After the class discussion and videos it is evident that advertisers do not care about human beings they portray; they are only interested to use everything possible to sell a particular product or concept. The advertisements have a lot of power in society. They reach almost everybody and can portray a particular message. The ads follow and enforce social hierarchy, emphasizing the power of white male, and catering to their needs. They portray women in impossible body type, and force women to become this type without concern for women's self esteem. They also show women in a derogatory, less than human way. They hungrily target children, who do not understand how to differentiate between images. Jean Kilbourne in the “Killing us softly 3” video describes that advertisement sells more than just products. She says it sells values, images, concepts of sexuality, success, and normalcy. “To a great extent advertising tells us who we are and who we should be”. This suggests a lot of power within society. The ads seem to create the “normal” behavior and create the demand for it. It seems to put everyone into a mold and reject others who do not fit in. So much power to sway large number of people is very dangerous. Therefore, it is important to understand how advertising, and media works, to have media literacy.
First, the images in the “Killing us softly 3” video show that women's body must be skinny, tall, and perfect. Their bodies are used for selling objects, and they are dissected like meet. In turn women become the objects that are less than human, drawing violence against women. This was an example for sexism, meaning that women only matter as sexy body parts being inferior to the man. Racism as well as sexism was clear from the portrayal of minority women dressed in animal motifs. It is appalling that the colonists' mentality that minorities are savages, barbarians, animals still survives into the twenty first century through advertising.
From the advertisers' point of view these concepts are designed to sell more products since they are attached to sex and sexuality. Sex sells. For example, many times women's bodies are used to cling to an enlarged beer bottle. Since advertisers use psychographics to create the ad for a particular target audience, this kind of ad makes sense. Here the target audience must be young adult males. The agency must assume that this demography is infatuated only with sex and drinking. Then in return this message creates a norm for young men. This is a way where the advertisements also harmful for men, suggesting they are mindless drunkard, violent guys.
The ad I found could be on the list of Kilbourne's images. Here are three pictures of women for the Aroma coffee. They are in a pose of yawning and in their mouth there is a white coffee cup with black coffee. At first it may even pass as something innocent, but looking at the pictures for a while it becomes quite disturbing. Even though the women are not especially in a sexy position or naked, the sexual exploitation is screaming off the pictures. At first the cup in the mouth looks like a pacifier, bringing up the image of innocent babies. As Kilbourne said making women into silent, innocent, and good little girls with passivity toward life. Second, the ad also looks like a proposal for oral sex. There is a lot of pornography. The roundness of the cup mimics those inflatable sex dolls who can be penetrated through the mouth. It hints at gagging or pouring something down someone's throat. All three images were made for the same client, by the same people who are actually men. All three images depict women only! Is coffee only for women? What would it mean, if a male body was portrayed in the same position? This would go against everything that the advertising agency thinks is normal in society. Even though men drink coffee too, to show this particular image with a man would it indicate male prostitution?! Or indicate a man in a ridiculous position. But this is ok for women, since they are already forced into being sex objects. So it becomes normal and the only way to construct this specific ad in the eyes of the advertisers. The website showing this ad has a section for comments, and most of the people accept the ad, but there are a few pointing out the disturbing nature of the pictures.
What is also interesting here is that this ad was produced by a Middle Eastern agency called Impact BBDO. It is not clear if it was meant for the Middle East region or somewhere else, but the women being almost fully dressed could indicate this. Perhaps they have codes for decency showing women that are different then in America, but they found a way to show sex, porn, and sexism anyway.
I choose this advertisement because it was another example how advertisers are utilizing women's body as a sexual object to sell a product. This should not happen under any circumstances. As Kilbourne said ads like this generate violence and degraded self image for women, and keeps the status quo in society. There is a possibility to advertise coffee in a sensible way and be respectful for women.
For the advertisers the strategy could be to actually target the people who enjoy drinking coffee and show their ritual for this activity. The ad agencies need to know demographics of the audience and most likely it would show that not just young women drink coffee, but a whole range of the population. Some people will be put off by this image of a sex doll lady. In fact, the client's logo (Aroma Coffee) almost disappears in the corner of the ad, it is so small. So it is not only a degrading image of women, but a bad advertisement for the product. So another strategy could be to emphasize only the taste and look of the product, or if there is a special character of the product itself. In this case the coffee could play a bigger role in the ad, which is the purpose in the first place.
For an alternative to the Aroma coffee ad, there could be a couple depicted drinking coffee on similar level of dressing and power, without sexual posing, or in a pose that suggests intimacy between two people. Also it could show friends connecting by sharing a cup of coffee. This alternative would be better, because of less exploitation of humans, and a more truthful representation of coffee drinkers. In another example the ad could show an alarm clock next to the steaming hot coffee mug saying “the only good thing about morning”. Here no human can be falsely represented, but all coffee drinkers would connect by sharing this experience.
For the industry as a whole strategies have to change from depicting women and men in purely sexual ways to showing the actual persons who have feelings, self esteem, dignity, and knowledge. They must fulfill a more informative purpose about the product without attaching negative meanings to any particular segment of society. If they must sell beauty products that mainly target women, it should portray women from different range of demographics, not just the almost impossible female body. Perhaps the agencies must hire more women and minorities to build ads that would be more critical in terms of content. White males are not the only audience with buying power. They should not be the majority of target audience. Also when the consumers get more knowledgable about the messages of such ads they will turn away, and the clients end up selling less products. So this is not a long term strategy. The advertising agencies must be more responsible in their business; and there must be more people overseeing and translating the messages, such as Jean Kilbourne, educating people about mass media and advertising.
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