Do you think that advertisers have a moral duty to avoid stereotyping people?

Current advertisements take sharp turns for the worse as their source of persuasion for appealing to their global target audience has no pure intentions of educating or informing, but to persuade. These advertisements tend to contain stereotypical components, which refer to the oversimplified creation of generalizations made to a particular group of people, thus forming labels of in-groups and out-groups, also known as social categorization. Discrimination of certain groups and the impartiality of other groups would hence take place. Moreover, this leads to the degradation of cultural and traditional values of particular racial or religious groups, as well as the instinctive creation of oversimplified false assumptions. Therefore, through constant daily exposure of such advertisements within newspapers, magazines, television, billboards, and online sources that portray stereotypical thinking, viewers, listeners, and readers would then comprehend the presented conventional message as the most 'correct' or most socially accepted mind-set. Therefore there are definite ethical values that need to come into consideration when creating advertisements. Hence advertisers do have a moral duty of avoiding stereotyping people, as it is their responsibility to send a positive message to global viewers through their advertisements to avoid stereotyping and any other negative outlooks within society. It isn’t worth creating disaster within our small world in order to successfully sell a product. This could be easily done through the use of positive persuasion techniques rather than the negative.

"Her Future Begins on Two Wheels"

The print advertisement, established by Child Fund International publicizes about their new Dream Bike Program. When explicitly analyzing specific components that tie together the advertisement as a whole, it can be said that the persuasive appeals and strong visual content reveal the cultural, social, and historical contexts as well as the values of its production.

With the aim of attracting, persuading, raising awareness, and educating, Child Fund emotionally connects (pathos) with financially stable individuals to get engaged to provide young girls living in impoverished countries with "two wheels" (Dream Bike) as their source of transportation to their path of success. This is specifically aimed to target parents through the immediate need to nurture those young girls that are lacking a safe transportation on their everyday route to school. As a result, they would sympathize and donate to Child Fund. Since girls in India as well as most impoverished countries, are restricted in obtaining their equal rights of having an education due to gender inequality and cultural beliefs on gender roles, this ad fights this catastrophic issue by promoting and guaranteeing a simple solution that young girls could have the potential of accessing a safe pathway to an education through the funding and use of a Dream Bike. It is valuing the rights of women to receive an education, as it is very well-known that within this generation, females face concerning struggles regarding the inequality on their part in comparison to the overpowering males. As a result empowerment towards women are specifically looked upon in comparison to the men that are completely ignored. This is due to the breaking of the stereotype of young Indian girls not prioritizing their right to pursue an education, while men having more rights to get an education, acquire a job, and earn money to financially support the household. This ad therefore promotes that through the simple solution of funding "two wheels", one will be making the greatest difference to India in regards to reviving the girls' dreams and supplying them with a guaranteed path and ride to a successful future.

Recreational Drones

Advertising Pitch

Within the pitch presentation, five main appeals were approached; these include the bandwagon appeal, rational appeal, need for affiliation, need to achieve, and need for aesthetic sensations. They effectively display the fascination of the recreational drone and its positive consequences to attract the target audience, those are the parents that are investing in the recreational drone, and the teenagers that are using the drone. The bandwagon appeal would be managed to add popularity to the drone by featuring a professional camera operator and his son/daughter using the drone, while demonstrating that there is potential for the son/daughter to acquire such skill and interest as the dad while having a great time and capturing memories. This drone is targeted to be initially used for fun, and can then progress to become a hobby, and then could possibly become a profession. Therefore parents and their children wouldn’t want to miss out on this fun and educational experience. Furthermore, exposing the drone's competitors, the go-pro and regular cameras, gives rise to the drone's identity and would therefore show that why would one use a regular camera when you can remotely-control a flying aircraft with a high-quality camera that can capture the beauty of nature and our surroundings while being on ground. Secondly, through the approach of ration, emphasis on the drone's wide range of extraordinary features that include its fast flight speed, lightness, HD camera quality, and remarkable stability, would attract the target audience. Thirdly, the need for affiliation will be approached by suggesting that hobby groups and flying clubs can form within these suburban neighborhoods in New Zealand trigger friendships, and plugging those teenagers into a group is a great way for them to meet other people passionate about flying, while learning how to fly, new techniques, service, and maintaining their aircraft. Fourthly, there would be the need to achieve within the advertising of the drone by giving the teenagers needs to produce high-quality as a result of using such innovative and professional device.  Finally, the need for aesthetic sensations will be focused on by featuring the wonderful views of suburban New Zealand, to grab the attention of young viewers and their parents with the beautiful scenery captured by the drone.  

Three specific persuasive techniques used were Repetition, New, and Rhetorical questions. Repetition will simply cause for the teenagers watching YouTube videos to be continuously bombarded with the drone's advertisement that will result in their interest in purchasing the drone. The second persuasive technique approached is "New"; it is effectively used to show that our product isn’t like any other regular camera or go-pro. It is a new and innovative product that can capture beautiful views from the perspective of a bird, while remotely controlling the aircraft from ground. Rhetorical questions is the third technique approached within the advertisement to impact the teenagers to agree with the speaker within the commercial in regards to answering the obvious questions of wanting to have fun and capture stunning videos. These were believed to be effective as they demonstrated within the advertising video that the drone is new, fun, and simple, and not like any recreational device.

Being aware that our product is based on recreation, this influenced the target audience to be mainly based on teenagers that need entertainment in their lives and are lacking outdoor activity. In addition, since the context included to be in Suburban New Zealand, this provided the approach of placing a camera on the drone to capture beautiful views while practicing outdoor activities. This awareness influenced the overall approach to this activity to be based on exciting the target audience with the extraordinary features of the drone and its aesthetic production of the wonderful views, as this would attract the target audience the most, living within the suburban context.

In regards to the content, more attention should’ve been given to the specific features of the drone, as they were only briefly listed off, without mentioning attractive specifications that could top off the advertisement of the recreational drone. This includes small details. In addition, in terms of preparation, more time should’ve been spent practicing with the group members as a whole, rather than separately practicing and then presenting each part distinctively. As a result, the presentation lacked flow. 

Simply Ageless Makeup from COVERGIRL + Olay

Link to Commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZkyGJ_SFqQ 

This CoverGirl and Olay marketing video is targeting middle-aged to older women, specifically those that are suffering from the appearance of wrinkles and fine lines in the skin, by advertising the collaboration of CoverGirl and Olay on their production of 'ageless makeup'. Furthermore, by displaying Ellen DeGeneres, who is purely American and Sofia Vergara, who is Latino, no specific nationality is targeted. In order to convince these older women in investing in their simply ageless makeup, ethos, pathos, and logos are clearly used as tools of persuasion.

Ethos is first displayed by featuring Ellen DeGeneres and Sofia Vergara, who are famous celebrities older in age with healthy looking skin, as users of the simply ageless makeup. This therefore displays to older women that if invested in this makeup, their skin would be as flawless and 'age-free' as Ellen's and Sofia's skin. Due to the presence of these credible and honest actors, who are associated with beauty, success, and positivity, in the commercial, viewers are more likely to invest in the same beauty products as theirs to achieve the same results of anti-aging skin.

Another strategy used by CoverGirl is pathos. Humor is displayed throughout the video from Ellen DeGeneres as well as Sofia Vergara. Since Ellen is viewed as a comedian, she is included to comically 'insult' the female viewers by prying at their insecurities and suggesting that they must look young and beautiful. By including Sofia Vergara, with her Latino accent, she seems to be 'competing with Ellen' and both are trying to take on the show. This overall adds humor to the commercial that impacts the female viewers to smile or even laugh. As a result, more positivity is being included to attract female users. In addition, the whole commercial has a future-like feel that suggests that this product is very high-tech and effective. Both Ellen and Sofia are dressed in white suits with a purple background, while both zap in and out of the screen, all adding to the high-tech and futuristic features of the commercial.

Finally, logos is used by displaying that this makeup product is high-tech and coming from the future, while including supplements of Vitamin B and SPF that adds health to the skin. In addition scientific diagrams were used to give support to the product that it is beneficial due to scientific evidence and induction that help solve the problem of anti-aging through CoverGirl's suspension formula. They use the word anti-aging to give rise to their product in comparison to any other makeup. "It helps you look younger three ways", in which suggest that their incredible formula for the liquid foundation removes the appearance of wrinkles, while evening out the skin tone, and producing plumping moisture to the skin.