This add kind of just annoyed me
May. 19th, 2013 11:49 pm
So I wrote to Coty, the company that owns Rimmel.
"To Coty,
I understand that you are the company that owns Rimmel. I would have written directly to them but since I could not find a feedback email address for them I am writing to you instead. I hope this gets to where it needs to.
I am writing to you about one of your adds that is on the bus stop I commonly use. I have attached a picture of it. And while I don't want a semi-naked woman shoved in my face that is not why I writing.
I'm writing because when I saw just what product this add was for I was honestly surprised.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the main market for fake tan, women?
So why do you have an add obviously targeted toward the hetro male gaze?
Look at the add. The model in it is in a submissive 'sexy' pose. You can't see her face, meaning she is to be seen as an object not a person. And she isn't even smiling.
I'm surprised there isn't a caption underneath saying "working girls get it done with Rimmel".
So congratulations on targeting your lesbian and prostitute demographic, I suppose, but was that really what you were going for?
I think someone needs to have a long talk with your advertising department.
I would not be shocked if the sole reason we don't just have a pair of boobs taking up the whole poster is because whoever was in charge is a leg man.
You want a better add? Have a women laying back holding some sort of tropical drink like she's on a beach, that way you can keep the bikini, except she's at her desk in an office. Invoke that feel-the-summer-whenever-wherever vibe. Or have someone walking down the street as if the sun is shining on them when everyone else is huddled and shivering (because it's actually winter). There you go, I thought of both of these ideas in five seconds. Have them for free. Neither of them have much to do with the caption of 'get on glowing' but it has more then what your poster has.
I am aware that sometimes posters are actually tied into television add campaigns and don't make much sense out of context but I don't have a TV so I don't know what yours is. All I can tell you is snapping a picture of a scantily clad model and slapping it on a poster is cheap and lazy.
So if this isn't wilful ignorance then I think someone needs to check the accounts because the money's not being spent on this add.
You are an international multi-million euro company.
You can do better then this."