This is how advertisers think:
What do we sell here? We sell temptation, desire, animal instincts… We want to show the true nature of man. He is a savage. He needs food and fire. He hunts and gathers. What does he get? He gets a hot dog. We are pagans. We love rituals. When our team scores, we become noisy. What do we want? We want a hot dog. Children – little angels. No they’re not. They are monsters. We give them tuna sandwich. They don’t want tuna sandwich. They want hot dog. We need women. Mothers… we want their daughters. Do you know what a women wants? Do you? We do. A woman wants hot dog. We need sex. We need a dangerous food, a food full of sin. That’s what we want. What is that food? It’s a hot dog.
These lines illustrate the most common strategy employed by ads in order to sell – they convince the viewers to buy a product because the ad stirs up their sexual desires.
Sexual images have been a staple of advertising since the very birth of the industry. Women’s faces and bodies adorned Coca-Cola calendars back in the 1890s and have been employed to sell virtually everything since. But in recent decades, sexual imagery in advertising has become more common, more explicit, more exploitative, and more violent. According to the New York Times, “Sexual themes… are being used as never before to cut through the commercial clutter and grab the consumer’s attention.
Hedonist [see bottom of the page] messages can be found everywhere these days. We’re witnessing a global brainwashing campaign, and the advertising industry is one of the main players involved the process.
Whether we choose to buy products supported by hedonist ad campaigns or not, we must face the fact that they are part of our lives. They can be seen not only on TV and on the Web, but also everywhere in the offline world.
Some ad campaigns are sending their messages without camouflage. Like Keanu Reeves said in Sweet November: “We need sex…”.
The thing with these ads is that they put pressure on our minds, even if we’re not aware of this. This pressure may not be strong, but it lasts for years… maybe even for a lifetime.
If continue to go this way, we’ll soon see ads depicting completely naked models advertising for bottled water, or toys for our kids…
The use of women’s bodies in ads is essentially a cheap trick that marketers use instead of making more thoughtful arguments on behalf of their products. The mechanism used in these ads is quite simple: Attractive bodies are employed to grab attention and stimulate desire, which advertisers hope will then be transferred to the product. Buy the beer, get the girl. In this way, women’s bodies are equated with commodities, presented as the rewards of consumption.
Now let me tell you something more about the pressure that I was talking about. You may not realize it, but it is real and it will affect you when you’re feeling weak, lonely, bored, depressed… resulting in increased chances of you buying a product that has ads with sexual connotations.
Recently, the advertising industry has managed to drop to a new low.
“Women in a bar are surrounded by anthropomorphized, cellphone-toting pigs. One shuffles to the men’s room, where, after procuring a condom from a vending machine, he is transformed into a head-turner in his 20s. When he returns to the bar, a fetching blond who had been indifferent now smiles at him invitingly.”
At the first look it may seem funny, but if you analyze it you’ll realize that it’s not. It is just another marketing tool designed to sell more, and bring in more cash at the expense of the consumer minds.
If two big TV networks refused the ad, it means that something is really wrong with it.
Representatives for both Fox and CBS confirmed that they had refused the ads, but declined to comment further.
In a written response to Trojan, though, Fox said that it had rejected the spot because, “Contraceptive advertising must stress health-related uses rather than the prevention of pregnancy.”
In its rejection, CBS wrote, “while we understand and appreciate the humor of this creative, we do not find it appropriate for our network even with late-night-only restrictions.”
Do we really want to become mindless animals, driven by instinct? I surely don’t want to. These things are stealing our freedoms, turning us into addicts.
What’s there to be done? Should we fight this phenomenon or just accept it? If we should fight it, how?
Speak your mind in the comments.
Word Box:
Hedonism is a philosophy that pleasure is the most important pursuit of mankind. The name derives from the Greek word for “pleasure” (ἡδονισμός hēdonismos from ἡδονή hēdonē “pleasure” + suffix ισμός ismos “ism”).
