In our lesson on Wednesday we looked at both the Lynx and Dove advertising campaigns. Lynx and Dove are owned by the same company, Unilever, which is an Anglo-Dutch multinational consumer goods company. Unilever owns many brands including; PG Tips, Ben & Jerry's, Lipton, Domestos, Cornetto, Pot Noodle, Marmite, Lynx, Sure, V05, Hellman's, Magnum, Peperami, Persil, TRESemme, Impulse and Flora just to name a few.
We looked into Lynx in more detail, in particular the 2011 advertisement for Lynx Dry Full Control. One specific ad got banned by the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) this advert was banned because the messages expressed in the advert were too sexually suggestive and inappropriate for the regulation standards, not only this but the advert was also rather degrading to women. This advert not only contained frisky content of Lucy Pinder but also the caption at the end read "prevent premature perspiration" which can be interpreted in an extremely rude way. Therefore the ASA banned this from the UK after only very few complaints. Lynx still pushed the boundaries with their adverts including some shower gel adverts which had the line "the cleaner you are the dirtier you get".
These sorts of adverts are completely aimed at the male population and even the way the adverts are lit make a substantial difference to the sales as the women in them need to look completely flawless, perfection even. The backlighting in the Lynx Dry Full Control image that we looked at in the lesson made the Lucy Pinder's skin look blemish-free and also created a type of glow highlighting her figure in an obvious yet also subtle way. The advert also positions Lucy so that she is in a 'T & A' shot which clearly is for the male audience. One feature in the ad that i noticed was not just the woman and her revealing clothing but the background. The ad was placed in a set that replicated a 50's style home therefore throwing in the ideas of women and their perception as the housewife. This means that subconsciously the advert is telling men that if you purchase this Lynx product that you will be in control of women much like the 50's and they will do anything and everything the men want. The ad is therefore saying that Lynx will mke you the one who is in charge and you can handle anything, including her. This is also very demeaning to women.
We also looked at another Unilever company which was Dove, this campaign however is very different to the Lynx one as it promotes women in a healthy way. For example the advert we looked at shows average sized women, not super skinny models, smiling and being proud of who they are and what they look like in contrast to the Lynx ad which makes women look like objects and accessories to men. This expresses the ideas of freedom, independence and confidence which was a much more popular advert for the female population as it made them think that if they bought Dove then they would feel all these things even more so than they might have before.
We found out what Cultural and Technical codes are and all about decoding which is a process in which we work out what the image actually means and what it is about instead of just simply understanding it. Overall in the lesson we learnt a lot of information about all the small things that are considered when making an advert as well as things like how strict the ASA are and how seriously they take complaints into consideration. However this advert was banned for reasons that are very clear to me.
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