Smarter people than me are also fascinated by it

Sex in advertising, that is.

Lisa Wade, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Occidental College and a blogger at Sociological Images. As she often takes on the issue of sex and sexism in advertising and other media, we often end up sharing links.

The most recent one she shared (via Facebook) is a Pinterest board of ads that use subliminal, and not so subliminal, sexual symbolism.

And by "not subliminal", she means stuff like this:

And this:

And...

Some are subversive:

Others are rather creative:

As an educator, Lisa provides links to analyses of the images. As an adman (and ad critic), I find this both useful and entertaining. Here's hoping the Sexual Symbolism board will continue to expand, and that people will actually learn to make and/or identify better ads because of it.

Kraft's "mixed race" snack ad is all kinds of wrong #FdAdFriday

I'll let Bradley Koch from Sociological Images take it from here:

"The problem with a marketing campaign like this is that it trivializes the experience of people with multiple racial/ethnic identities who are still often met with derision and confusion. The first ad above perpetuates the self-fulfilling prophecy about “confused” identities. As a child, I remember family members telling me that they didn’t have a problem with interracial couples but worried about how others might react to their children."

Yeah, what he said.

And Kraft just keeps going and going with the awkward and inappropriately racialized gags.









WTF?

I miss the good old days of ugly Lego

This Lego ad, from about 1981, is immensely popular on the internet circa 2012. It, and two others of the same vintage, were recently featured on the academic blog Sociological Images as examples of gender-neutral marketing of children's toys.

SI's Lisa Wade contrasts the Lego of her childhood with today's more gendered Lego sets for girls that put women back in the kitchen:

Or the beauty shop:

Granted, there are lots of different Legos for kids, but this is the one Mastermind Toys lists as "a brand new LEGO world for girls!"

I get it. I only have a son myself, but all of his little girl friends have totally bought into this whole "princess" thing — even though their parents are socially progressive yuppies like me. Kids should be able to (safely and responsibly) play however they want with whatever they have (my son has started making "spy weapons" out of cardboard tubes) so is there really a problem here?

Lisa writes, "In the circles I run in, it’s being roundly criticized for reproducing stereotypes of girls and women: domesticity, vanity, materialism, and an obsession with everything being pastel."

By the way, this controversy is a few months old already. What inspired me to weigh in was an even older Lego image, from a 1973 catalogue, that was featured on Retronaut:

This was around the time when I started playing with the iconic blocks, almost 40 years ago. Note that the craptacular ambulance built by 5-year-old "Maria" could have just as easily been built by "Mario".

And then it hit me what the real problem is.

Lego stopped being a "blank slate" imagination toy sometime in the '80s. While you can still buy plain blocks if you look hard enough, Lego is now much more about getting kids to act out branded and scripted narratives than asking them to start from scratch.

Here's an example. It's the bio of "Emma", one of the Lego Friends:

Favorite animal: Horse, Robin
Hair color: Black
Favorite color: Purple
Favorite food: Fruits and veggies. And chocolate. And cupcakes. And pizza…
I love: Designing clothes and jewelry, crafts, interior decorating, remodeling and horseback jumping.
I’m also good at: Yoga, giving makeovers, martial arts, making origami animals.
My friends think I’m sometimes: Forgetful, but I never forget to accessorize.
I want to be: A designer
Motto: “That’s SO you!”
I would never: Leave home in clothes and accessories that don’t match!
I like to hang out: At the beauty salon and my design studio.

There is literally nothing left to the imagination here.

Toys representing fictional characters with complex backstories existed when I was a kid, too, but not in Lego form. Instead they were "dolls" and "action figures".

I still have mine.

So my question is, should Lego be held to account for defining and gendering the play narrative for its dolls and action figures more than any other toy company?

To be fair, no. Parents do not have to buy these sets for their daughters, and they could well buy kitchen sets for their sons. It's just another company in the business of making money by giving kids (and parents) what they say they want.

I think the real shame here is that a classic toy that engaged children in unique imagination exercises 30 or 40 years ago has become just another product tie-in to increasingly monotonous children's entertainment. And part of this monotony is the cute girlie-girl thing.

I just miss my ugly, impractical Lego machines and houses. And I miss ads that sell nothing more than imagination. But then again, I miss being able to lose myself in a bucket of plastic bricks for an entire afternoon.

There is hope, though. In some places, Lego and its advertising still rock.

Check out this German campaign that shows retro lego geniuses. And this amazing Russian campaign that turns Lego kits into something else. And this fantastically minimalist American one from 2006.

Vodka: Liquid underwear remover #FdAdFriday

Sociological Images' Lisa Wade found this old Smirnoff ad on Retronaut. She writes, "The message, of course, is not that a woman who drinks the vodka will become politicized; instead, it is that Smirnoff will 'loosen her up' and facilitate seduction."

Ah, how times have changed...

The Daily Femme's Cherie wrote, "At first, I thought it was tied to some article critiquing the offensive and sexist advertisements of the 1950s and 60s but quickly realized this was nothing more than an advertisement in 2010."

Hmmm...

Here's one advertising blogpost we can all agree on

Via Sociological Images

I don't think that first line of copy means what you think.

Cottage cheese thighs?

"Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine," who are basically a vegan advocacy group, are hating on cheese again.

These billboards were recently erected outside Albany, New York, in dairy country.

Strangely, this is part of a campaign to have cheese removed from (or reduced in) school lunches.

"PCRM president Neal Barnard, M.D., has written a letter to members of the Albany city school board, asking the city to cut down on dairy products served in schools to help students reduce the risk of childhood obesity.
...
School lunches in Albany include an abundance of cheesy foods. The city’s high school menu, for example, includes dairy- and fat-loaded offerings such as chicken parmesan and lasagna with three different types of cheese. Cheese pizzas are available daily."

I won't defend the nutritional value of crappy school lunches. But as an ad guy, I find PCRM's ads as useless as ever. Eating too much fat makes you fat? Gee... thanks. Quite the medical breakthrough there. Targeting one food as the enemy, however, oversimplifies the issue.

Tip via Sociological Images

F'd Ad Fridays: Jello Green Grotto Salad

No, this is not an Urban Dictionary euphemism for an unspeakable sexual act. But perhaps it should be.

Via Sociological Images.

Postmodern beer advertising from Molson?

This is kind of hard to believe, but also quite remarkable.

After years of serving up ads that insinuiate that drinking their brand of beer will make you attractive to the opposite sex, Molson has decided to go meta.

The above ad, according to Sociological Images, appeared in Cosmopolitan. Just look at that sensitive, but ruggedly manly, dude with the adorable puppies and matching sweater and cap. A fine catch for any heterosexual woman! And look here! He's drinking a Molson!

While not very credible in its forced cuddliness, this ad probably went unnoticed between all the photoshopped boobs and bums that make up most of the ads in a women's mag.

But then someone caught wind of the other side of the campaign, that ran in FHM and Playboy:

Copy:

HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF WOMEN.
PRE-PROGRAMMED FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE. 

As you read this, women across America are reading something very different: an advertisement (fig. 1) scientifically formulated to enhance their perception of men who drink Molson. The ad shown below, currently running in Cosmopolitan magazine, is a perfectly tuned combination of words and images designed by trained professionals.  Women who are exposed to it experience a very positive feeling.  A feeling which they will later project directly onto you. Triggering the process is as simple as ordering a Molson Canadian (fig. 2).
…
Extravagent dinners.  Subtitled movies. Floral arrangements tied together with little pieces of hay. It gets old.  And it gets expensive, depleting funds that could go to a new set of of 20-inch rims. But thanks to the miracle of Twin Advertising Technology, you can achieve success without putting in any time or effort. So drop the bouquet and pick up a Molson Canadian…

Sociological Images editor Lisa Wade (a respected blogging ally, I should disclose) was offended by the ruse, writing "The second ad, then, portrays men as lazy, shallow jerks who are just trying to get laid (not soft and sensitive at all). And it portrays women as stupid and manipulable."

But I think Molson was on to something here. And it has to do with the nature of the trick.

There is no way any male reader of those magazines would take the "Male" ad seriously. It is a parody of the many "how to pick up girls" ads that have been gracing those kinds of publications since the '60s.

It also needs to be seen in context of the culture of pranking Millennials have grown up with. While some women might be offended by the goofy trick, others may get as much of a laugh out of it as the men.

What do you think?

UPDATE: Åsk, from Adland, tells me this campaign is old. Like, real old. (It's always good to know the internet's longest-running ad blogger!)