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

Semiotics: Making Sense Of the World

How the ad world would be like if no one was able to decode the messages encoded in advertisings? In other words, would advertising be as powerful if no one could understand the messages they try to send? If their visual imagery, message, and ideas did not make any sense to society? 
The answer is simple, advertisings rely on semiotics, and without it, nothing much would be left. Semiotics enable us to make sense of all visual imagery and associated advertising messages. Through semiotics we're able to encode and decode meaning in messages, thus we can also understand better the world around us.

For this week's blog I'll be applying semiotic analysis to 3 ads, one print, one video, and one outdoor. So, let's begin with my favorite one:

The Walking Dead Outdoor Ad

I found this outdoor ad at the Spartan Ad Club's Facebook page. From my point of view, this ad relies on myth, and iconic signs to encode its message. As soon as I looked at it, I instantly denoted the bloody, dark hand, fingers, and palm. Then, almost immediately, I connoted these iconic signs, with the hands of someone who's dead. Next, I was able to associate these signs with the myth of zombies, which in fact, is a very popular myth among today's TV shows and movies. And last, the words in the ad just helped me to associate the signs to the TV Show "The Walking Dead".

The way this outdoor ad connotes the myth of zombie with dead body parts is so "realistic" that I can almost feel disgusted just to look at it.

Although I'm not so into The Walking Dead because I don't like any zombies' movies or TV shows, I need to say that I love this ad!

This second ad was produced by a Brazilian agency called Ogilvy, for the Brazilian mobile phone company Claro's campaign:

Claro Print Ad

To me, this ad was quite harder to understand its concept than the Walking Dead one. To begin with, I'd had never even made sense of it if I hadn't had read the sentences on the top left of it: "One letter it all it takes. Don't text and drive". And that's why I believe these two sentences are essential for the reader to decode meaning in the message the visual imagery of this ad brings. 

In this ad, I could see the letter "T" strategically placed in an angle that connotes the impression that the letter is a street, viewed in the eyes of a driver in his/her vehicle, and also that the "little" boy, who's playing soccer, is far away. However, since the supposed "street" ends where the letter "T" also ends, the sign connotes that the boy is just one letter "T" away from the driver.

Last but not least, this TV ad is a part of Under Armour's campaing "I will". I love the concept of this ad because it's very futuristic:

This ad shows several athletes using Under Armour products to perform different sports at a high competitive level. All of them are being monitored by either a cardio system or other Under Armour products that have a high technology that are integrated with a tablet system that keeps track of their performance. This ad connotes that these athletes performance is being analyzed and studied from close by, in a regular basis, and that Under Armour is who is the responsible for such studies. A voice in the ad gives more meaning to this connotation by saying that Under Armour's objective is to make their athletes and consumers better by improving and innovating their products. Then, the ads final message relies on a futuristic idea of a product that is not available yet: clothing integrated with sort of a digital system that allows its consumer to choose its temperature, color, and style. And once more, the voice in the ad connotes that even though this type of innovative product is not available yet, but it's being built at Under Armor. Last, the words "I will" as a part of Under Armour's campaign, connote to this message that Under Armour is a brand of futuristic and innovative ideas and products. 

I loved the experience of writing this week's blog entry because it was the first time I have ever analyzed ads. I knew little about Semiotics, and that really opened my mind to the way I see ads. 
I hope you all also enjoyed the ads I chose to analyze, and learned a little bit about semiotics and how it help us to make sense of the world around us.
See you in the next blog entry,

Isa

Brands & Me: A Story of Friendship

I refer to brands as my "friends" because in a certain way I feel that they've been always there for me when I needed, and as a consequence I started to be always there for them as a loyal consumer. 

I believe relevancy of brands apply not only to the product they offer, but especially, to the emotional connection they've built with their consumers over the years. And by emotional connection I mean the feelings and sensations a particular brand or product brings into its consumer, such as trust, nostalgia, safety, satisfaction, and so on. 

As a tennis player who has traveled to 15 different countries, I've felt lost and out of place several times throughout my life. However, big brands, such as Apple, Coca-Cola, Mc Donald's, Johnson&Johnson's, and many others, were there for me 100% of the times, to help me out and give me a sense of belonging and safety. 

Mc Donald's store in Lima, Peru

For example, when I went to Peru for the first time, I was only 12 years old, I could barely speak any Spanish and I literally couldn't understand any restaurant's menu at all, thus I felt lost and vulnerable. However, when I saw a Mc Donald's store, I knew that I'd do fine in that place. Although I'm not a big Mc Donald's fan, in this particular situation, the brand Mc Donald's became totally relevant to me, since it brought me the feelings of safety and trust. I knew what to expect and how to order there, regardless of my communication skills in Spanish. 

Brands also become relevant in the way they help us to identify one's self identity. In other words, we can tell a lot about someone's lifestyle and even personality based on this person's brand choices. For example, we discussed in class last wednesday (02/06) how someone who chooses a Macbook over a PC has a more creative, modern, open-minded, and even rebellious side than someone who'd choose the PC, because of what the brand Apple implies  through its mission, identity, products, and style. 

Some of the products I own from my top 3 brands.

For this blog, I tried to make a list of brands that are relevant to my self-identity. However, since I'm a big "brand-driven" person, my list got a little bit bigger than what I expected so I tried to come up with those I consider the top-three: Apple, Babolat, and Disney. Apple comes in first place because I currently can't see myself using any other brand when it comes to electronic devices. At the moment, I have four Apple devices: a Macbook Pro, an iPad, an iPhone, and an iPod nano. Second, I chose Babolat, which is a brand for tennis rackets, accessories, and so on, because I can't see myself using any other tennis racket but Babolat's one. I've been using it since I started playing the sport, 15 years ago and am extremely loyal to the brand. Third comes Disney. Disney has influenced my self-identity since I remember myself. I love the stories, characters, movies, the brand, and everything. My connection with Disney has been the same since I was first introduced to the brand until today, and I that is the reason I chose it to be into my top-three relevant brands.

Well, I hope you all enjoyed to read this post as much as I did enjoy writing it. Thank you for reading and accessing my blog. I also would like to say that I'm going to try posting my next entries earlier in the week.

Finally, I'd like to end this post by leaving a question here:

• What brands are relevant to you in terms of emotional connection and self identity?

Isa

Dietmar Dahmen: Guest Speaker.

"We invent technology, and technology re-invent us." This particular sentence called my attention during and after Dietmar Dahmen's presentation in my Intro to Advertising class, last Wednesday (01/30). And I will discuss it later on this post.

First, I would like to give some feedback about our class's Guest Speaker. Dahmen's presentation was full of new content, which I've never heard or studied before. He discussed several topics and terms of contemporary advertising and marketing.Thus, his presentation was extremely interesting and valuable to me. To mention one of several new things I learned last wednesday, a big term of today's society, the FIRST-ISM, stands for people's desire to be the first one to purchase a product and therefore, people's increasing interest on pre-ordering, making such products "old" even before their release date. Thus, as Dahmen would say: "Everything gets new AND old, faster and faster on today's society."

Referring back to the first sentence in my post: "We invent technology, and technology re-invent us." This, was without a doubt, a quote that made me reflect for quite a bit of time after Dahmen's presentation that wednesday afternoon. Technology is the biggest key element of our society today. It is the responsible to all major changes in our life-style, and in the way we communicate, interact, and connect with people throughout the past few years. As Dahmen would say, technology crossed boundaries that were before impossible, and took connectivity to another level. Through social networking, smart phones, and many others, all generations were impacted by the constant changes and improvement of technology. 
Here is a picture of me and my grandfather, who is 79 years old and lives in Brazil, talking on Skype a few days ago:

In my opinion, this picture is great because it illustrate Dahmen's point of how easier, lighter, and faster connectivity has became because of technology, also how it has impacted all generations, and how it has irrevocably changed the way we communicate. 

All the changes technology brought into out daily life have also affected the way Advertising currently works. In the past, companies used to focus on their product rather than on their consumers. As Dahmen would say, they used to bring people to work, rather than bring work to people. However, today, information has substituted material considerably. Brain has overcame muscles. And companies' relationship with their consumers has became a key to their success. Today, companies need to connect to their consumers more and more. In order to build a strong and reliable relationship with their costumers, which was inexistent years ago. Costumers now can give feedback and have their voices heard within a company like never before. Thus, as the companies' sales strategy changed from product-oriented to marketing/consumer-oriented, Advertising and Marketing' strategies also needed to follow along. In his presentation, Dahmen mentioned how My-vertising, and Use-vertising have became more and more powerful throughout the years, creating relevance, experience, and trust in consumers, therefore helping to build a longer-term relationship between them and a company.

I believe I could spend the whole day reflecting over the quote in the first line of this blog entry, as well as over Dietmar Dahmen's presentation, because it is such an interesting topic to me! However, I don't think any reader would be interested in reading a Bible-sized entry, neither would my professor who will be grading this entry pretty soon. I just hope all readers enjoy this week's post and have learned something new as I did in Dahmen's presentation. I also would like to apologize the delay on posting this entry.

See you all again soon,

Isa.