Advertising for the sexes..

The issue of male and female differences 'is much more fundamental than the usual myopic media one about where the ads appear: it's about recognizing women [and men's] different approach' (Financial Times, June 29, 2001)

Today's lecture entailed looking at the gender differences in advertising and how some adverts appeal more relevantly to women than to men and vice versa. Afetr being shown a slide show consisting of a variety of printed advertisements we were asked which one stuck in our mind the most and what ones we remembered. The females in the class tended to remember the adverts that involved a celebrity whereas the more humerous advert (involving a comical guinea pig) proved more relevant to the males. This experiment poses many questions about advertising for the sexes and the contrast between the two. This concept is invaluable to marketers and advertisers as they are able to target their market effectively and produce an advert which will have maximum impact through being relevantly appealing.

The advert to the right invovles a female product which is clearly targeted to a female audience. The use of sensual colours which relate to the colours on the bottle of the perfume is appealing to the visual sense;this is enhanced further through the inclusion of the celebrity Beyonce Knowles. The product is clearly shown in the foreground accompanied with the bold 'true star GOLD' title which indicates exaclty what the product is and how it looks. What is interesting is that the perfume advert does not address the sense of smell which is paramount to the success of a perfume.

In contrast to a typically female advert, the advert to the left could be described as 'typically male'. Rather than being appealing, the advert has taken a humerous approach which would be relevant to the male mind-set. The advert is aiming to advertise online bingo to the male sex, an area which is largely dominated by female directed comapanies such as Foxy Bingo. In order to have maximum impact the advert created is overtly funny with a man breast feeding a baby with the tag line 'Where have all the women gone?'.

With gender difference in mind, we are now comtemplating what our personal perception experiment would be and which variables we would test according to perception theories from theorist such as Solomon et al or the black box model.