Fair and Lovely

FAIR AND LOVELY

Females from our part of the world always desire for a fair and glowing skin. For the past many years fair and lovely advertisements have been portraying fame and fortune related to fair and beautiful women. In their advertisements a tube of fairness cream will bring them immense success and fame. According to them the key to fame is simply and miraculously a tube of fairness cream. That, apparently, is all that really stands between us and fame and fortune: a 14 day experiment with a tube of the miracle cream is guaranteed to raise your lucky star to dizzying heights. The roles of males in the mass media have been shown to be dominant, active and authoritative, while females have been shown as passive, dominated and conquered by men.
The TVC of fair and lovely shows that only fair complexion gives you the path to success. When top models appear in these ads that imply that talent, individuality and intellect are only secondary and useless without a fair complexion; a potentially hazardous message is conveyed to the audience especially young girls.
By looking at the print advertisement of fair and lovely you see that fair complexion is the main factor being highlighted once you are fair only then you are glamorous and successful. It shows the difference in your complexion after using fair and lovely.
The stereotype present in our society of having a fair skin tone cannot be eliminated since it is easier to spot women who just want to "go with the flow" of the society and who happily accept all pains and tortures in the name of fashion and beauty.
The advertisement of fair and lovely is humiliating to the women as it has clearly pointed the discrimination on the basis of the color as well as also have pointed that success in the leading fields are due to fair color rather than intellectual ability. It also points out that beauty is defined in context to the color of the skin rather then the features and dark skinned people cannot be successful neither in their professional nor in their private lives.

Huda Farooqi

TVC ANALYSIS: COKE

This is a dramatization type of TV Commercial and presentation technique is Live Action. In This New TV Commercial, coke has the same target market which they already have.
The pictureisation is telling the whole story o TV Commercial in the first 5seconds. Coke uses emotional appeal to involve the viewer’s and “key visual “that sums up the intended message. How people enjoy consuming coke, what passion comes to their mind when they hold a bottle of coke they forget about others when it comes to coke.
They used visuals and words to register the brand in the viewer’s mind. They used music as well for more entertainment of the viewer’s. Keeping all these aspects in mind this ad features all the messages coke wanted to convey. On the whole, their commercials are rather entertaining and are bound to be remembered.

Amal Khurram

Shandy Cola Print ad analysis

Product: FMCGs
Source: The Review
Placement two pages

This cooperate ad is about carbonated drink Shandy. This ad was at the center of the magazine and in the form of a poster to get the maximum attention of the readers. Although they have made a lot of ad in this ad for capturing maximum eyes but it is not that much attractive as their body copy is so long and irrelevant that readers may lose interest while reading it. They mentioned it to get more and more public attention that their drink is good and they should try it, but it seems that the effort they put would go in vain.
Then come to its illustration and slogan. It is right that they are offering and different sizes flavors and ranges in their product but their packaging is not that much attractive because it is just as the same as that of other beverages bottles. Then it has no proper monogram from which people could recognize it. It slogan “Apna Hai Raj Kay Pyo” is also not that much appealing. In short it sounds a bit cheap. But English slogan they have used is acceptable “Drink Shandy, it belongs to you”. Their heading Quality, Service and Customer satisfaction is closer to the quality line of Mc Donalds.
In short after seeing this ad an image of pirated drink comes into mind due to which consumer may feel hesitated to buy this drink and his buying decision may get effected.

Amal Khurram

Waves (print ad analysis)

It has become a trend to use women in ads. It is believed that a female makes an ad more attractive and eye catching which is quite true. For instance if you are flipping pages of a newspaper or a magazine and if there is a female in the ad who is promoting the product, wearing tight fitted clothes, will suddenly grab your attention.

Load shedding is a major issue these days. Every Pakistani is a victim of it. Load shedding comes with numerous problems. One is the braking down of electrical appliances due to high voltage and fluctuations. In addition to this, freezers and refrigerators do not work properly in summers due to heavy load shedding. Pakistan’s largest selling brand, Waves, recently launched a new deep freezer “Cool Bank” which works without electricity for hours thereby resolving the problem of load shedding.

Overall the ad is acceptable but what grabs the attention of viewers is a woman sitting beside the deep freezer in a casual manner. She is wearing a skin tight shirt and jeans with high heels. From my perspective in this ad, there is no need to expose a woman. The primary focus of this ad is on “Cool bank” and not on the woman.

Besides this, the marketers prefer to keep those girls in ads that are tall, slim, fair and smart. Women have become an object in ads which grab attention. The success rate of ads that include females are higher as compared to others which do not.

Fariya Hashmat

Mountain Dew (print ad and TVC analysis)

There is a wide difference in the depiction of men and women in advertisements. When both genders appear in the same ad, it can be seen that women are mostly portrayed weaker than men. Similarly if females are shown in an ad, they are depicted as sex symbols or dumb. Conversely men appear as strong, courageous and adventurous. Males act strong, tough and hide their emotions.
When an individual looks at the print ad of Mountain Dew, he or she can easily tell that the ad is gender biased. The print ad is self explanatory! The colors used in this ad (that are black and green) symbolize authority, power and command. Apart from this, the chopper further enhances the look of the advertisement. It is generally believed that chopper riders are strong, muscular with tattoos and are huge. In addition to this it can be seen that the Mountain Dew can is “wearing” a black leather jacket that again portrays masculinity. The tag line, “THE HARDEST SOFT DRINK” represents the intensity of this drink, giving a picture that Mountain Dew is not for weaker souls (that are females in this case).
Coming on to the television commercial analysis of Mountain Dew, generally in each electronic ad it is quite visible that there are no females which is strange, since females are majorly shot in ads like Gillette, Honda, Dockers etc. There are several TVCs of Mountain Dew that are all adventurous and breathtaking. There is a TVC in which an experienced Kung Fu trainer fights with a boy who is not very much aware of the Kung Fu techniques and moves but still he defeats the trainer just because he has Mountain Dew! Similarly all Mountain Dew advertisements portray men as courageous, powerful, adventurous and above all daring.

Fariya Hashmat

Olpers TVC

The Olpers television commercial is made with great creativity and concept. It is bringing the Muslim cultures from around the world together in one bond. It is a commercial specially made for the Ramadan so it is highly bent towards culture and religion. It shows people from various communities performing their prayers, sehri and aftari. The ad beautifully highlights values and traditions. For instance it is screening the fact that the entire family is sitting together and opening their fast.
The ad shows visual clips from Pakistan, Turkey, Kashmir and Palestine. This shows that the brand Olpers has taken into account a vast market. It is also a symbol of collectivity and togetherness and this is what represents our society. The ad defines its product’s target market in an efficient way; it features kids, adults and elderly as well.
One worth mentioning factor about the ad is that there is no direct dialogue between any of the actors; still the ad is able to say so much to its viewers. It is clearly able to convey its message to us. Although the theme of the ad is Ramadan, still it is highlighting the different ways to use the product very well. For instance the ad shows that Olpers can be drank directly, it can be put in tea, it can be eaten with cornflakes and is also being used to make pastries. This is a brilliant way of positioning the product in the market. In one of the clips it is also showing hoe it is distributed, a van comes in a market and is delivering the milk to the retail shops.

Maira Sajjad

Shezan Twist Print Ad

These days media has become free and open. But sometimes this leads to creation of such ads that do not carry appropriate meaning. Women are used as a matter of representation. For instance in this ad is a follow up print ad of a television commercial, so it will be talked about in that context. The ad shows a racing competition between men and when one of them wins the woman comes in and rubs a Twist juice on his face as if they are celebrating the victory and beating the heat with it. In my point of view first of all the ad does not define its target market properly. It’s a simple juice ad whose target market actually includes kids, adults and even the elderly. Had it been some energy drink ad (red bull etc), this racing idea could have worked. But this ad could have simply been made with a nice family approach to it.
Coming on to another noticeable point here is that the woman is just used as a symbol of representation even when she is not needed here. There was simply no need for the lady to get on the back of the man, make a seductive expression and rub the juice box on his face rather than making him sip it. And he in turn gives a responsive expression again making the use of the product vague.
The tagline ‘jeeto josh se’ again relates to an adventurous setting and environment (in this case racing) so there was no need for the woman here.

Maira Sajjad

Portrayal of Women in Advertisments

In this time period, advertising has provoked the feeling within women that in order to gain acceptability in a society, having good looks is an absolute necessity. Marketers are driven by profit motive and for that matter they adopt tactics which will fulfill their goal of maximizing profitability, regardless of it being ethical or not. Women in media are promoted as commodities that helps them in fulfilling their marketing and strategic goals. Their role is based on their physical attributes instead of their personality, character or other mental abilities. This phenomena is well exemplified in the television commercial shown below:

The advertisement shown above is of a campaign conducted by ufone for its pre-paid connection services. The television commercial exhibits three young ladies dressed up in a western attire and are seen to be involved in activities which in an Islamic state can be referred to as immoral. Their behavior, dressing and their body language are by no means suitable to serve as means of promotion for any brand. The advertisement further promotes the concept that a girl just requires good looks, and with that she can overcome all hurdles in her life.

Through this promotional advertisement, not only a wrong image of women is set in our society but it also affects the general perception or psyche of teenagers regarding the role of women. Respect for women women on general, also suffers a back lash, as media portrays a negative image or stereotype regarding the feminine group of our society. As the commercial was not in accordance with the cultural values of our part of the world it lead to the cancellation of this promotional contract and it was abandoned.

It is well evident that all advertisements agencies and other media giants have their own respective marketing strategies. But the manner, in which women are being portrayed as saleable commodities, is something which is of great concern for all of us and sufficient action needs to be taken.There is a dire need to take steps that would help in increasing the participation of women and they should be allowed easy access to expression. Moreover, they should be empowered with decision making authority at all levels and achieve the gender balance in the appointment of women in all form of media. Furthermore, the diversified positive role played by women in media should be portrayed and promoted at a larger scale.

We must develop and adopt certain codes of conduct and guidelines that would assist in removing such biases in the society. We should aim to promote balanced representation of women that would help in building up a more unified society. This is the time to come up with schemes and adopt policies that would alter stereotypical attitudes and behaviors concerning gender roles and responsibilities. In return it will lead to gender equality and positive attitudes and behaviors.

Women in Advertisements are subject to sensationalism

Advertisement type: Print ad

As we all know that the media of today which includes advertisements is a powerful way of influencing the perceptions of people which can then be used for positive or negative changes in the society. Media has played a huge role in building up various stereotypes in our society. As defined by Wikipedia, a stereotype is defined as a commonly held public belief about specific social groups, or types of individuals.

As seen from the print advertisement above, a lady has been shown wearing an attractive dress with high levels of exposure. Women’s physical attributes are made use of for commercial purposes and are presented as ‘items’ or tactics that serve as an attraction and help in increasing the sale of the marketed commodities. The advertisement shown above is of low fat, high calcium milk ‘Olwell’ which lacks creativity and just to give the brand a superior look, a female individual has been added with un-wanted exposure of her body parts.

In this case, the advertisement should have rather emphasized on the attributes of the product i.e. high calcium milk. This could have been done through showing a masculine body which depicts a healthy body structure. Whereas on the other hand, in this advertisement the marketer chose to just add a lady in an attractive posture to increase the worth of its brand. Increase in brand equity for the companies, allows women to attain high salaries as their presence result in high sales for the companies. Hence, for this reason they are paid high salaries and makes this activity as one of the highly paid professions for women.

Commercialization of media has been the main reason for this deteriorating image of women in our society. The way women are being portrayed in our society through advertisements, despite of it being a Muslim country is a very alarming situation.