Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Description of Topic:
The author sets out to study the lack of representation of the lesbian community in a consumer culture that is largely based on heterosexuality and heterosexual norms. The article concludes that since lesbians have not been targeted as a separate consumer group they essentially have a different relation to consumerism. It carefully looks at the relation between lesbians and consumer culture, current representations of lesbianism and consumption in media, and the role of the lesbian spectator as a consuming subject. Clark looks at economics, homophobia, and heterosexism as reasons why the lesbian community hasn’t been targeted and has been inadequately represented. She examines fashion layouts from Elleand Mirabella as well as mail-order catalogues such as J. Crew to explain how advertisers are capitalizing on a dual market strategy known as “gay window advertising” which speaks indirectly to the lesbian consumer market without alienating heterosexual consumers.
Summary of Key Points:
Clark discusses how lesbians have not been targeted for several historical reasons. Initially, lesbians have not been attractive to advertisers because they are not economically powerful. Since lesbians represent all races, ethnicities, income levels, and ages they are not easily identifiable as a social group, which also creates a problem for advertisers used to separating these categories. Advertisers also fear that the product will be associated with homosexuality and heterosexual consumers will not buy it, thus many companies feel it’s too risky. This is why advertisers have come up with the dual market strategy referred to as “gay window advertising.” These ads avoid explicit references to heterosexuality or homosexuality and models often emit an androgynous style which allows for the onlooker to perceive the ad however they want. Lesbians can read into the ad’s elements which may be representations of the gay and lesbian culture as they see fit. If the ad is successful, heterosexual consumers don’t notice the subtexts, and advertisers are able to reach both the homosexual market with the heterosexual market without revealing the ads true intent.
Discussion Questions:
1. Can anyone recall ever seeing an advertisement or commercial that featured a lesbian model or celebrity?
2. Would you be less interested in purchasing a product if it was advertised to lesbians? If so, do you think it should be allowed during regular viewing hours or after midnight with other late night provocative commercials?
3. What type of insecurities do you think some viewers may have with advertising directly to the lesbian community?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4H7YHptSkU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPp7fmJMpLs
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Tailfins of 1959
Terrific slideshow and related article at the NYTIMES on tailfins.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/08/02/automobiles/20090802-fins.html
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Sunday, July 26, 2009
"Listening to Khakis: What America's Most Popular Pants Tell Us about the Way Guys Think"
Raquel Aguilar, Melinda Lopez, Matthew Scherer, Bobby Lewis
Advertising Criticism
July 29, 2009
Malcolm Gladwell, “Listening to Khakis: What America’s Most Popular Pants Tell Us about the Way Guys Think”
Summary of Key Points: Gladwell provides indisputable facts with regard to the success of certain advertising campaigns and lays the groundwork for dissecting the psychology behind the advertisements. For example, the essay states that “seventy percent of American men between the ages of twenty-five and forty-five own a pair of Dockers, and khakis are expected to be as popular as bluejeans by the beginning of the next century.” These statistics are credited with the success of the unconventional Dockers ads that aired in 1987. These ads provided unprecedented success in terms of marketing fashion to the American male, a demographic who, according to a study conducted by two psychologists at studied at York University, lacks an appreciation for details. These ads along with other advertisements have relied heavily on understanding the “emotional underpinnings” and psyche of the American male. Gladwell brings to light the intentional use of subtlety in campaigns such as “Nice Pants” and Bugle Boy Jeans. He also addresses the fine line that the advertising community walks with regard to reaching the male audience. Concerns for alienating and condescending this particular demographic are explored and defended.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Selfridge & Co.
"A New Era of Shopping"
The Promotion of Women's Pleasure in London's West End, 1909-1914
~Erika D. Rappaport~
Love Thyself at Selfridge's & Co.
Description of Topic: Rappaport examines a redefined meaning of shopping and a woman’s place in a prewar urban society. In particular, the opening of Harry Gordon Selfridge’s Oxford Street Department Store which emerged during a “new era” shaped by decades of economic and cultural transformations. She is interested in Selfridge’s role as an American owner and his influences in architectural styles, window displays, and creative marketing strategies, helping him achieve success within an expanding English commerce culture. Prior in the Victorian Era, shopping was considered in negative connotations as being “wasteful”, “indulgent” and even “immoral.” She examines how Selfridge rewrote the meaning of pleasure and what it meant for women to take part in, having their own needs meet in a new, innovative way. Most importantly, marketing strategies used through publicity such as print media to turn notions from the past and make them into legitimate pleasures. She looked closely at how transforming anxieties into profit through paid advertising became the success of Selfridge’s & Co. To do this, she looks at a range of sources, from early advertisements in newspapers, journals, and articles which illustrate a promise of satisfaction, indulgence, and excitement. Modern shopping became pleasurable and respectable, a notion of self-fulfillment and independence for women no longer feeling like a necessity. Underlying the usage of mass retailing and media, she carefully examines how Selfridge created the largest and most publicized department store which became the center of urban society in a time of social and cultural changes.
Store opened and changed shopping in London forever in 1909
Customers in line and waiting to enter the department store
Shoppers were able to get a taste of what was inside by viewing the large window displays that the Selfridge & Co. department store was known for
Shoppers crowding the counters on a busy day at Selfridge's
Summary of Key Points: Rappaport underlines the importance promoting the store emphasizing on women, their pleasures, and the city. Selfridge’s central strategy was challenging the pleasures of pre-existing urban commercial culture in order to showcase shopping from labor to leisure. It now became something sought out for and desired with the press repeatedly featuring consumption as public, sensual entertainment. She describes how featured ads and articles linked shopping to romance, novelty and tradition, sensuality, and consumption. In other words, it became a “home away from home,” shopping part of lifestyle as “a time of profit, recreation, and enjoyment.” One important part of her essay is that Selfridge sought a way to design and publicize the department store as a mixture of both elite and mass culture. While most ads were focused on immediate, forms of consumption, she examines how shopping became newly represented moreover as a unique female, urban pleasure in the West End although limited in areas largely due to political, social, and economic limits placed on women in public life. Selfridge’s was successful because he was able to give women access to both a public and private life through promises of escapism from a women’s place in the home.
To this day, window displays are still seen as shoppers and tourist walk through London's West End
A window display during the holiday season
Selfridge's in 2009 with all the windows lit up pink for a charity campaign
Discussion Questions
- Selfridge's was described as an "architectural masterpiece" from interior to exterior and as "A Pleasure-A Pastime- A Recreation." How are today's malls in Corpus Christi or within Texas in general similar to these ideas? How are they different?
- The essay describes that Selfridge's & Co. and other shopping experiences cater more toward women than they do men. Is this still the case in malls today? How and why?
- The opening of Selfridge's department store was both a largely publicized media event and visual, commercial spectacle that spread the social changes he inspired. What media accomplish this?
