Together We ... Olay


I watch Youtube an almost unhealthy amount. I tend to watch it while I do homework or while I am procrastinating doing said homework, so I see a lot of advertisements each day. One ad that had recently caught my eye for a number of reasons is the new Olay skin care commercial featuring several empowered women. In the ad, Youtube star and activist Lily Singh is the narrator of the ad and throughout its entirety gives a small motivational speech telling women that they are not “too anything,” that instead they are just the right amount of whatever they want. Then, multiple other strong female influencers come on screen dancing, smiling, and being casual, showing off what they stand for (be it body positivity or their stereotype-breaking career). I would say that this ad appeals most to a need for affiliation and a need for autonomy.
Although affiliation and autonomy are basically two opposites, they work together in this ad to make it impactful to its target audience: women. The need for affiliation is appealed to by referring to women as a united force, getting through life’s barriers and push backs together, which makes the viewer feel as though if they buy Olay, they will be a part of this large group of strong, powerful women. However, the ad still pushes you toward the need for autonomy by showing what each woman had that was unique to her. That pushes women to support each other in a group setting, but to support your own and other’s uniqueness as a group. You could have a prosthetic leg or be an Olympic medalist and with Olay, you are equal and you are unique.

Comments

  1. Hannah SanfordMay 12, 2019 at 6:54 PM

    The class discussed last Friday (I think) the idea that companies do not really support the ideals that they portray in their ads, that they just do it to get publicity and appeal to a certain demographic. That being said, do you think in this case that feminist theme helped or hurt the ad and the company at large? And in addition, do you think Olay actually supports women's rights or were they just using the marketing/advertising techniques you mentioned?
    I think your analysis of the advertisement made a lot of sense. The idea that one does not have to be like everyone else to be a part of the group and be accepted plays on both the need for individuality and community, making this ad clever and you displayed that point well.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Brandy Melville's Unattainable Figure

Image
Brandy Melville is a popular Swiss apparel brand aimed towards young women. They are one of my favorite brands to shop at and I have spent more money than I am proud of shopping on their website and in their stores. They are a brand that has a generally positive connotation in my mind, I think of their products being of a generally high quality, and their website and stores are very put together and sophisticated. Aside from all of those positive thing about the brand, though, I do have a big problem with the company's advertising. And I don’t mean the pop up ads they pay for other websites to display or the influencers that they send packages to to show off their new products, I mean the models they use to display their clothes. Brandy Melville tends to use a wide range of girls on their website to model their clothes and then they will have influencers or models send in pictures of themselves wearing Brandy Melville outfits to post and promote their Instagram page. Again,
Read more

Mooks and Midriffs in Modern Media

Image
In the PBS documentary, Merchants of Cool , the concept of media using a “mook” or a “midriff” to draw in teen viewers is brought up. A “mook” is a character used to draw in teens by appealing to their immature nature. They are usually crude, misogynistic, loud, and angry, and are usually found to be funny by teens. We have a lot of these kinds of characters in the current media landscape and I would say that the best two examples are stand up comedians and youtubers. Not all stand up comedians and youtubers and mooks, but there are definitely a lot of them that are. I do not really watch a lot of stand up comedy because I never know where it is streamed, but I have seen a lot of clips of comedians on Youtube and Instagram as well as seen a few specials that Netflix has put out of stand up comedians acts. The kinds of stand up comedians that I am talking about are ones like Seth Rogan, Kevin Hart, Hasan Minhaj, and Ali Wong. They tend to focus on funny, sexual, or crude things tha
Read more

MissRepresentation

Image
In the film, MissRepresentation , there were many parts that stood out to me, but only one that affected me the most. That part affected me the most was where the film talked about how when young boys see sexualized women or women being less than men in the media, it leads them to treat women that way in real life. While this was not something that I didn't already know, it is still something that hit me because of how much I experience it in my life. This is noy just something that people experience in stories or movies, it is something that affects real people every day. At a young age, from playing video games or watching movies where men abuse and sexualize women, boy will reciprocate those actions onto their female peers. On playgrounds you will see boys being physical to girls, their actions defended by adults by saying it just means that the boy “likes” the girl. But those defensive adults are just another reason that boys grow up continuing to be affected by the media.
Read more