Sunday, September 21, 2008

Ad analysis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fucxG-he2qU

I happened to catch part of this ridiculous advertisement on the TV in CafeMac , and later found the whole thing on youtube. The ad is for a color cream to be applied to grey facial hair, and these two men visit this other man in “rest home.” The rest home, is, naturally, staffed by nurse/cheerleaders, (I counted at least six standing sexily in the background). The ad is obviously directed at men, not only because it is a product for men, and the constant reference to “men,” but because of the copious amounts of scantily clad cheerleaders. It is also focused around football (the man in the rest home is a football star), which is a male-dominated sphere. I understand that cheerleaders and football go together, but it is such a blatant effort to use women to sell a product, I was disgusted.
The first the audience sees of these girls is a straight-on view of a girl who is bent over, giving the audience a cleavage shot. She quickly bounces up, puts her pom-pommed hands on her hips and perkily asks “hello, may I help you?” This is the only line any of the girls have, the rest just stand around. All the girls are very thin, wearing a short skirt and a bra-like shirt, with flowing long hair. The men are the ones who are doing, the women are very passive and supportive and flat. The three men in the advertisement, two interviewers and then the one they are interviewing, do all the talking, and appear in the foreground pretty much the whole time (except for the cleavage shot in the beginning), with out-of-focus cheerleaders in the background.
After the man gets out of the rest home due to the magic powers of the anti-graying cream, he is back on the football field, but not playing football, instead he is surrounded by a crowd of cheerleaders. At the end it says “he scores!” but again, there is no football playing going on. It says “he scores” when he is surrounded by jumping, smiling, bouncing, half-naked girls, suggesting the double-meaning of the verb “score,” and suggesting that by using this hair-coloring cream, you too can “score” with hot cheerleaders.

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