Why are Men always Idiots in Ads?

Blisterman

There are so many ads which show women to be better than men at stuff on TV. It sickens me. Of course if there are ads which show men to be better than women at stuff and women to be helpless, they'd be outraged. We need to stop this hapening.

Shrimp

Give an example of "Men always Idiots in Ads"

mike65

Its not just the ads, name a soap opera without most male characters being deeply flawed and/or buffoons. Anyway the ad-man logic says most items advertised on the telly are bought by women so appeal to them not men. As for examples er I don't watch the ads any more cos i feel I'm being got at!

Mike.

ps remember that "ask before you borrow it" campaign for Nissan Micra about 4-5 years back? Imagine if the boot had been on the other foot.

blah

That reactions lenses ad with the man repeatedly sticking his head in and out of the window to make the lenses in his sunglasses change.
The one where the man confuses the tampon with a sugar sachet.

Laguna

Blisterman wrote:

There are so many ads which show women to be better than men at stuff on TV. It sickens me. Of course if there are ads which show men to be better than women at stuff and women to be helpless, they'd be outraged. We need to stop this hapening.

Yeah it sickens me, the sex equality issue was needed for Women to be respected in the workplace/society but now it's turned on its head and Men are seen as stupid/not needed. I also hate the myth that females can multi task better than men, utter bull****.

tetsujin1979

Every one of the Mr Muscle / Daz / <insert cleaning product here> ads. Some loser can't clean the kitchen floor, so instead he uses the product, hey presto spotless floor!

Laguna

Better still, some loser can't clean the floor so the wife/girlfriend raises her eyes to heaven and shows the thick **** man how it's done

simu

It's dead annoying actually but these ads are aimed at the muppet segment of the female population and the ads must make them feel better about their pathetic little lives. Ye could always start sending complaints to the Advertising Standards Agency - why leave it as the exclusive domain of blue-rinse, ultra-conservative biddies?!

parasite

on a related note, see this bbc article : The modern rules of advertising?

Laguna

Imagine if a man rang up and complained to the advertising committee about the portrayal of males in adverts, he'd be laughed at. Men don't matter remember!

simu

No - they have to take all complaints seriously. Start here!

simu

parasite wrote:

on a related note, see this bbc article : The modern rules of advertising?

rofl

19. Professional people have strangely trivial preoccupations, e.g. a female barrister who is morbidly obsessed with finding a healthy snack bar.

Blisterman

I am going to start complaining about these ads. Someone has to do something.

whiskeyman

Women arent exactly portraited as highly intelligent either ya know.
At the end of the day, advertisers want to show people look inferior / silly until they use their product.

growler

its because the ads are targeted at a female audience !!! in order to get the target audience to properly identify with the brand that is being promoted the advertisers seek to make the audience identify with them, even better they want to make the ad memorable so the ladies will talk about it over their coffee, fag break, waxing whatever. If making a man look daft helps them achieve this, then good for them, hey if it gets the men talking about it (like you) even better, more exposure for them.

In much the same way as the Carlsberg / Fosters ads are targeted at men, feature attractive ladies and cleavage etc., pretty basic stuff.

Any advertising for any product needs its brand to be liked by the people it is being aimed at, if an ad for Cleaning Products featured grizzled housewifes with manky nails and stained clothing it wouldn't sell. If an ad for Carlsberg showed an overweight couch potatoe, farting while watching match of the day, it wouldn't help sales either.

Why would you bother complaining about this ? you must have something better to do with your time, or would you rather that all advertising didn't feature and humans at all in case it could potentially annoy someone ?

Talliesin

Blisterman wrote:

There are so many ads which show women to be better than men at stuff on TV.

It's because the people making the ads think women are stupid enough to fall for the ploy.

monkeyfudge

parasite wrote:

on a related note, see this bbc article : The modern rules of advertising?

hahaha... nice find...

23. Women never merely hop in and out of the shower, instead preferring to act out some sort of soapy Dance of the Seven Veils.

Blisterman

But if you look at the carlsberg ads. The women aren't made out to be inferior to the men in the ad.

Talliesin

Blisterman wrote:

But if you look at the carlsberg ads. The women aren't made out to be inferior to the men in the ad.

In most of them they exist primarily for the man's benefit though.

growler

Blisterman wrote:

But if you look at the carlsberg ads. The women aren't made out to be inferior to the men in the ad.

no they just happen to fit a stereotyped beautiful babe idea who also happen to be good at cooking, like football and love to serve random lads with pints while bending over suggestively in their tight fitting clothes ( if Carlsberg made TV advertising rules they would walk around naked too) ..... seems to be a perfectly equal balance of the sexes there!

alleepally

This is an interesting thread as it's been bugging me that all the road safety ads I can think of ALWAYS have a bloke as the cause of the accident.

I want to see an ad where a woman is driving along doing her makeup or brushing her hair and causing a death or some gin soaked bird driving home after a night out with the girls playing bridge or whatever.

If there were ads like that, there'd be a big stink about it.

growler

I don't know the statistics for alcohol related accidents but I would assume that the reason that men are the focus of these ads is because men (in the age bracket portrayed in the ads) are statistically more likely to be involved in such accidents that bridge playing housewives.

If you did an ad focused on women then men would identify less with the message and the effectiveness of the ads in getting the message across to the target audience would be reduced.

Pigman II

These ads really are a pain. But its not just men who are getting the short end of the stick.

It seems that every ad that is aimed at:

1) MEN has to be done thru sexual association ie "buy this product and you will attract the women around you"

2) WOMEN has to be done thru enablement ie "buy this product and you will become superior to men around you".

It's just lazy and it just shows how mentally repressed the general public are that they put up with this nonsense (and worse still buy into it!).

//

Personally I wish every ad was like the now famous GeneKelly/GolfGti ad ie cool visuals and decent music no narrative, no hard sell and no implications that "if you buy this item you will achieve X.Y.Z". It's just pure entertainment.

However on that topic I believe that things are changing now and in years to come ads will become more 'entertaiment' based rather than 'lifestyle' based. The ad men are realising that TV is dead and the internet is the new way to get their word out there. As such the ads they make will have to be more like 'mini-movies' or 'funny email-style clips' than jaded notions of sexual stereotypes in order to attract/maintain public attraction/interest.

growler

"cool ads" while they might win awards and look good, don't do a great job at selling stuff usually, they might have an impact on intangibles such as brand value, but the reason for most TV advertising and the measurement by which it's effectiveness is measured is usually sales (or other measureables such as web visits , inbound calls, etc.).

Some brands can get away with being cool and entertaining, Levi's and Guinness have a great history in doing just that but their TV advertising is usually part of a much more sophisticated marketing camapign aimed at increasing sales / market share , the ads' purpose in these cases in more to position the brand as being "cool" than to create direct sales. That's fine if you are trying to sell to a cool audience, but you can't take the same approach with products and services like, insurance, toilet cleaner, fertiliser, drink driving etc. you couldn't make this entertaining or cool , and if you tried your target audience would't get it.

Wanting TV advertising to be entertaining is great, but it's a road that leads to very blurred distinction between entertainment and adverts, more product placement would result in worse quality entertainment ultimately.

mike65

Info-tainment! :eek:

Mike.