Wow…just read Pink Think.
I agree that “femininity is learned” (p. 19). Of course, masculinity and other values are too. I love how the push for pink think was marketed as being intuitive and natural, yet was so calculated and prescribed. Reading the list of “how-tos” and “dos and don’ts” (p. 18) felt slightly uncomfortable when viewed through a modern lens. Uncomfortable in the sense that our generation emphasizes equality and self-sufficiency, therefore, it would make me feel uneasy to be the constant focus of my wife’s daily endeavors.
I would also like to point out the feminine representations from an advertiser’s perspective. I produced and edited a :60 spot for Cover Girl make-up featuring Christie Brinkley. The open-design set had many cues conveying vanity such as Brinkley’s flowing dress, numerous opposing mirrors, shimmery curtains, and soft lighting. Brinkley’s demeanor and movement projected coyness by the way she puckered, smiled, and winked at “the viewer” (via the camera lens). Months prior to the shoot, the New York based ad agency team, comprised of mostly women, conducted several all-female focus groups and randomly consulted women on the street to better understand how beauty and femininity spoke to them. And more importantly, what were their levels of familiarity and perceptions of Cover Girl products.
As we know, advertising is a multibillion dollar industry. A juggernaut of accountants, attorneys, and creatives handle most marketing efforts. There is little tolerance for (financial) missteps. It happens, but not often. Companies and advertisers do their homework. Regarding the Cover Girl campaign, the advertisers presented consumers with highly stylized templates of attitudes and lifestyles that originated with input from female participants. Sure, the portrayals were greatly embellished and glamorized, but the goal was in selling a desire; a desire to own Cover Girl makeup.
As we know, advertising is a multibillion dollar industry. A juggernaut of accountants, attorneys, and creatives handle most marketing efforts. There is little tolerance for (financial) missteps. It happens, but not often. Companies and advertisers do their homework. Regarding the Cover Girl campaign, the advertisers presented consumers with highly stylized templates of attitudes and lifestyles that originated with input from female participants. Sure, the portrayals were greatly embellished and glamorized, but the goal was in selling a desire; a desire to own Cover Girl makeup.
Another example that comes to mind is the iconic pink associated with Mary Kay cosmetics. Most people understand that women are the company’s primary target audience, however, Mark Kay also offers a men’s line of toiletries. The men’s products are packaged in a masculine gray and a subtle, almost disassociative “MK” logo printed in a black sans serif font. Mary Kay flipped the script on girlhood to widen their target audience.
Overall, reading Pink Think revealed the circular constructs of idyllic thoughts, that deconstructs when receiving input from external sources, then reconstructs the new "info" with existing beliefs, knowledge, and values (p. 11). Wet, lather, rinse, repeat…
Other areas I found interesting within today’s passage: the author’s bias, Jayne Mansfield’s death, and the Lady Lionel train set.
Hi Bobby--
ReplyDeleteWow--thanks for the great advertising insight! It's interesting to me that the women focus groups offered up ideas seemingly matching stereotypical femininity, especially focus groups in New York--I would have thought that maybe because of all the different cultures femininity would have a bolder or more empowered approach than Brinkley seducing the camera.
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DeleteHi Christine,
DeleteThank you for responding.
I was not directly involved with the Cover Girl focus groups, however, I was aware of the campaign's process. My role began in the production phase and carried through to postproduction.
Regarding focus groups; when a budget allows, advertisers will often triangulate data from several subsets of focus groups. In the case of Cover Girl (also indicative of other well-known brands), the focus groups included an open-call subset (via newspaper ad; minimal screening) and a controlled subset (prescreened participants by age, gender, and purchasing habits). The inclusion of "people on the street" skewed the outcome because the participants were more similar to those in the open-call group in terms of not having prescreened profiles.
Focus groups for brand or market research can easily become biased, because the methodology can be massaged to "fit" the outcome. Another challenge for advertisers is that the sample size is often too small to project across the general population (a group size averages about 10 participants).
This post may not quite address your comment about "seducing the camera," but I hope it illuminated some of the steps taken in marketing to an audience.
I like the point you make, Bobby, that ad campaigns are in it to sell, not to really make for a better society. And they work for a reason, right? I mean we all know how to read them and how we are supposed to react to certain messages. Lynn Peril, the author of Pink Think, talks about Mansfield's use of pink as “a visual shorthand for her ideas of femininity and female sexuality" (p. 17). This shorthand - we'll talk about it later as linguistic and visual commonplaces - work because culture as a whole decides it does. We give these stereotypes power by giving them power.
DeleteWe give these stereotypes power - I love this statement. Recently I had to apologize for making a comment about being blonde. My girlfriend, who is blonde, always talks about her blonde moment. At first I did not understand what she meant and she explained the stereotype. Unfortunately I used that term in another venue and I realized that even though someone jokes about it, I was giving this stereotype power. I apologized for the comment and they thought I was crazy. A stereotype is a stereotype. I love your statement. Thank you
DeleteI was really interested in the Lady Lionel train set as well, although it seemed mentioned in passing. I wondered why, despite the pink, the train set didn't sell. I wondered if the train, then, could be taken to represent things girls counldn't identify with in 1957; an obvious symbol of power and freedom, an object seemingly made for brother/father. It was strange to think in terms of toys and their larger implications.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't lego also sell pink legos? How is that campaign or was it a bust?
DeleteAkin to putting a suit and tie on a criminal gang member for a court hearing; masking may weaken credibility. The Lady Lionel experiment revealed a credibilty issue in terms of changing a color could override the social schema that boys = blue and girls = pink. Arguably, most girls who played with Lionel trains were drawn by its masculine elements. The toymaker's primary fan base likely questioned the (monetary) motive behind feminizing the trains.
DeleteAn article published in the Baltimore Sun (Nov. 1993) mentioned a Lady Lionel set valued at $1000 was for sale; that amount has probably tripled since then. Perhaps owning any kind of pink train today would be considered cool in the shift towards a unisexual culture.
Bobby,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading about the photo shoot. Have you ever seen the documentary “Killing Us Softly”? (Actually, I think there are three or four now.) It’s all about women and advertising.
About the laughable lists of do’s and don’ts from that seem antiquated today … well, although society isn’t as explicit in its gender roles, I think a lot of the sentiments behinds those lists still exist. I will have to dig up the study -- and it’s probably dated -- but they surveyed male students on college campuses about the appropriate use of force a man could use against his girlfriend. If I remember correctly, a percentage said it was acceptable for a male to strike a female if he learned she had been unfaithful. (I will look up the study tomorrow in the library … I just read about it recently.)
And although progress is being made, domestic violence still exists. I have been around a few situations where men have hit their wives / girlfriends. What’s worse, a lot of people still turn a blind eye -- “That’s their business.” I do understand that the battering dynamic is complex, and that women don’t leave for a variety of reasons, but I was struck at the basically misogynistic stance so many people took. (I had to make sure I hadn’t been inexplicably transported back to the 1950s.)
This isn’t to say Pink Think necessarily causes things like domestic violence, but the harm that the Pink Think has caused women still permeates our culture. I believe there is a relationship.
Hayley
Hayley,
DeleteThank you for the reminder about the "Killing Us Softly" documentaries. Below is a link to its filmmaker, Jean Kilbourne, explicating the vast ways in which women have been the object and subject of the mass media.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1993368502337678412#
Have to run now. I will comment later on your point about the relationship between domestic abuse and pink.
Oh, and I agree the author is totally biased. I should have mentioned this wasn't a scholarly article - clearly a pop culture read of pop culture. It'll be interesting if we see bias in our other readings. I'm betting my "scholarly" work is pretty biased too. It's hard to remove yourself from your own positionality. The trick is to own that position, I guess.
ReplyDelete