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.

Playboy's late-life identity crisis

Poor old Playboy doesn't know what to be in the 21st Century.

Founded as somewhat of a countercultural icon for affluent and educated men almost 60 years ago, it played an important (if one-sided) part in the Sexual Revolution and spoke out against McCarthyism. In the '60s, it matured into a brand for the wannabe martini set. But by the '70s, hardcore pornography took away its more horny audiences as it maintained its relevance through top-notch interviews and celebrity pictorials. In the '80s, it was all about video.

Now, here we are in the digital age. Pictures of naked women are abundant and free. So is interesting and subversive content. So what's left for Playboy?

I think their biggest problem is that sex, culture and politics are no longer a man's exclusive domain. Playboy will never be able to shake its basically sexist brand character, and who wants to be associated with that?

The douchebag market, that's who. Young men who read Maxim and wear Axe.

To compete with Maxim, Playboy launched The Smoking Jacket, an online ladmag that covers culture, entertainment and boobies with a less overtly-pornographic, teasing style. Fellow adblogger Steve Hall, from Adrants, is one of the contributors. (He pens a "sexy ads of the week" column.)

And Axe?

Check out this Playboy shower gel ad by DDB Paris:



Yeah, it's a shitty ad. It's also extremely creepy. Can you imagine how a young woman would feel if a strange man, alone with her in the elevator, hit the emergency button? She'd be expecting the worst.

I don't really know if Playboy has a future as a serious brand. It could be that, in a few years, it will only survive as a logo worn ironically (or desperately) by attention-seeking young women.

What do you think?

Creepy 1959 voyeur mag encourages stalking, collecting "pretty girls"

How sleazy could this 1959 ladmag really be? That was a time of wholesomeness and chaste respect for womanhood, right?

In this scanned full issue at Retronaut, you can learn the basics of treating women like trashy conquests, such as:

And:

But don't worry, guys. It's all a big game to those girls. They want it.

See the full issue for a tour-de-force of mid-century repressed male fetishes, including easy foreign gals, farmers' daughters, "the kitten type", big bottoms and Zsa Zsa Gabor.

PETA sexploitation ads: Coming on a fire truck near you?

Add caption

Only if you live in Baltimore.

According to AdFreak, a Baltimore city councillor has proposed selling ad space on city vehicles to add an new revenue stream. PETA has already mocked up their own custom ad for the occasion, claiming that seeing a half-naked woman and a bad pun "will drive Baltimore residents to PETA's heart-healthy vegan recipes that will keep them firing on all cylinders."

Yeah, whatever.

This is how they sell video games in Japan now

Ummmm....

I don't think you need to speak Japanese to get the overal message of this Sega promotional video, starring bikini model Yukie Kawamura. She plays the popular video game Super Monkey Ball on the new PS Vita platform. (Apparently this is a big deal.) During the play, she balances a bubble in her cleavage, is visited by a giant monkey mascot, and does contortions for the amusement of the all-male crew.



There is also a shorter vid, which shows new "adult" features of the game.

Gamma Squad's Nathan Birch describes it thusly:

"Sega’s Super Monkey Ball series is about cute cartoon moneys rolling around in hamster balls collecting bananas. It’s about as kid-friendly as a series can get, so of course Sega, master of understanding what makes its own franchises work, has added “adult” levels to the upcoming PS Vita version of Monkey Ball. 

Yup, in these levels the normal floor textures have been replaced by pictures of Japanese bikini model Yukie Kawamura, whose protruding breasts act as obstacles for your adorable hamster ball monkeys. So yeah, basically some burnt out developer at Sega, depressed at being forced to work on yet another Monkey Ball game, just decided to dump the contents of his softcore porn file into the game instead of designing textures."

"Adult"? ...right. It's all about attracting more adolescent boys and turning them into men who fantasize about weird shit like this:

Wait... what?

Coincidentally, "sega" is Italian slang for male masturbation (from the verb "segare", "to saw")...

Russian bank's weird bimbophobic ad #FdAdFriday

"Bimbophobia" is something I just made up. It's the fear and loathing many people feel for the Hiltons, Kardashians and Stoddens of the world.

It is essentially sexist in its nature, seeing rich and vain women as monumentally stupid (which a few may well be) but it also smells a bit like class conflict.

That said, the ad is mildly funny and surprisingly restrained by Russian ad standards.



Via Adrants

Radio station insults men by calling them women #FdAdFriday

I wonder if this kind of shit will ever end.

This "joke" was posted on the Facebook wall of Chez 106, an Ottawa radio station that plays classic rock.

You see, Ottawa has a hockey rivalry with Toronto, which leads to this kind of trash talk. Which can be fun, as long as you don't go trashing half the human species while you're at it.

Calling men "women" as an insult is probably as old as the hills. Kids still use it in the playground, I'm sure. But that doesn't make it OK. And the menstrual reference, often perceived as a women's "weakness" by assholes, is also a dick move.

Okay, my rant is done. I'll let Iggy Pop have the last word:

Via Slutwalk Toronto

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...

Unhappy marriage? Have you tried vulva bleaching?

There's no more... umm.. delicate way to say it.

This appalling ad from India takes the old-school fear mongering of women over vaginal odour and adds India's bizarre obsession with skin-whitening products to create a veritable symphony of wrong:



From the YouTube link:

"Designed to address the problems women face in their private parts, Clean and Dry Intimate Wash offers protection, fairness and freshness. To be used while showering, its special pH-balanced formula cleans and protects the affected area, and even makes the skin fairer. Life for women will now be fresher, cleaner, fairer!"

"Do you ever feel, you know, not so bleached?"

 Jezebel sums up the international reaction to this appalling product and ad quite nicely:

"...this product—which, in addition to just being fucking insane, brings up painful issues about the hierarchy of skin tone within the Indian community. As if it isn't bad enough that darker-skinned people are encouraged to stay out of the sun and invest in skin-bleaching products like Fair & Lovely, and that white actresses are being imported to play Indian people in Bollywood movies, now everyone has to be insecure about the fact that their vaginas happen to be the color that vaginas are??? Splendid! God, I was just saying the other day that my misogyny didn't have enough racism in it."

You tell 'em, sister!

Barbie 2012

Cross-posted at Sociological Images

Barbie is running for President of The United States of America... again.

The candidate as Euro-American.

She even has a campaign Tumblr. But what is her platform?

Okay, so she's not taking any strong stands on the GOP's War on Women's reproductive rights. But she did come up with a totally awesome nickname for her campaign ("Glam-paign"). 

Apparently, however, candidate Barbie will do something no other candidate can: she will bridge the racial divide in America by morphing herself into four different ethnicities!

The candidate as African American, Asian American and Latina(?) American.

Yes, I get that this is a toy. And the Miss-America-style platitudes are to be expected from a company that wants to sell to both sides of the political divide. But it's a shame that girls don't get a chance to see that women really can change the world.

This week, Malawi swore in Southern Africa's first female head of a country. She wasn't elected as such, but as Vice President took the position after President Bingu wa Mutharika died in office. (A scenario that could have happened with Sarah Palin, had John McCain won the Presidency.)

Other women currently heading states and countries are:

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf - President of Liberia
Doris Leuthard, Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, Simonetta Sommaruga - Members of the Swiss Federal Council, Switzerland
Pratibha Patil - President of India
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner - President of Argentina
Dalia Grybauskaitė - President of Lithuania
Laura Chinchilla - President of Costa Rica
Dilma Rousseff - President of Brazil
Atifete Jahjaga - President of Kosovo
Monique Ohsan Bellepeau - Acting President of Mauritius
Slavica Đukić Dejanović - Acting President of Serbia

And:

Angela Merkel – Chancellor of Germany
Julia Gillard - PM of Australia
Yingluck Shinawatra – PM of Thailand
Helle Thorning-Schmidt – PM of Denmark
Portia Simpson-Miller – PM of Jamaica
Kamla Persad-Bissessar – PM of Trinidad and Tobago
Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir – PM of Iceland (Appointed)
Hasina Wazed – PM of Bangladesh 

The United States has yet to elect a woman to the position. And while Canada has had two appointed female Vice-Regents, we have yet to elect a woman to the Prime Minister's Office. (Kim Campbell was nominated for the position directly by her party.)

So perhaps it's time for Barbie, who has been in every federal election since 1992, to campaign a little harder. Or for North American countries to catch up with the rest of the world and nominate and elect a woman of substance who isn't seen as just "another Barbie".

Guitars as women as sex toys?

There's always been a strong connection between sex and rock 'n' roll (the latter term, itself a euphemism for sex), and the feminine shape of guitars has always been acknowledged.

But this is still weird as hell.

Interestingly, these ads for Hendrix Studios in Russia (a rehearsal studio) was created by two women:  Anna Gladkova and Olga Azukina of Moscow's Twiga agency.

Somehow, that fact changes the way I look at the ads. They're not so much about treating women as sex objects (via guitar lust); they're showing men as kind of pathetic and desperate.

And then there's this:



Via Ads of the World

"We are not men... we are not an advertising agency"

Remember that horrible "manly" Turkish shampoo ad with Hitler in it?

Employees of a Turkish ad agency sure do. And they hate what it has done to the reputation of their country, and their industry.

So they decided to do what any red-blooded Turkish men would do to fight back: they got in drag.

Adland reports that Farkyeri issued this statement:

“We are not men… 

We, as a local advertising agency in Turkey, hereby condemn the unfortunate commercial produced in March 2012 by an advertising agency from our country for a shampoo brand in our country by using the images of a speech delivered by Adolf Hitler. 

From a humanistic perspective, it is shameful to use as a commercial material the tragedy of a genocide that caused the death of millions of innocent people and an international problem of gender apartheid which results in oppression and killing of millions of people. In terms of creativeness, it is simply cheapness and taking the easy way out. We are first human and then advertising agency. We never accept any concession on our humanity for the work we do. We refer those who carried out this cheapness to the conscience of the public. We believe that the advertisers and consumers in our country will give them the best answer. 

The belief of any publicity is good publicity can be argued, but there is no question about the good and bad people. This is clearly an attempt to make a commercial profit on the grief of millions of people. This is a shameful human weakness. And this is unfortunately done by an advertising agency in this country. 

As a matter of fact, if manhood is racism and gender apartheid… if it is to use grief of millions of oppressed and massacred innocent people as a commercial material, we are not men! If those who prepared this are advertiser and if this is called advertising, we are not an advertising agency! 

Farkyeri"

The above image is also the landing page of their web site.

And now there's a video, too:



Wonderful way to self-promote while making a real statement. (Coincidentally, the season opener of Mad Men had Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce do something remarkably similar, but against Y&R's racism.)

Hitler employed as shampoo pitchman

A bizarre story from The Drum. This Turkish shampoo brand has decided not only to be unforgivably sexist, but to Godwin up their ad as well:

"Beneath the images of the Nazi leader the firm typed the message 'If you are not wearing a woman’s dress, you should not use her shampoo either.' 

The piece then concludes: 'Here it is, a real men’s shampoo, Biomen.'"

So, Hitler is a "real man"?

Turkey was neutral for most of the Second World War, sheltering Jewish refugees from Europe.

Abraham H. Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League's National Director, issued this statement:

“This video is just the latest example of the use of Holocaust imagery in some countries to sell commercial products, which has contributed to the trivialization of and desensitization to the unparalleled horrors of the Holocaust. There can never be any justifiable purpose for using the images of Hitler, Nazis or any other depiction of the Nazi killing machine to sell products or services.”

Of course we've seen the Nazi leader in ads before. But usually as a symbol of evil, not as a "macho" pitchman.

The complete Axe guide to horrible female stereotypes

Earlier this week, I shared the lameness that was Axe's "trick the smart girl into boning you" ad.

What bad body wash and low self esteem will get you.

Today, Adrants shared the rest of the series of Axe ads based on female stereotypes:









Notice something strange about the series as a whole? While the "Brainy Girl" ad was about the douchey Axeman manipulating his date into thinking he cared about her cultural interests, it seems the theme of the ads was supposed to be about long-suffering boyfriends who will do anything for sex.

To recap:

Sporty Girls are turned on by violently competitive jerks.
Flirty Girls dig threesomes with meek men.
High Maintenance Girls want a total doormat.
Party Girls want guys who do lots of really hard stimulant drugs.

And apparently, Brainy Girls like great big frauds.

What's strange is that the "Brainy Girl" is the only one who isn't a completely inconsiderate bitch. Why does she deserve an Axe douche for a boyfriend?

'Tis one of the great mysteries of advertising.

How can a woman make more than a man in the same career?

Just ask Sasha Grey:





This PSA from Belgium's Equal Pay Day movement is an interesting one. The message, "Porn is about the only way for women to make more than men" highlights the problem of women being valued more for the sexual pleasure they can give to men (either directly or voyeuristically) than for non-sexualized accomplishments.

From the cause site:

On average, women still earn 22% less than men. One of the main reasons this issue still exists is that too often young women make career choices led by general expectations. Equal Pay Day however wants to motivate them to think about these expectations, and not just follow them blindly. Sasha Grey wants to as well, and to help spark the debate, she's agreed to share the story about her short but demanding career in adult entertainment.

At the same time, Ms. Grey is an unashamed and defiantly un-regretful case study in life after porn. She has managed to cross over, perhaps more than any hard core female "adult" performer before her, even though her reputation occasionally gets in the way of her trying to be an average citizen.

Does her refusal to vilify the industry that is being used as the extreme example of sexist attitudes in the workplace help or hinder the message?

Via Illegal Advertising

Every family's worst nightmare: Dads in briefs

You know, as a "needs to get in shape" middle-aged man, I have no problem whatsoever with the double standards in what would be considered ageism, sexism and body shaming if this was an ad about women.

It's just one of those times when we need to accept the payback.

Flash only (for now):



Ad by Del Campo Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi, Beunos Aires

Via Creativity Online

Putting the sexy back in philosophy class #FdAdFriday

Jezebel featured this odd bit of promotion that Philosophy Prof Vincent Hendricks did for his class at the University of Copenhagen:

Yes, those are sexy schoolgirls behind him.

Apparently, the immensely-modest Dr.Hendricks did the shoot for the Danish ladmag Connery when they chose him as their "Man of The Month".  And he thought it was not only entirely professional to imply that he is getting lots of female student ass, but also felt that his actual female students would enjoy being characterized this way.

I do, however, give the man bonus points for out-creeping one of the creepiest ads of 2011, that award-winning Brazilian KIA pedo travesty that caused shitstorms all the way to Korea.

If the timelines were reversed, I would have assumed he actually inspired the ad:

After raising predictable outrage, Dr. Hendricks issued this apology:

"To the Philosophical Community 

Some recent pictures on my website have caused some debate. The intention was that the pictures, as a cover on a forthcoming magazine, might be used to view logic from a somewhat humorous and untraditional perspective appealing to larger audience which the magazine covers. However it had the opposite effect offending various parties in the philosophical community. I truly apologize for this and I stand completely corrected. I have removed the pictures from the website."

 Yeah, whatever.

Ad hackers play into admen's hands #FdAdFriday

The defacement of public advertising can be brilliant and entertaining, as in the recent Mad Men teaser poster hacks in NYC. And then there's this:

The Drum writes:

Peter Davis, executive creative director of [Powownow agency] gyro Manchester, commented: “Our new campaign for Powwownow has been made to court with controversy, so we’re pleased to see it’s already doing just that. If our character is already causing widespread offence then many people won’t like some of the things we have planned for him - this is only the beginning! We all have preconceptions about free services – ‘if it’s free, it must be bad!’ To confront this idea, we’ve created an obnoxious fictional businessman that spends money lavishly and dislikes anything that’s free – especially Powwownow. Our "more sense than money" campaign drives the idea that actually, you don’t have to pay a premium to get a great quality service.”

In Plain English: the guy in the ads is supposed to be an asshole and the copy is supposed to piss you off.

So, whoever got enraged enough to risk arrest and fine by stating the obvious on this ad actually did the advertiser a tremendous favour. I wouldn't be surprised if future campaigns of this kind actually hire people to deface the ads. (Maybe that's what's happening with the Mad Men meme - you never know.)

Being an ironic asshole in your advertising, by the way, has a history of backfiring. Remember the Groupon dogpile during last year's Super Bowl? People are just not that clever.

Are books more interesting than women? #FdAdFriday

BoingBoing posted this piece of over-the-top vintage sexism.

Given the nature of the "literature," I wonder why they didn't address the additional point that the book will "stick together" with you after you're finished.

F'd Ad Fridays: The breast outdoor outfitter in Ukraine

No, this isn't a post about FEMEN. But it does provide some context for why they started using their breasts as their primary medium of protest. Because if these ads for outdoor outfitter Go Free are any indication, consumers there are even more boob-obsessed than their Western counterparts.



The first ad, apparently for helmets, was featured on Copyranter this morning. I found two more on their YouTube channel.