Ad Analysis

Ad Analysis

The world where we live today has made image advertisements a common technique for selling products with the intention of attracting the consumers or people that see the advertisement. Gender displays are used heavily in advertising in order to clearly create the distinctive role of one gender in relation with the other gender. Advertisement is a significant tool for socialization in modern industrialized societies. Most advertisements today show pictures that have mysterious, creepy, or strange pictures or messages written to attract the public. The advertising industry is one of the biggest industries in the world that spend hours and millions of dollars preparing and building the advertisement. One of the reasons for using gender variations in advertisement is to closely link potential buyers to their respective gender needs, so that men and women would be compelled to buy products which boost their masculinity and femininity respectively (Bordo, 1947).

The first advertisement is from a “Kenwood Chef” company promoting its kitchen utensils. This advertisement shows a husband and wife standing next to a cake mixer. Other items featured in the advertisement are: cooking ingredients, a glass of wine, a glass of orange juice, a glass of red liquid water, and 2 eggs. In the advertisement, the words “I’m giving my wife a Kenwood Chef” and “the chef does everything but cook – that’s what wives are for!” have been used for the new cake mixer products. The man gives his wife a cake mixer as a present.

The meaning of the Kenwood Chef advertisement is that the husband is the backbone of the family hence working outside to get money for his family. The words “I’m giving my wife a Kenwood Chef” means that the husband cares for his wife, and he appreciates the fact that cooking is meant for women. He thus gives her a cake mixer so that she may easily carry out her wifely role of cooking. His wife can make cakes easily and faster due to the cake mixer. This advertisement also implies that the wife is the chef at home that cooks good food for her family. His wife is wearing a chef hat in order to reinforce the assertion that cooking is meant for women. This advertisement is an ideal depiction of the place of women in society. Women are considered care givers, and cooking is part of them. Owing to the fact that women in the contemporary world are going professional and most of them spend a lot of time working out of home, it is good that they get such products which make their cooking easier when they get back home (Bordo, 1947).

The second advertisement is a multinational consumer goods company called Unilever which has the company logo on the right top of the advertisement. Unilever is a company that deals in a wide variety of products including foods, beverages, cleaning agents, and personal care products. One of the company’s new and improved product is the shower gel “LYNX”. This advertisement shows an attractive woman wearing a bikini. The background of this advertisement is shown in the beach, with a public shower. “The cleaner you are, the dirtier you get” is the motto of the LYNX Company with their new improved shower gel. The picture of the LYNX shower gel product bottle is also shown in this advertisement. The woman is also shown stripping off her brazier, while smiling sensually. Her sexy posture and broad smile clearly brings out her sexual attraction towards the man using the LYNX shower gel. The LYNX shower gel advertisement uses women as the object of the advertisement. At the bottom of the advertisement is the facebook page of LYNX shower Gel Company.

There are many companies in the world using the opposite gender to promote their products. The LYNX shower gel advertisement is intended to appeal to men so that they can buy the product. This advertisement was designed in the belief that men would feel that beautiful ladies would be attracted to them if they used the LYNX shower gel. It shows that a distinctively masculine man is supposed to use the LYNX shower gel which increases the chances of beautiful ladies getting attracted to them. Therefore, a man would want to buy the products in order to increase his masculinity.

In conclusion, these two advertisements use gender differences in order to promote their products. Advertisement is a significant tool of socialization in modern industrialized societies. Images and photos have become a commonly seen technique used when selling products that have attractive photos to attract the consumers or people that see the advertisement. The first advertisement shows a good husband giving his wife a cake mixer in order that she may work faster. The second advertisement shows a woman wearing a bikini; it’s intended to lure men into buying the shower gel on grounds that the shower gel makes the men folk more attractive to women. The reason the company decided to use a model of an attractive woman wearing a bikini is because gender displays are used heavily in advertising in order to create the role of one gender in relation with the other gender.

Reference

Bordo, S. (1947). Hunger as Ideology.

Below are two ads that I used.