This add kind of just annoyed me

[xt1me]

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."
 

Comments

[uninotesjournal.livejournal.com]

Beautiful semiotic spotting!!!
However the male gaze is the dominant gaze used by advertisers as they explain that they sexualize the model to bring on women's worst emotion, Jealousy.

This is why women are becoming increasingly fake, i.e shades of orange with plastic tallons and peices of feathers stuck on to their eyelashes.

[xt1me.livejournal.com]

Yeah it's getting ridiculous.

(Wow, you're my first actual real comment. It makes me feel a little guilty that my journal is mainly filled with rubbish.)

Thats what journals are for!

[uninotesjournal.livejournal.com]

Well I aim to keep visiting your journal regular, if you grant me the same luxary, then we can wallow in each others "rubbish" together.

I'm aware that I speak in a old english dialect but forgive me, I have been watching re-runs of the tudors and simply can't get out of the habit.