{"id":57296,"date":"2016-01-28T12:00:59","date_gmt":"2016-01-28T18:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=57296"},"modified":"2016-01-27T20:38:31","modified_gmt":"2016-01-28T02:38:31","slug":"shot-in-the-dark-todays-discoveries-ten-years-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=57296","title":{"rendered":"Shot In The Dark: Today’s Insights, Ten Years Ago"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ten years ago on this blog, we were talking about the trend in advertising since probably the mid-nineties; if you look at an ad featuring a family, the man is probably depicted as a bumbling doughy cretin married to an improbably gorgeous woman who is (along with the kids, apparently including any boys that haven’t gotten married and had kids yet) inevitably smarter and more capable than him.<\/p>\n

And now, the people who study and talk about these things are…well, studying and talking about it. \u00a0At least in the UK<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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What is more concerning is advertisers’ and programme makers’\u00a0depiction of men as stupid<\/a>, subservient slaves to career-juggling\u00a0supermums \u2013 a trend that runs from the buffoonery of Daddy Pig <\/a>to an endless tidal wave of cretinous TV ad dads.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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T<\/span>he Mintel research confirmed that 20 per cent of men think we are portrayed as incompetent about the house <\/a>in ads, and small wonder. In ad land \u2013 unlike the real world where men dominate computing and engineering \u2013 bumbling blokes can\u2019t even get a broadband connection and struggle with basic domestic appliances, while smarter women roll their eyes, then save the day.<\/p>\n

Overall, this means that, increasingly, men in adverts are prized for their looks, but ridiculed for their brains \u2013 which is precisely where women were in the 1950s and ’60s.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Here’s the scary part – and the part that I’ve never seen anyone write about; \u00a0advertising doesn’t happen by accident. \u00a0Even in the\u00a0Mad Men\u00a0<\/em>era, advertising was the product of rigorous audience research; it’s vastly moreso today.<\/p>\n

The “Dumb Husband” stereotype reigns supreme in ads for products where women might be reasonably assumed to be the primary consumers. \u00a0 Look at ads aimed at men; for the most part, women may well be eye candy, but the ad passes on little or no subtext about the womens’ intelligence. \u00a0 \u00a0 And yet ads aimed at women are highly likely to portray men as idiots.<\/p>\n

Given that ads – much less trends in advertising – don’t happen by accident, this suggests that these ads are dominant because\u00a0that’s what women think about their men. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

And yet society wonders why young men are choosing video games over dating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ten years ago on this blog, we were talking about the trend in advertising since probably the mid-nineties; if you look at an ad featuring a family, the man is probably depicted as a bumbling doughy cretin married to an improbably gorgeous woman who is (along with the kids, apparently including any boys that haven’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-men-and-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57296"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57298,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57296\/revisions\/57298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}