Hot on the heels of the pummeling of Bud Light over choosing a transgender spokesminstrel, this ad campaign claiming the history of beer for feminism, has surfaced:
Corporate virtue-signaling? Sure.
But that’s not the part that annoys me the most.
The worst part is what this says about women in America today.
Money Where Their Mouth Is: Advertisers are, in normal times, perhaps the ultimate practitioners of the free market. They, their campaigns, and their agencies and departments rise and fall on how successfully they gauge the sentiments of their audiences.
For example, the ad agency that conceived of a “Clydesdale” campaign for a certain brand of beer managed to do a superlative job of gauging the effect that ad would have on the ad-viewing audience – not only selling lots of beer, but creating perhaps America’s foremost celebrity draft horse team.
Likewise, the ad agency that thought a group of cute frogs croaking the name of the beer into the dark would sell beer – and they were right.
Good ad agencies, execs and campaigns “read” society correctly.
So – what are they reading?
Impressions: It’s not a big stretch – ads are aimed at the people who buy products.
And within families, households and communities, that varies by what’s being sold.
So think about products where the primary buy/don’t buy decision is men. Classic example – firearms. Ads for firearms portray men as sober, decisive, serious people. That’s how gun owners see themselves and their paths. An ad agency that portrayed their male customers as doughy comic relief would probably have a hard time getting their contract renewed, since the brand’s sales would probably tank. By the way – the women portrayed are also solid, serious people, as well.
Home improvement brands, like hardware stores, tend to take men fairly seriously as well
Beer? Well, the portrayal of men in beer ads is often tongue-in-cheek…:
…and the women portrayed with them tend to be – as the shrieking harpy in the Miller ad notes – somewhat idealized:
In a bikini? Sometimes. The purple middy top is close, in its own way.
But women are portrayed as idealized as a rule. Young, pretty, not stupid – it’s affectionate.
So – when the target audience is women, what then?
Complete contempt, that’s what. The males – especially fathers and boyfriends – in commercials these days wish they were portrayed with the sensitivity of a hot chick in a bikini (although the guy narrating this video gets the message all wrong):
The point being, our ads tell us something about how advertisers (who get paid to get attitudes right) see how we see each other. And from the ads – and the crushing preponderance of them by volume – we learn:
- Men, at least in the last 30-40 years, have affectionate respect for women, while celebrating attraction
- Women think men are hopeless incompetents.
And this has been going on for well over a decade.
So is it any wonder the young fellas of GenZ are forsaking the mating game for video games and pr0n?
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