Toblerone Campaign: #TobleroneArt

Social media is probably the most powerful tool brands can use to engage with their consumers. For our last in-class workshop, my group and I needed to devise a social media campaign that would encourage higher-class San Franciscans to consume and try the new Toblerone Crunchy Salted Almond chocolate bar.
Thus, my group and I created the following campaign:

TOBLERONE ART CHALLENGE:

• Create art with your Toblerone chocolate bar. Recreate each one of the monuments announced on the Toblerone official Facebook page in order to win a box full with the new Toblerone Crunchy Salted Almond bar, $300 store credit, and the chance to be hosted in the Toblerone main website as well as to be the brand's Profile Picture in all social media sites.
• HOW TO PARTICIPATE: 
• Upload a picture of your masterpiece on Instagram with the hashtag #TobleroneArt
• Share this picture on your Twitter and Facebook, using the same hashtag
• HOW IT WILL WORK:
• There will be 8 weeks, and 4 monuments (two weeks per monument)
• Each monument will be announced on a Sunday morning of the first week on Toblerone's official Facebook Page and will be shared on Twitter, Instagram, and their main website.
• Participants will have exactly one week to upload their pictures
• On Sunday afternoon of the second week we will start the process to select the Top 3 masterpieces, and our criteria will be: neatness, creativity, and originality.
• On Wednesday morning of the second week, we will announce the Top 3 masterpieces and will post them in our Twitter, Facebook, and main website pages. 
• Then, we will let the public vote in their favorite one, which they think should be the winner of the week.
• Results will be announced on the same Sunday morning that the second, third, and fourth challenges will be announced.
• Announcements will be made on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and our main website.
• PRIZES:
• The winner will win a huge box full with the new Toblerone Crunchy Salted Almond chocolate bar, plus a $300 store credit to be spent at anytime within a year
• The winner of the week will be hosted in our main website page, as well as on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter pages.
• The winner masterpiece will also be our Profile Picture in social media sites during the following two weeks until the next winner is announced.
• HOW TO VOTE:
• The public can vote in our Facebook page by liking or sharing the picture of the masterpiece they liked the most
• They can vote on Twitter by using the hashtag #TobleroneArt followed by number 1,2, or 3. Depending on which masterpiece they would like to vote for.
• Last, they can vote in our main website by selecting their favorite masterpiece and submitting their vote in a survey style.

Although social media would be the heart of our campaign, in order to raise awareness and motivate the public to participate in our challenge, we would need to use other sources of media such as TV, Outdoor Print, Radio, and Out-of-Home as well.

What do you guys think of our campaign? Would you like to participate in our challenge? Do you have any ideas that we could implement in our campaign in order to make it better and more successful?

Isa

Serious talk: interruptive advertising

You are watching the season finale of your favorite TV show, then suddenly: BOOM! An ad appears on the screen. Is there anything more annoying than that? 

Interruptive marketing consists of an interruption of consumers' activities to throw advertisements at them  without their consent. Examples of interruptive can be those pop-up windows on your laptop while you're visiting a website, billboards across the road calling your attention while you are driving, print ads in between pages of an article you are reading in a magazine, and so on.

Overall, interruptive ads have a bad reputation because most of them offer no engagement or connectivity to the consumers. Information about a product or brand is simply presented to consumers, and most of the times, they do not even want to receive such messages. 

When I think of those elephant in the room interruptive ads, I cannot help remembering the TV commercials of a Brazilian Warehouse called "Casas Bahia". These ads marked my childhood because of how annoying they were. I would be watching "Dexter's Laboratory" and suddenly these commercials would interrupt my activity and they were not even relevant to me, once I did not have any interest in buying furniture to my house. Although the commercial below is in Portuguese, one can understand what I am trying to imply about low engagement, annoying interruptive ads. The main line of the commercial is "Tomorrow only, at Casas Bahia, you will find these discounts", then show the discounted products and their prices, with sounds that would even scare anyone who is not paying attention to the ad. Take a look:

Today, many brands are understanding that ads such as the one above are not very effective, because consumers currently have more power than ever to chose what ads to watch, and that is one of the reasons why Netflix became so popular, so fast. Therefore, it is becoming harder and harder for brands to reach consumers through interruptive marketing, especially through TV commercials.

Brands are becoming to understand that great ads are those that offer great content, have powerful, memorable messages, are creative, innovative, unique, and address the target audience correctly, engaging them with the brand or product. Also, convergence between different media and conversation ads are key in  contemporary advertising world.

Here is an excellent example of TV ad that shows all characteristics above, thus, worked pretty well, at least for me:

What do you guys think of interrupting advertising? Do you think its negative reputation has been lessened? Why or why not?

Let me know your ideas on this topic because I will be writing an essay on it very soon! Thank you,

Isa

Now they fit p-e-r-f-e-c-t-l-y!

Ugh, it's holiday season and those pants you completely love don't fit you anymore. What are you going to do? Buy new pants on a bigger size? No way! You know you will lose all that extra fat once you get back to your regular life and routine. So... now, what? How are you going to fit in those pants while holiday season is still on?

I have the answer for you, right here for you:

What is this?

This is the waistband stretcher! My classmates and I were introduced to it last week. It stretches the waist of your pants so they can fit you when you gain that little amount of weight that you don't pretend to stick up with, thus you would not simply throw the pants away or buy new ones. 

Or if you are one of those people in who have trouble finding the right pants size, for instance, size 3 get too tight and 4 too lose, the waistband stretcher can be a very good option for you as well.

I read some reviews on Amazon, and buyers say that it works pretty well, easy and simple to use, and results are what they expected. In addition, once you warm wash it a couple times, the pants go back to their regular size.

Pretty nice, isn't it?

Below is a Radio followed by a TV commercial that my group and I created to promote this handy product to busy moms looking for a house warming gift:

RADIO:

SFX: Holiday jingle playing in the background 

Music fades gradually

Mom(showing frustration and exhaustion in her voice): Oh my God, why do I always gain a couple of pounds during holidays? Now my pants don't fit me anymore. What am I going to do?

Mom's friend (female voice in a friendly and soft tone): Don't worry, girlfriend. I have the perfect solution for you

Mom: (showing curiosity): What is it?

Mom's friend (with enthusiasm): The waistband stretcher! It stretches the waistband of your pants, making them fit perfectly!

Mom (happy, satisfied tone of voice): Yes! Now they do fit me! This is amazing!

WVO: For more information about the waistband stretcher call XXX-XXXX or visit our website www.xxx.com

TV:

Scene 1: It's holidays and mom is trying on her pants to go to dinner with her girlfriend but none of them fit. (They are in a closet, it is sort of messy, and the television is on.)

Scene 2: Her girlfriend suggest the mom to buy new pants but the mom says that is not a possibility since she will most likely lose the weight she gained during holidays. (The mom is very frustrated and the friend is trying to help her out.)

Scene 3: Suddenly, the "Waistband Stretcher Angel" (name of our fictional character, a female angel who comes to help women in trouble fitting their pants out) interrupt them and introduce them to the Waistband Stretcher

Scene 4: The Waistband Stretcher Angel talks about the product, shows how amazing it is, and explain how it works, then she unexpectedly leaves the room.

Scene 5: The two women, mom and her friend, try the Waistband Stretcher on the mom's pants. (Very detailed)

Scene 6: It work and now the pants fit perfectly! Mom is happy and now she can enjoy her dinner with her friend.

What do you guys think of our commercials? Could you picture them out in your heads? 

Leave your feedback in the comments section if you can.

Thank you,

Isa :)

Creative mode: ON!

Is there anything more exciting than a super creative and innovative ad?

I don't think so...

The ad below was displayed by Goodyear in the streets of Brazil. The ad connotes how Goodyear's tires are made to stick on the roads, giving total safety and reliability to your car. 

This message is delivered when a consumer sees the little sign saying "your vehicle was towed", a sign that towing companies in Brazil use to communicate whenever they perform service, but the tires of the car are still stuck on the street:

I am glad I could find pictures of this ad because I do remember seeing it back when I lived in Brazil. To me it is fascinating how creative and original this ad was. I particularly love it!

Below are some other examples of ads that went beyond the borderline in terms of creativity and innovation:

Amazing Lego outdoor print ad at a bus station. Love it!

Another Brazilian one (sorry guys, I'm feeling a little homesick lately). This one is trying to raise awareness of the negative consequences of drinking and driving. So this truck says "This might be your new transportation if you drink and drive." Absolutely amazing out-of-home ad!

This Lays out-of-home ad is super fun! It tries to imitate real potato being grown in order to connote their message "Our potatoes are grown closer than you may think"

Last, I have no words for this Mc Donald's ad. So nice! Look at the way the coffee pot is positioned to look like a street light and at the same time to look like coffee is being poured into the cup. Amazing!

All right guys, I could totally blog about innovative out-of-home ads all day long. As I said before, I love them! I even created a Pin Board for them on my Pinterest profile so I can keep re-pinning those I like.

Anyways, what do you guys think of out-of-home creative ads? Do you have any favorite ones in particular? 

Isa

Old is brilliant: bringing the typewriter back

As the topic for this week's discussion in class was Nostalgia, my group and I was assigned a very challenging task: revive the typewriter among college students.

In order to promote the typewriter, we thought that we should use emerging the retro, vintage tendencies among college students to help us out to try making the product a more attractive to our audience.

As many college students have never had an experience using a typewriter in the past, it is tough to evoke nostalgia by focusing in the typewriter itself. Thus, we will rely on referring to the typewriter as the starting point of the world as it is today. In other words, we would be emphasizing how the typewriter gave birth to everything we know today: media, movies, pieces of literature, books, music, and the laptop as well. We would associate the typewriter with this brilliance, creativity, originality, and history. And from there, we would most likely be able to start generating nostalgic memories in our young target audience.

Our campaign would rely on Radio, Internet, and Outdoor Print. And our slogan would be "Old is brilliant"

For our outdoor print advertisement, which was my favorite, we thought of having several billboards and banners, each relating the typewriter to a different creation. One would have the typewriter and comic books, another would have the typewriter and the news, or the typewriter and movies, and so on.

For radio advertisement, we would emphasize Pandora and Spotify because of the age range of our target audience. For Internet, we would be using videos on YouTube which would then be shared in social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. 

What do you think of our campaign idea so far? Do you have any ideas that could help us to improve it?

Isa

Throwback: I love it!

Who does not love to revive past experiences? 

Well, I do!

I can spend hours looking at old photos and videos, or simply playing with my parents and grandparents old devices, machines, and products.

Nostalgic marketing is all about reviving a brand, brand image, or product that was very equitable in the past, and present them in a contemporary way.

When using a nostalgic marketing strategy a brand is able to reconnect with the past, leading their consumers to generate memories about the past experiences with the brand or product being promoted, and if these memories are positive, an emotional connection between the consumer and the brand will be created, thus the repercussion of the campaign is set up to be very successful.

Another advantage of using nostalgic marketing through a brand's perspective is that it is relatively cheaper to produce a nostalgic campaign by using an existing brand image, than to create a brand new one.

However, nostalgic marketing may turn to be a con to a brand in the way it may generate negative memories of the past in some consumers, or it may alienate groups that do not have the knowledge of what is being revived by a brand, therefore they cannot feel nostalgic about it.

Moreover, if too many changes are made in a product or brand image in order to make it more contemporary, the public may not feel nostalgic either and may nor relate to it as well as they were intended to. Thus, nostalgic marketing would not be successful.

As I said before I love nostalgic campaigns. So, I went on the internet and searched for some successful and creative examples of nostalgic marketing. My favorite is this one by Volkswagen Netherlands, I found at imediaconnection.com. They made a campaign called Fanwagen, a car built by Facebook fans and equipped with social media's features such as relationship status in license plate, and many others. The Fanwagen was built over one of Volkswagen iconic cars and at the end one of their Facebook fans won the car.

What do you guys think about nostalgic marketing? Have you had any experiences with it?

- Isa

Jeep Campaign Workshop

"The Jeep Life has never been so easy"

The purpose of my project is to grab the attention of my target audience, seniors (age rage 50s-70s), so they feel like buying a Jeep is a good idea.
To do so I'll rely in three key factors: simplicity or easiness, safety, and reliability.

Among all the car models produced by Jeep I chose the Cherokee as the most appropriate for my target audience. Its cost is relatively higher than other models, however, my audience is aware that higher quality comes at higher prices, and they are willing to pay for a reasonably more expensive car once the quality of its features is important for them.

The TV commercial I designed to sell a Jeep to seniors would show a couple of grandparents, driving a Cherokee with their two grandchildren and their beautiful Border Collie pet in the backseat. The grandparents would drive the car to several different exciting locations such as the beach, the mountains, the desert, the snow, and so on. These experiences would connote the "Jeep Life" to my audience, bringing that off road sense of freedom and adventure shared with the family. While the grandparents are driving the Cherokee to these locations, some features would be shown in the ad, always emphasizing how easy to use they are, as well as how they make the car safe, reliable, and convenient to the target audience. Examples of these features would be the "Advanced 4x4 system", "Park Sense: parallel and perpendicular, front/rear park assist sensors", "Forward collision warning", "Park View: rear back up camera", etc.
The slogan of the campaign would be: "The Jeep Life has never been so easy"


So, what do you think of my commercial? Any ideas of how to implement it?
I believe it is important to show that even though technology has been added in the new Cherokee, it is easy and simple to use, once many seniors are sort of "scared" by complex technology. Also, safety features are very appealing to my target audience, for two reasons: one, they are getting older, and two, because they will most likely be driving with their grandchildren or family members. Thus, that is the reason I would emphasize features such as the "Park Sense" or the Park View", which can be very convenient to prevent collision when parallel parking. Furthermore, with this commercial I would like evoke the sense that despite their age, my target audience can still experience moments of adventure and excitement with their families.

Isa

Harley-Davison Case Study

1) I definitely believe that brand communities result in a higher involvement with the brand. Brand communities give the consumers a sense of belonging, creating strong connections with the consumers' emotions and memories. They give consumers an unique and distinctive experience, helping in the creation of these individuals' identity with the brand. Moreover, brand communities give consumers a great opportunity to relate and connect with other people of similar interests.

2) I believe the long-distance bike rides help the consumers to enhance the meaning of the brand for the riders because they promote the sense of freedom, adventure, and rebellion, helping the consumers to relate to the "Harley lifestyle". They also offer an opportunity to the riders to connect with others, show off their bikes, and share experiences. 

3) I do not believe Harley should get more involved in the rides. The Posse Ride seems to be working fairly well and as its objectives is to enhance the cultural aspect and lifestyle associated with the brand, giving the consumers a carefree, rebellious experience, if Harley gets too involved, the sense of freedom will not be the same and the results these rides will have in the brand community may become negative.

4) There are several other ways Harley can increase involvement with the brand. It could get its consumers to participate in products design, through personalization of motorcycles and gear, as well as through ideas for new products design. They could also develop a sort of "brand loyalty honoree", in which consumers would get a distinct certificate in the purchase of their first, second, third bikes, and so on. These certificates would be personalized with the information of each consumer, such as, which model of bike was bought, when, etc. Last, a really cool idea would be a campaign with pictures and videos on social media, where consumers would upload pictures or videos in the craziest places their have ever ridden their bikes to, for example, creating a photo and video gallery with their experiences. These galleries would be accessible to everyone, and consumers could share their experiences, and get ideas for possible places and rides they would like to adventure themselves to.

I love the idea of brand communities. Very very interesting case study! I hope to one day be able to help creating experiences such as the Posse Ride to consumers. They are fun, healthy, and promote brand involvement.

Isa

"Smart" Paul

Ladies and Gentlemen, please meet Paul, a loyal consumer of the Smart cars: 

Paul and Argon at Golden Gate Park

Paul, 54, is a science teacher at a private High School in the San Francisco Bay Area. He lives by himself in a duplex apartment near Lombard Street, San Francisco, where he can enjoy one of the most beautiful views of the city. Paul has no children, even though he sees his beautiful Golden Retriever, Argon, as his own son. Paul is a vegetarian, and an avid consumer of organic, fresh food. He enjoys hiking, biking, reading and playing the piano in his free time.  Recently, Paul just purchased his brand new Smart car. This is the third car of its type he buys within the last decade. Paul strongly believes that Smart cars are an asset to the environment as well as for his own pocket. Smart cars have great gas mileage, as well as what he would call a "fair" buying price. They are convenient when it comes to parking, especially in a city like San Francisco where finding a parking spot can be a real hassle, and are relevant to his lifestyle as well as family size (aka he and Argon). In addition, besides of its significantly small body, Paul believes that Smart cars are very safe, and astonishing comfortable on the inside.

A day in a life of Paul:

6am: Paul wakes up to his silver digital alarm clock bought at Ikea.

6:10am: He takes a quick shower (to not waste water), using his organic products

6:15am: He dresses up for another day of work 

6:30am: Feeds Argon, pick the San Francisco Chronicle at his front door.

6:45am: Eats breakfast (cup of black tea and two slices of wheat bread with French butter), while reading the newspaper and answering his emails on his iPad Mini

7:05am: Drives his Smart car to work while listening to some Indie Rock

7:20am: Paul gets to the High School where he works and finds parking easily.

7:30am: Starts teaching his Environmental Sciences class 

12pm: Paul has a break to grab some lunch (usually a salad with mixed seeds) and check up the news and connect with his social networking in his iPad Mini.

1pm: Paul goes back to teaching, always bringing his inseparable Greenpeace water bottle (he is not a member of the organization yet, but he would like to be)

4pm: He gets out of work and goes grocery shopping at a local farmers market, once again he finds parking easily (which makes him feel good about his car choice)

5pm: He gets back home and takes Argon to a very nice walk at Presidio Park

6:30pm: Paul gets back to his apartment, feed Argon, and takes another quick shower

6:40pm: Dresses up in comfortable clothes and head to the kitchen to prepare dinner (salad, tofu, homemade banana bread, and also homemade, berries smoothie)

7:30pm: Reads a science-fiction book, take a look at his emails, prepares himself for his classes of the following day, and watch some TV shows at Netflix

10:40pm: Goes to bed, feeling good about his healthy and environmentally sustainable life.

Paul's brand new Smart car (Passion Coupe model)

Isa

Instragram: why do we love it so much?

What is the key differences between those products that have an outstanding repercussion in the market to those that had a disastrous one?

The key factor behind the success of a product, a service, or a brand itself, is always the consumers. Whether a product is able to meet its consumers wants and needs or not will determine the outcomes such product will have in the market. However, the products that are able to reach even beyond their consumers wants and needs by being creative, innovative, and original are those that tend to live longer in the market's spotlight.

Instagram, a photo-sharing and social networking app released in October 2010, rapidly became a fever all around the world and is currently one of the world's fastest-growing social networking app. According to the gadgetreview.com Info Graphic below, Instagram currently has 100 million monthly active users and an average of 40 million photos uploaded per day:

Now, what is it that made everyone fall in love with Instagram?

Well, Instagram was able to connect people in a simple, easy, and friendly way.    Below I here is a list of the things I believe are the most contributing for its success:

• It's simple and easy to manage
• It's free
• It's fast to upload images and navigate
• It's friendly
• Use of images only to connect and interact with other people
• Mobile use only (iPhone and Android)
• Connectivity with other social networking (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Flicklr, Tumblr, etc.)
• It's clean (No ads, campaigns, "shared stuff" pop-up into your feed)
• It's fun, creative, and artistic (offer 19 different filter to edit your photos) 
• It's original, the first of its kind

Personally, I love Instagram because it has a "cleaner" look than Facebook for example. It's only images, no long statuses updates, campaigns, ads, etc. 

What about you?

Isa

Greenpeace is fracking furious, George!

"We apologize for the inconvenience caused while we frack your town." says the sign on the streets of Knutsford, England - a town in Chancellor George Osbourne's Tatton constituency. 

During morning rush hours on Monday, March 4th, Greenpeace protesters arrived in large scale to give people in Cheshire, county where licenses for gas exploration have been issued to a few fracking companies, a taste of what their life will be like if George's Osbourne energy strategy to fight against UK's energy problems through fracking is put in force locally.

According to Greenpeace, "Fracking is how you get shale gas out of the ground. You drill holes, then inject water and chemicals at high pressure in order to fracture shale rock and force out the gas". And oppositely to Chancellor's Osbourne's claim, energy experts say that fracking not only will leave the UK dependent on expensive, polluting gases, but it won't make energy bills go down as well. 

Thus, in order to raise awareness to the fracking gas issue and to eventually stop Osbourne's problematic energy plan, Greenpeace protesters re-brand the Chancellor's Constituency Office with signs of their fictional fracking company "Frack & Go", and set up a giant drilling rig across the street from the building, in Village Green. 

See the action in the video below: 

The action could be accompanied live through the hashtag #FrackAndGo on Twitter, and also on Greenpeace UK's Facebook page. Both Facebook and Twitter accounts are linked to the organization's Frack & Go website, which streamed the action live to their audience. 

Greenpeace did a very well done job engaging their audience to their protest through social network, and if you visit their website you can actually see how strongly connected with Twitter and Facebook they are: Greenpeace UK: Frack & Go Website

During the protest, Greenpeace UK also used several several signs playing with the "Fracking" word in order to call attention of the people around, and I think that was great!

This environmental campaign by Greenpeace UK was incredible! It truly did give Knustsford people a feel of how their lives would be like if Chancellor's Osbourne plan is put in force, and really impacted the way they feel about the issue. Their response was so strong that a poll in Tatton commissioned by Greenpeace from ComRes, after the protest, showed that more than half of Osbourne's constituents oppose fracking and would rather opt for a carbon-free electricity system.

Now here is my question for you: what do you think of Greenpeace's campaign? Would it work for you if you were a resident of Cheshire's county?  Because, it did for me! 

Thank you for reading my blog. See you later,

Isa

Breaking the Negative Stereotype of a Sexist Ad

"Taking care of my home. Is a dream, dream, dream..."- NO WAY!

Given the fact that we have been covering the gender stereotypes' topic in our Intro to Advertising class, our professor showed us the following sexist ad:

The Hasbro's Rose Petal Cottage ad reinforces the pre-determined role of housewife and mother associated with women. However, I find it extremely unacceptable the way this ad tries to "force" the stereotype in such young girls, by reinforcing that this is all their lives should be about, taking care of the home, serving their guests, cleaning, cooking, nannying their babies... No way!

I truly do have a problem with this commercial, therefore I will be reworking the ad to break its negative stereotype.

First, let's start by totally taking this jingle off the ad, "taking care of my home" should not be a "dream, dream, dream" to any little girl out there.

Second, I would change the house's pastel colors for bright full-colors, I would  use simple red roof, yellow house, brown door and windows. 

Third, I'd add more children in the ad, both girls and boys, to make the product's audience heterogeneous.

Fourth, my ad would be filmed in the outside of a house, probably in the backyard, where there is grass and the children could be free to let their imagination flow.

Fifth, my house would not have neither a laundry room nor a "baby room". I would make it more plain, for the kids to decide what they want to bring inside of it.

Sixth, I would change the name of the product, because "Rose Petal Cottage" does sound quite girly and that would not be my target audience since I'm trying to reach both genders. I would call it "The Play-House" or something like that.

Last, from there a totally new script would be written in which boys and girls would be playing together at the house, and a heterogeneous jingle, maybe sung by all children in the ad would be playing in the background.

Well, hopefully I'm not the only one who found this ad to be overly negative in the way it portrays gender stereotypes. 

Ads should be used to lessen the negative pre-determined roles associated with gender, instead of reinforcing it, especially when such a young audience is targeted. 

By saying that, now I'd like to know from you, what do you think about this ad?

Thank you for accessing my blog,

Isa

The Evolution of Gender Stereotype in Ads

Is gender stereotypes in ads a thing of the past?

Well, I don't think so. 

Although, the portrayal of gender stereotypes in ads has became relatively smoother over the years through the introduction of humor and role reversal,  we can still find some ads that insist in displaying the strong pre-determined role associated with women since colonialism: the housewife, mother, sexual object, dumb, subservient, submissive, inferior, "childlike", delicate, vulnerable, and so on. These type of ads are also very likely to display the male figure as dominant, strong, tall, superior, etc. 

For this blog, I chose some sexist ads from 1920s until present, in order to compare and analyze the evolution of gender stereotypes in ads:

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1970s

1990s

2000s

2010s

2010s

2010s

2010s

After looking through all these ads, we can clearly see the evolution of gender stereotypes in ads, especially after the 1970s. I believe the main negativity of a gender stereotype is when the pre-determined characteristics associated with either men or women implies that one sex is dominant or superior over the other. And in fact, negative stereotypes should not ever be accepted in any advertising. However, when the stereotype is portrayed in a humorous and positive way, by only displaying typical behavior related to different genders, but not implying that such behavior make the gender superior or inferior, I believe it becomes more acceptable. 

As I said in my previous post about racial stereotypes, I truly believe advertisers have huge social and ethical responsibilities, and advertising has enough power to impact society's acceptance of stereotypes. Therefore, I believe ads should be used to lessen the presence and acceptance of any negative stereotype held towards any groups in our society.

Thank you for reading my blog. I hope you liked my selection of sexist ads over the years. And please, let me know what you think about the gender stereotype in ads issue. Is it acceptable? If yes, in which ways? 

See you soon,

Isa

The Big Bang Theory and its Stereotypes

Do you recognize these faces? 

It's hard to find someone who has never heard of The Big Bang Theory, currently one of the most popular sitcoms in the world. 

The show has gained attention over the years for its humorous portrayal of the life of two roommates and physicists, Leonard and Sheldon, their equally socially awkward geek friends, Howard and Raj, and Penny, the blonde girl who lives next door.

Given the fact that TBBT is definitely one of my favorite comedy shows, I decided to make a brief analysis of how the show portrays gender, cultural, and racial stereotypes in its characters.

Penny

Since I'm a girl, I'm going to start with Penny, the only female main character of the show (such a biased way of ordering my analysis, but anyways...) Penny is a waitress from Omaha, Nebraska who seeks to be an artist, and strongly fulfills the pre-determined role of "dumb blonde". Attractive, relatively sexy, and unintelligent, she is presented by her sexual promiscuity rather than intellectual capability.  

Rajesh "Raj" Koothrappali

Another strong stereotyped character in the show, is Raj, an Indian astrophysicists who displays several pre-determined characteristics associated with Indians living in America. Starting with his thick accent and social awkwardness, characteristics attributed to the fact that he's both a foreigner and a nerd. As a result of these characteristics, he has problems talking to girls unless he's drunk. And finally, he has overly protective parents who are always interfering in his personal life, reflecting Americans' typical perception of Indian parenting. 

Howard Wolowitz

Last, I'd like to analyze Howard, who's also a significantly stereotyped character in the show. Howard is a nerdy, tiny Jewish man, who lives at home with his overbearing, loud, and obnoxious mother. He is probably the least likable character in the show, and has difficulties when interacting with women as well, often ending up offending them or being totally awkward. Here, the stereotype is portrayed by several traits popularly believed to be associated with Jewish man.

Although stereotyped characters are vastly present in the show, I believe The Big Bang Theory clearly portrays such stereotypes in a humorous way, making them less likely to be seen in a negative way. 

Hope you guys liked this post, and please tell me what are your opinions about The Big Bang Theory and its stereotypes. Do you think it is acceptable? Why and why not?

See you next time,

Isa :)

Racial Stereotypes in Ads: Is It A Big Deal?

Racism is a very polemical, widely discussed issue in the world of Advertising. Some advocate that advertising just simply reflects society's behavior, others believe that advertising accentuates racial stereotypes by conditioning us to accept some pre-determined roles. 

I personally believe it is a little bit of both. Yes, if racial stereotypes did not exist in our society, they would not be showed in ads because no one would be able to decode the message. However, I also believe that racist ads reinforce the acceptance of these pre-determined roles and characteristics of a certain racial group among people in our society.

In my opinion, advertisers have a major social and ethical responsibility and racial stereotypes are not acceptable in advertisings or in movies, TV shows, and the media in general because of the huge influence these medium exert over our society's beliefs, values, and behavior. In fact, I believe these medium should be used to fight against stereotypes and lessen the acceptance and presence of these pre-determined roles among our society. 

Although stereotyping seems to be a natural response of us, humans, when interacting with others, it plays a negative role in the organization of our society as a whole, especially because we live in such a diverse country and all people are different regardless of which racial, ethnical, sexual group they belong to. Therefore, I believe, racial stereotypes in ads are a big deal, and should not be accepted.

As our society became more and more inclusive throughout the years, the acceptance of different racial groups became more indeed, and racism became illegal. Thus, racial stereotypes in ads are seen less and less, especially when compared to their popularity in the 1920s. However, racial stereotypes are still present in today's ads, though in a much smoother way.

Below are some recent ads I found where racial stereotype is present:

Nivea Campaign (2011) 

This ad by Nivea was seen as totally offensive by the way the words "re-civilize yourself" are linked with the image of an African-American man, with a clean cut and no facial hair, throwing away the head of another African-American with an Afro-Hair style, referring back to the colonialism and the negative stereotype held towards Blacks, who were seemed as "savages" and "uncivilized".

Sony Playstation (2006)

This Sony Playstation Ad connotes the white woman exerting her "power" and "superiority" over the Black one. This type of racial stereotype also refers back to colonialism and the relationship between master and slave.

These two ads made me literally shake my head to their unfortunate connotation. I truly wasn't expecting to find such negative portrayal of racial stereotypes in relatively recent ad campaigns. 
Now, I'd like to know from you: What do you think about racial stereotypes in ads? Is it a big deal?

Thank you for reading my blog,

Isa