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8 Posts tagged with the advertising tag
One of the 12-year-old junior high girls I work with at church has 27 tubes of lip gloss—and counting.
I am not kidding. She had everything from Bonnie Bell to Bath and Body Works and even Sephora in her make-up case. I know this because a few months ago she proudly, almost lovingly, laid each tube out on a table and said, "See? I was serious. I love this stuff."
She's not alone.
From 2007 to 2009, the percentage of girls 8 to 12 who use lipstick (and/or gloss) rose from 10% to 15%, according to the NDP Group, a consumer research company. And the percentage of girls who use mascara and eyeliner nearly doubled, from 10% to 18%.
It makes me remember when I was 16 and got scolded by an older woman at church for wearing eye makeup. "You're a naughty girl," she said, her index finger wagging wildly at me. Parents and authority figures today, however, seem to be choosing their battles, and if a tween or young teen wants to wear makeup, a mother is more likely to purchase it for her. In fact, 66% of tween girls polled by NPD said a family member or adult friend had given them makeup.
Maybe these tweens feel they must wear makeup. Stacy Malkan, author of Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry told The New York Times, "There's relentless marketing pressure on young girls to look older. Not just from magazines and TV ads, but from shows like 90210. Those kids are supposed to be in 10th and 11th grade, but they look 25."
Indeed.
How do you feel? Is it appropriate for a tween to wear eyeliner, mascara and lip gloss?
Heard any of today's "news of the weird" yet? Before I continue, I'll let you get a cup of coffee. You might need it in order to ponder the following.
(pause)
Recently as I was thumbing through a magazine, I saw a picture of a cat's litter box immediately following an article on the entertainment industry. I thought, Does not compute, as I took another sip of coffee. My second thought was, Um, is that little lump of something in the box smiling and waving at me? (At which point I wondered if I'd had too much caffeine.)
Turns out the lump's name is "Clumpy." There's even a cat litter website devoted to chronicling his (its?) "adventures." Clumpy's foil is named "Crumbly"—but that blob isn't nearly as happy and didn't even attempt to smile at me.
All I could think about on my way to work was the fact some advertising agency had probably done market research to see how best to sell cat litter. They decided that creating a fantasy world for a happy litter box clod is the best and most necessary way to reach the American public.
Seriously? Is our culture so accustomed to amusing YouTube videos, slick pictures, and screen time with cheerful little characters that even cats' poop has to be animated in order to sell a product?
I think I do need more coffee. Excuse me …
Kids. When I'm not yellin' at 'em to get off my lawn (waving my cane in their general direction), I'm tellin' 'em to not slouch so much, or to get those plumb earbuds out of their ears or put on a belt so their pants don't fall to their knees. Why can't kids be more like they were back in my day, I ask myself, when they wore parachute pants and used gallons of hairspray on their mullets and listened to music the way it was meant to be listened to—on a boombox three millimeters from your ear?
Turns out, though, today's youth may be more on their game than I give them credit for.
According to a story by William Higham in Adweek.com (which we talked about in this week's Culture Clips), teens are more conservative—financially and socially—than their baby boomer forebears. Drinking, smoking and drug use among youth are all falling. More than 75% of teens say that family is "the most important thing in their lives," and more than half say that "living by high moral standards" is their No. 1 priority.
Maybe some could teach their parents a thing or two. The same story says that drug use among folks in their 50s is soaring (it's gone up more than 70% since 2002), and more 50-somethings use marijuana than people in any other age group.
Now, Higham pieced all this together because he believes that advertisers should take note and change with the times. Kids today might really be interested in things like "insurance and pensions," while oldsters might be more prone to commercials that focus on staying hip and edgy and—well, young.
Now, I'm not sure if I completely believe all the conclusions Higham outlines. But when I watch advertising geared specifically toward Boomers—filled as the ads are with gray-haired rock bands, wrinkled surfers and exhortations to stay forever young and revolutionary—I kinda wonder whether he has a point.
And, if Higham's right, we might be in for a very interesting decade: What happens if trying to stay "hip" ironically marks you as being old and out of touch? Will youth proclaim once again that "you can't trust anyone over 30," adding, "because they're too stoned to make much sense"? Are we finding ourselves in an age in which folks, when they (finally) grow up, aspire to be more like … their children? Or was that what got us into this situation in the first place?
So, what's the most enticing sound you can think of? Birds singing? The engine of a Ferrari 458 Italia? Rain spattering on your window?
How about … a buzzing cell phone?
According to neuromarketing research expert Martin Lindstrom, we love the soft hum of a silenced cell phone—or, at the very least, we can't ignore it. And that means Madison Avenue won't be ignoring it for long, either.
According to a story on Time.com, about 83% of all advertisements focus, primarily, on visuals to entice us to buy something or go somewhere. Oh, sure, we hear waves crash and seabirds call in certain beer commercials, or the sound of a sizzling steak for a restaurant chain or two. But really, when was the last time you heard sound used as a top-notch subliminal selling point for, say, window cleaner?
But the sounds we hear can be just as influential, if not more so, than the things we see. And there are certain sounds we're programmed, one way or another, to respond to.
The sound of laughing babies blew the doors off every other auditory cue in Lindstrom's arsenal: We listen to a baby laugh, and we can't help but pay attention. And that makes sense on a whole host of levels
The buzzing cell phone, next on Lindstrom's list, was far more intriguing. While I think we're probably genetically programmed to pay attention to whatever sounds babies make (we, after all, have to take care of them, so it'd make just good biological sense that the sounds they make would trigger certain reactions in us), the cell phone couldn't be a pre-programmed relic from earlier times. This is new neural wiring for us: The sound, to our modern ears, may signal connectivity and community. We hear the phone and we think, "Ah, someone wants to talk with me! And I might even want to talk with them, too!" Lindstrom's theory is that our auditory programming is now so tuned in to the phone buzz that, should we hear it during a fast-food ad, we'll be more likely to crave a double cheeseburger.
In fact, a double cheeseburger sounds good right about now. But I digress.
Lindstrom found the third most impossible-to-ignore sound was the fluttery shoosh of an ATM machine doling out cash—which perhaps says something about the premium we place on money. Fourth was the sound of a steak sizzling on a grill. No word as to whether vegans found the sizzle equally enticing.
With Madison Avenue always looking for new ways to sell us things we don't really need, we can expect to hear lots more of these sounds in our future. Lindstrom, frankly, seems a bit surprised that advertisers have largely downplayed our eardrums thus far.
To that, I have two words of explanation for Mr. Lindstrom: mute button.
We all know that today's media, in its many forms, can impact society. That's what the whole premise of advertising is based on, after all. Well, now a coalition of atheist groups is hoping that advertising will help them in their own cause. They'll soon be posting a month-long run of ads in New York City's busy subway stations that feature a picture of a blue sky and wispy clouds, sporting the question: "A million New Yorkers are good without God. Are you?"
Now, putting aside the debatable "good without God" premise, these ads only leave me with one head-scratching thought: What is the burr in these guys' saddles? Why do they find it important to denigrate something they don't even believe exists? I mean, I can't imagine paying gazillions of bucks to make sure the world knows I have doubts about the tooth fairy.
Surely they don't hope to change the minds of churchgoers. Atheists already think that believers are a bunch of misled idiots, right? So why bother? On top of that, the most recent American Religious Identification Survey reported that religion is actually losing ground in the U.S. So it's not like some rising tide of God-fearers is putting a crimp on the lifestyles of the rich and faithless.
On the other hand, the organizers—euphemistically titled the Big Apple Coalition of Reason—say this isn't an anti-religious campaign. Christians, therefore, needn't get irked. The ads are more of a "get the gang together" sort of thing. Which still doesn't make a whole lot of sense. They get all these like-minded irreligionists to come together and ... what? Share a collective "we don't believe" high five? Or maybe exchange nonbeliever decoder rings over milk and cookies?
I'm not sure. But methinks it sure doth sound like a lot of effort to rally around not believing in something they're absolutely convinced was never real to begin with.
Back in August, we reported in "Culture Clips" that Mariah Carey's new album would feature a 34-page advertorial insert co-sponsored by Elle magazine. Well, we've now reviewed Mariah's latest (check it out here) and had a chance to look at the enhanced liner notes included with the album, Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel.
Actually, mini-magazine is more like it. Mariah's partnership with Elle takes product placement to a whole new level.
The CD booklet is designed like a miniature version of Elle magazine, complete with cover blurbs, ad pages and departments blending the mag's regular features with all things Mariah. A music section offers thumbnail descriptions of all her albums. On the fashion front, we learn about the styles Mariah favors, from boots to dresses to coats to shoes. Want to mimic Mimi's face? A spread on Mariah's makeup and perfume choices makes it possible. A movie page lists the singer's all-time favorite films and advertises her upcoming role in the film Precious. And then we get several pages of interviews and sound bites about Mariah's marriage to actor/singer Nick Cannon.
All in all, it's a tour de force mash-up of music and marketing, with Mariah as the star of her own private version of Elle magazine.
Personally, I react to this in two different ways. On one hand, it's hardly subtle. This isn't subliminal messaging, like a movie character using a certain computer with a large glowing fruit on the front, or the judges on American Idol conspicuously consuming a certain soft drink.
On the other, the blending of these media (music with a magazine ... and plenty of products) amplifies two problematic trends in our culture, namely rampant consumerism and our fascination with celebrities. Want to look and smell like Mariah? Or watch her favorite movie? Or vacation where she supposedly does (the Bahamas, Aspen, Italy and Disney World)? This little booklet isn't shy about telling you how you can imitate her supposedly charmed life.
Do you find such blatant product placement annoying? Or is it not that big a deal? One thing's for sure: I think we can expect ever-more elaborate advertising partnerships between pop culture's superstars with the brands they (supposedly) love ... all designed to entice you to part with your hard-earned bucks.
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