it seems like a death sentence for any company or organization to not use technology as much as possible. The companies that have a strong presence online, whether they sell their product, advertise or any other means of use, seem to be more successful. 

I chose to look at WWF (World Wildlife Fund) and how they use social media as a means of campaigning. WWF has a dedicated social media page on their website which can link users to Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Flickr, Care2, Causes.com, Google+, Linkedin and Pinterest. There are pretty much connected in every way possible.The organization has a Facebook page which people can like and follow to stay updated. They also have special pages for animals that need extra help, which you can also like and follow. In addition, they offer an easy link that let's you add WWF banners to your favorite pages online. Youtube contains informational and advertising videos as well. Their Twitter page is especially helpful when looking into all the avenues of help that they offer. Social media is a huge part of digital technologies and helping companies and organizations get their product and message out there. 

Women as Objects

Along with racial stereotypes, gender stereotypes still play a very strong role in our society's advertisements. I would say gender stereotypes are even more common than racial stereotypes because people are less likely to complain about it. 

As a young woman, I am very concerned with the way women are portrayed in the media and advertisements. One of the biggest issues is using women as objects. There truly are infinite examples of this, but here are just a few:

When advertisers choose to literally turn women into objects it does something to anyone viewing it. The woman is no longer perceived as a person, but as a literal object. This automatically makes women be viewed as lesser to men and also validates wrongful acts towards women. If a woman is not a person, she doesn't need to be treated as one. Although it is jarring to think about, these kinds of advertisements promote rape culture. To quote Killing Us Softly 4, "Turning a human being into a thing is almost always the first step towards justifying violence against that person." Killing Us Softly is a set of documentaries that should be viewed by every student, teacher and professional in the advertising industry. 

Racial and Gender Diversity in Modern Family

Modern Family is a great example of a show that has lots of diversity in it's characters, especially compared to many other television shows. The show is based on a "modern" family which consists of three little sub families. Jay is the father to Claire and Mitch. Jay is a middle aged, upper class, white male. Jay is married to Gloria, a beautiful, much younger, Colombian woman. Gloria has a son from a previous marriage named Manny. Claire is married to Phil and they have three children together, two daughters and a son. Mitch is gay and he married Cam and adopted a Vietnamese girl together. The cast has a perfect combination of genders, being almost 50% for each. While there are more Caucasian actors in the cast, this is really very normal considering that almost everyone is related.

Unfortunately, despite the characters being fairly diverse, there is still a good amount of racism and gender stereotypes in Modern Family. Gloria, the oh-so-beautiful Colombian is often portrayed as a hot airhead. She pronounces words wrong for a laugh. She also falls within her gender stereotype as being a character who loves to shop, look pretty and do nothing else. After watching the show for awhile, you can start to see how she can actually be extraordinarily smart and cunning. She also has an enormous amount of pride for her heritage and struggles with being a proud Colombian in a white, American family. This is a very believable struggle a real person in her position might have. Gloria is also an exceptional mother though sometimes she can be overprotective and naive.

Claire, the other mother in the show, depicts many stereotypes for a middle class mom. Claire is a stay-at-home mom, who doesn't "work" outside of doing everything for her family. It is sad to see some of the scenes with Claire play out because at least for me, she's not a very likable character. She is really uptight, serious and usually puts an end to all the fun, which really does depict a stereotypical "soccer mom". 

The examples for how Modern Family promotes stereotypes both racially and gender-ed are numerous. The real enjoyment comes when the characters show an unexpected side that is opposite to their stereotype. Some links showing the many racial and gender stereotype jokes are included below.

http://adamjohnsonnyc.kinja.com/can-we-officially-call-modern-family-a-racist-show-now-1648805655

http://imgur.com/gallery/t0aMR

http://flavorwire.com/395863/two-liberal-gay-couples-with-a-side-of-white-supremacy-please

Racial Stereotyping

At first glance the following questions seem to have simple answers. 

Is it ever right to racially stereotype for advertising purposes? No
Is racism in advertising a thing of the past? No
Do advertisers have ethical responsibilities? Yes

These seem like the right answers, but this really doesn't show how complex these issues are. Let's start with the first question. Is it ever right to racially stereotype for advertising purposes? I would say overall, no. It is wrong to paint all people with the same brush, which is what stereotyping does. Racial stereotyping is especially nasty and should really be avoided at all costs. Unfortunately, the fact is that stereotyping exists and will probably always exist. Because stereotyping exists, it's effective. There's also the issue of racial stereotyping that is "not harmful." The following commercial is a piece of the Doritos campaign featuring a mariachi band. 

Doritos is advertising itself as a "Mexican" chip by using a racially stereotypical Mexican music. Although this campaign seems harmless because it's focusing on the fun, lively mariachi band, it still promotes the idea that Mexican means mariachi. A Mexican can be any type of person, whether it be a goth, a politician, a musician or a student. A person of any race can be anyone they want and racial stereotyping is wrong in all forms because it takes society backwards.

It seems very obvious that racism in advertising is not a thing of the past. This business insider article gives many recent examples of racism in advertising. http://www.businessinsider.com/the-10-most-racist-ads-of-the-modern-era-2012-6# Although it is not abolished, racism in advertising has improved since the early years. It also seems to be less apparent to the average person because advertisers have started being more subtle and careful about what they use. We still often miss the subtleties, but more and more people are helping speak up and getting ads banned. 

All people have ethical responsibilities to not use racist stereotypes in any form of life. Advertisers (they are just people after all) should be held to the same standards as any other human. In order to help encourage companies to stop, we all need to stop. Stop accepting racism as a part of life. If we want things to keep changing and getting better, we need to change and better ourselves. 

Semiotic Analysis

For this week's blog post, I'll be analyzing a print, television and outdoor ad. I will be spending the majority of the summer in Spain, near Madrid, so I chose to look at ads from an advertising agency from Spain. Lola calls themselves "the creative agency with Latin spirit and global vision". Here's their site: http://hello-lola.com/ 

The first ad is a print ad for the company Nomad Skateboards. Now, let's talk semiotics. 

The brief denotation: 

• landscape orientation with photo on right and text, ornamentation and photo of product on left.
• filigree border on all edges, reminiscent of French Art Nouveau
• photo is in a sepia tone and includes: two men, both in clothing from the past. Man with bowler hat and suit is skateboarding over three pieces of luggage. Man in background looks surprised and is moving to the right with two more pieces of luggage. They appear to be in front of a train or old, wooden building. Border of photo looks old and worn.
• Product, skateboard, is shown with the underside facing out and placed vertically. "very old school" is printed on the underside of the skateboard in a filigree design. 
• Very ornamental font reads, "Very old school", "They had the guts to fly a prototype zeppelin, but not to ride a board?".
• In a more plain font, "The board that should have arrived 100 years ago is here.
• website and company logo is underneath, right aligned.
• soft vignette on entire ad
• skateboard is cradled in filigree and is on top of everything else.

Connotation:

• The entire ad is based on a strong sense of nostalgia. The brown colors used give it the feeling of being old and valuable. 
• The overall vintage feeling makes the viewer think the skateboard is special, unique, classic, handmade, or a collectors item.
• There is a lot of care put into the text design which makes sense with a vintage ad, because they used to only have text or a hand drawing. 
• Because the board is basically on a drawn pedestal, it gives the feeling of being extremely important. It is something to be praised, looked up to, taken care of.

I really like this ad because there was a lot of care and precision put into. This print ad is an excellent example of "everything in advertising being there for a reason, nothing is an accident".

My second ad from Lola is a television ad for a car function that warns the driver when you weave out of your lane or various other driving mistakes. 

Here's the video:

Denotation:

• Young, attractive father steers son to the right while son is riding a bike, swimming in the pool and racing in a sack race. 
• Father weaves into right lane while driving, the car dings as a warning.
• father repeats, "to the right" and "that's my boy", many times throughout the commercial.
• son repeats his fathers words at the end of the ad. 
• soft, warm lighting throughout
• father and son are only focus throughout

Connotation:

• This commercial plays on emotions mainly to achieve it's goal. The father and son share encouraging words which make the viewer feel those "warm fuzzies"
• The soft, warm lighting and lush backgrounds provide a nostalgic, happy feeling. 
• There is no mother in the ad which adds to the emotional factor. "That's my boy" means more when there is no woman in the family.
• You might feel like you need this technology to be the best parent you can be. He's clearly an excellent father, if the viewer is a parent, they would want to be more like him. Because the father is young and attractive this provides even more reason to emulate him.

Although this ad doesn't stand out to me because I see so many car commercials all the time, it still works in that it effectively explains the product and shows it in a loving, positive light.

The final ad, also by Lola, is an outdoor ad for Magnum, a dessert company. Everyday people create new and exciting ways to introduce technology into everything we do and advertising is no exception. Here's a quick video showing what Lola did for Magnum's real life ad campaign. 

Denotation:

• large rectangular box that lights up with really bright, neon colors
• screen in the center guides user through steps
• Asks user to take a photo and post it to Facebook
• users ask their Facebook friends to get 5 likes in 30 seconds to receive a free ice cream bar

Connotation:

• Bright colors create a happy, carefree interactive environment.
• By using Facebook and technology, they are targeting the younger and more tech savvy. 
• using words like kissable, likes and sexy helps give the young, carefree feeling. Chocolate, ice cream and other desserts are often portrayed in a sexy way because they have a "naughty" connotation. Sex is naughty as well as chocolate.

This use of technology is extremely effective. It gets the product in people's hands, makes them feel rewarded for desiring and obtaining the product, and gets not only the photo taker's in front of the product, but their Facebook friends, too.

Super Bowl Commercial

The Super Bowl ad that I chose as my favorite was this one for Skittles. Skittles is known for their off-the-wall, goofy commercials and this one is no different. In this commercial, there is a very obvious story being told about a town that settles all disputes through arm wrestling. It's not obvious at first, but the viewer slowly develops an understanding of what the "usual way" is. As with good story telling in any form, the viewer/reader isn't introduced to the entire story at once and in the beginning, but slowly and in stages. This commercial is only thirty seconds so there is only one stage of a story being told, but it is still entertaining. 

http://www.superbowl-commercials.org/35133.html

In addition to the Skittles commercial, I also enjoyed the "Avocados from Mexico" commercial. This commercial had a funny story-line too, but I omitted it as my favorite because I liked the simplicity of the Skittles ad. 

http://www.superbowl-commercials.org/35154.html

Although I chose a funny commercial as my favorite, I really appreciated the story and message being told by this PSA about domestic abuse. I had heard this story about a woman calling 911 and ordering a pizza on purpose before, so it took a little of the surprise out of the ad for me, but all the same it does an excellent job of telling a very important story. The choice to have the visuals of the commercial not match the audio (still photos of a torn up house while the call is being made) is very effective in this case. It adds to the uneasiness of the situation. 

http://www.superbowl-commercials.org/35008.html

Although the Skittles commercial strikes my funny bone, it certainly doesn't blow me away. In truth, I wasn't extremely impressed with any of the ads that aired during the Super Bowl. After reading some reviews, it seems others have felt the same way. Story-telling plays a huge role in commercials for television, it could be argued that it is really the only role. Telling a story is what brings the viewers in and keeps them interested. 

Ad Agency: Barton F. Graf 9000

I found this agency after searching for some of my favorite commercials. I initially started by looking for the company who made the Little Caesars t.v. commercials. I have always thought those were funny even though they're pretty wacky. I then found out this company, named Barton F. Graf 9000 is responsible for these ads as well as some others that I've noticed. The company also did the Clash of Clans t.v. commercials and one for GrubHub which I saw during the Super Bowl. 

It seems to me, that while funny commercials are still very popular, that emotional, heart-wrenching commercials seem to be increasing in numbers and efficacy. Although I do find the sad puppy commercials fairly effective, I really enjoy watching the humorous ones. Barton F. Graf 9000 seems to do humor well. Even in this ad, promoting climate change awareness has a very serious undertone, but still manages to use humor in a new way that gets the job done. 

http://www.bartonfgraf9000.com/work/350-action/climate-name-change-integrated-case-study

The commercial that still makes me laugh out loud and got me interested:

http://www.bartonfgraf9000.com/work/little-caesars/no-rules

Overall, I like this agency's work because it uses humor in a new and silly way. Although some of the ads tackle more serious issues, there is still a vein of humor that really sets apart Barton F. Graf 9000.