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Blog
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Deceptively Skinny
How can a company or brand draw traffic to its website? How can a retail store capture people’s attention? Maybe by doing this:
Released on March 20, 2013, American Eagle invited us to go to their website to purchase our own pair. If this is the first time you have seen or heard about this commercial, you might be wondering what is going on with those jeans and what is American Eagle doing? Thankfully, they are not actually trying to sell these “limited edition” Skinny Skinny jeans. The “jeans” featured in the commercial are in fact spray paint on the models, which American Eagle isn’t trying to sell either. I don’t think anyone wants that trend to start! Their goal with this ad campaign is to grab our attention, which I think it did. The commercial leaves viewers slightly confused and wanting to know more, and the obvious place to look for answers is American Eagle’s Website, which draws in traffic.
Here you see the two “styles” of jeans, which are indeed spray paint cans. Prior to April Fools Day, it appeared you could buy the spray paint, but it was (always) out of stock. However, you could sign up to receive an email when more paint was available, resulting in the company capturing your email address. Now when you go to their site, you can receive a coupon for $10 off REAL American Eagle jeans.
This campaign, while strategically deceptive, seems to be successful. As James Twichell explains in Lead Us into Temptation, “What advertising does and how it does it has little to do with the movement of specific goods.” This commercial was strategic in this way because it does not advertise a specific product, or even a product at all. The campaign, I feel, had more to do with American Eagle’s brand image and drawing attention to the brand. As Bob Holobinko, American Eagle’s vice president of brand marketing, said, “we just wanted to have fun, and have fun with our fans, and it was a good opportunity to kind of push it from a brand standpoint and the response has been incredible.” Taking a risk to deceive yet entertain their audience was worth it.
While I commend their creativity and think this campaign is quite clever, I wonder what the impacts are for the future of advertising, especially the lines of deceptive advertising. While entertaining, it is deceptive from the commercial to the appearance that you can indeed purchase the spray cans. However, people tend to find this acceptable because it is rather funny and ten days later:
So, do you think this kind of deceptive advertising is acceptable because of its entertaining and playful nature? Or do you think advertisements like this could lead to more issues and mistrust about the nature of advertising?
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An Ad World After All
Something bothered me today while I sat behind a desk living the life of a retail sales associate. An older woman, probably in her 80’s, came in to return a facial product she’d bought that promised to diminish the look of fine lines and wrinkles and improve her skin’s youthful appearance. She’d gone through the entire bottle and was disgruntled to discover no such miracles. Now you might be thinking, “well I would want a refund too!”… but she didn’t. What she demanded of us was that we sell her a second bottle of the same product at a discounted rate. If you’re confused, stay with me another minute.
This elderly women, with her kind eyes and deep-set laugh lines, was not just trying to play the system and get free stuff. Her reasoning behind the strange request was that she had seen an infomercial on TV for the product and whole-heartedly believed she just needed to keep trying. At first I thought it was funny that she would be so quick to believe what she had seen on TV. When I thought about it though, I’ve probably been in her shoes on more than one occasion..
Advertising is made to set an ideal, stage an experience, and even inspire people to action. Many would say that it is the consumers’ fault for buying into these ads. Yet, then you realize it’s not just a teenager with his or her first paycheck sprinting to the mall to invest in the latest advertised trend. Our culture is centered on goods, and we all consume advertising like we tune into the evening news. For example, how many of you had to think twice when you came across Google Nose BETA on Monday? Advertising isn’t always quite that outright with its tricks, but you get the point.
I think that the trickery sells. Whether an ad simply draws your attention or gets you fired up about something, we all want to think we’ve got a chance to take part in something “better.” A better experience, a better product, you name it, we want it. In his book Lead Us Into Temptation: The Triumph of American Materialism, James Twitchell attempts to debunk the idea that advertising is the culprit behind an elaborate deceptive scheme. He says, “What advertising does is add meaning to otherwise interchangeable and often unnecessary products by the dull hum of background noise.” In his book he explores why we blame advertisers, how advertisers are effective, and what about our consumer culture actually drives this success. It isn’t the products themselves but the meaning attached to them through what Twitchell calls the “rhetoric of salvation” that sends us to the checkout counters.
So you see, what this nice old woman made me realize today is that advertising is so much more than believing in a product. We’ve all learned not to judge a book by its cover, and not to believe everything we see on TV (oh, the clichés!), but next time you start to think that you’re above the allure of the ads ask yourself this. Is it what the ad is selling or what you’d be buying that’s pulling you in. As Twitchell says, “Ads are what we know about the world around us.” What will you buy today?
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Luscious Lashes?
Every woman wants to look beautiful. Being a woman, in today’s society, we have been surrounded by the wonderful world of make up since the young teenage days of stealing make up from older sisters. Women are hardwired at a young age to see makeup ads, buy makeup products, and apply! As lead cosmetic companies compete against one another for their number one demographic, young women; some cosmetic brands have been questioned on the validity of their advertisements. This could be a leading factor for why the UK’s advertising laws are becoming more and more regulated.
In the fall of 2012, many Christian Dior advertisements were banned from the UK due to Natalie Portman’s Dior “New Look” mascara advertisement, accused of using exaggerated effects portraying luscious long lashes. The Advertising Standards Authority (AVA) had one complaint; it did not come from any consumer though, it came from Dior’s rival, L’Oreal. As reported on ABC news, “Dior told the Advertising Standards Authority that Portman’s natural lashes were digitally retouched in post-production to lengthen and curve them”. You may ask, isn’t every cosmetic company out there adding some kind of digital airbrushing? This ethical problem Dior faces is something that happens quite often in the United States but is rarely called out on. The young women in America are so conditioned to false “retouches” in cosmetic advertisements, that it is expected. If we know these advertisements are outrageously exaggerated, how do so many consumers get reeled in and buy the product anyways?
Daniel Kahneman, author of “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, would have something to say about this; he would probably say the consumer decisions of these young ladies are due to the way they think, they are using System 1 thinking. System 1 thinking gives you the ability to evaluate, using a basic assessment of a situation or person. The basic assessment young women make after seeing this advertisement is the acceptance that a beautiful, well-known, actress uses this product and looks like this. System 2 thinking gives you the ability to see an error in system 1. In other words, your mind can believe when proven the photo is digitally effected, but that is not what initially comes to mind.
I personally am glad advertisement regulations are becoming more strict, and that companies and consumers are calling out false advertising. Cosmetic companies do take advantage and influence the youth with luxurious pictures, promising them with beauty. Hopefully prominent makeup brands will be ethical in the future with the product they are promoting, because women want the same luscious lashes we see in magazines!
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Advertising Pranksters FOOL Consumers
Bacon flavored mouthwash, lunchmeat DVDs, and glass-bottom airplanes?? This year’s April Fools holiday has caused an eruption of many brands’ foolish pranks going viral on social media. Some brands have even gone as far as creating spoof commercials and print ads along with their playful posts and tweets.
For example, the P&G brand, “Scope” ran an ad on Facebook promoting their new “Bacon Flavored Mouthwash.” As you can see below, the company created a video spoof and several advertisements with catch phrases such as “Taste breakfast while washing it away” to promote this fictitious new product before they came out with the final phrase, “APRIL FOOLS!”
Another brand having fun with this holiday is the movie rental company, Red Box, who is advertising “Sandwiches at Redbox.”
To keep up with their April Fools promotional efforts, Red Box noted that they will be offering 50 cents off their rentals today only by entering the promo code “APRILFOOLS.”
Virgin Atlantic Airways founder Richard Branson fooled customers in his blog featuring a new “glass-bottom airplane.” (Not for those afraid of heights!)
The main reason marketers have chosen to embrace April Fools Day pranks is to make consumers laugh and create a lasting impression. However, these advertising pranksters may have another prerogative: by playing April Fools jokes via social media, these brands have the opportunity to go viral and target the new generation of social media natives.
I think this is a smart tactic for advertisers as it shows that they can poke fun at themselves while promoting a playful culture that consumers can enjoy. Furthermore, as these spoofs go viral, they are gaining more traffic to their company webpages where actual products can be marketed and sold.
Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking Fast and Slow introduces the idea that our minds are associative machines where there are two systems at work. While advertisers may be promoting fictitious products to fool consumers, they are also taking advantage of our associative minds. By being playful and enjoying the holiday, consumers may associate these brands with being lighthearted and fun, further promoting a positive brand image.
All in all, these April Fools pranksters have the right idea: using humor in advertising and focusing on building relationships with consumers should lead to a more positive brand image and (hopefully) increasing sales!
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You’re So Dead
So you’re dead, now what? Well, by signing up with LivesOn, an app developed as a new artificial intelligence undertaking, your tweets will not only be immortalized, but will actively continue from beyond the grave. LivesOn advertises itself as “your social afterlife,” and they strive to be just that. With just a few simple steps, you can sign yourself over to the world wide web for all eternity, or, at least until Twitter is replaced by the next advancement in social technology.
At its core, LivesOn is an intriguing idea; it’s something that has crossed the minds of many, “what happens to my social networks when I die?” Well, by creating a new algorithm, LivesOn has provided an answer. While still in this plane of existence, members sign up for a new Twitter provided by LivesOn. After the account is created, users then periodically will update their likes, dislikes, favorite celebrities and other information relevant to the post-mortem tweets. Users can even preview the service and see examples of what their future account will say, and are able to edit accordingly. The service, which has been developed by Dave Bedwood, in conjunction with the Queen Mary University in London, then uses an algorithm, one that is still shrouded in mystery, to continue the social networking following death. The algorithm in question will then, and it is still unclear how this happens, continues updating from your profile in occurrence with your pre-chosen likes and dislikes. None of this happens however, until your LivesOn executor, who you choose, gives his or her approval for the service to begin.
However, as impressive as this sounds, one has to wonder how much of this is actually possible. Will the account actually be able to successfully replicate a human being? Or will, in a more likely scenario, the account just occasionally retweet a favorited celebrity or celebrated television show or movie? Of course, this is problematic in itself, do people still want to be seeing a deceased loved one continue to fawn over their celebrity of choice, likely long after the celebrities fame has passed? Also, while to some, the idea of continuing tweeting following death may be fascinating, others find it less than appealing. In reality, how easy could it be to grieve if you’re still seeing the individual in question on your newsfeed every day still complaining about their lives as if they were still living them? And this begs another question, what happens to your account after twitter has long-been forgotten? Do you just continue tweeting about Justin Bieber to an empty newsfeed for all of eternity?
While the creator himself has said that the intended audience will probably be a niche market, the bandwagon has already begun for LivesOn. It seems that only time will tell as to exactly how well this will work out in the future, but unfortunately, it will require a few members of the living to depart before we’ll ever be able to tell.
– Jay Reilly
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Where’s the block in sunblock?
As the warmer seasons are rapidly approaching, we are about to be lavished with sunscreen advertisements. This is their time to shine! The question we have to ask ourselves is why are people who are applying sunscreen still being diagnosed or even dying from skin cancer? Is what we are buying as a preventative really as effective as marketers say they are, or do they not really care about our wellbeing?
According to the American Cancer Society, more than 2 million people are diagnosed each year with skin cancer. Sunscreen is supposed to elicit a medical benefit for us. We confidently go on vacation to the beach and enjoy outdoor activities with the sunscreen they have purchased. Unfortunately, the truth is, it may not make a difference if we even put it on. Some sunscreen brands are being choked full of ingredients that do not even protect against UVA, the leading cause of skin cancer.
CBS News reported that now FDA regulations state, “if a brand claims to be water-resistant, they must accompany the statement with the amount of time you have per SPF level before reapplying.” Naturally, this is a huge hit to sunscreen marketers. They are being forced into being more ethical in selling their products.
Surprisingly or not, there is a lot of fabrication in the terms being used, such as: “waterproof” and “full spectrum.” The question I have is, if sunscreen marketers were really producing their product with the health of their consumers in mind, wouldn’t they be educating us on how their product will actually protect us? Instead, they are frivolously throwing labels on the bottles that make us feel safe.
The truth of the matter is, we need protection from UV Rays and apparently sunscreen products are SPF-based. James B. Twitchell states in his book “Lead Us Into Temptation” that we have “no false needs…we have not been duped by hegemonic brainwashing capitalists into desiring things we don’t need.” We need sunscreen! We just need to be aware that marketers know that we do. Sunscreen brands will go to extremes to get us to buy their product to make a profit, even if it gives some customers a fatal result. Although this selfish marketing is unethical, it is just a way of getting us to buy their product.
So as beach weather is approaching, the next time you are browsing down the aisle for some sun protection, make sure you know you are buying the product that will be most effective. The FDA has released safety tips for picking the right one when you are trying to find a suitable sunscreen to pack in your beach bag!
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