WEB - Getting to Know You Questions

WEB Meeting July 31

The Business of Advertising

We see an average of 247 ads every day.
What is advertising? A form of communication used to encourage, persuade, or manipulate an audience to continue to take some new action. Commercial Ads often seek to generate increased consumption of their products or services through "branding" which involves associating a product name or image with certain qualities in the minds of consumers."
Ads try to define our culture, and what it means to be "normal" The happy family, the loving couple, the playful kids, the body-perfect woman, the uber-male. A mold that hardly any us fit in but we feel because we see it so much in ads we should strive for it or we are not "normal"
All ads (whether they realize it or not) are trying to convince you to buy their product because it fits into one of 4 universal needs - love, freedom, belonging, or fun.
What is the reality of the advertising business?
Women make 80% of the consumer decisions.
Women spend $20 Trillion in consumer spending
3% of women are creative directors in advertising.
Male Creative Directors are creating this illusion of what is "normal" and asking us women to buy their crap they do so by creating ads that they want to see and create a universe that they want to live in - and by that had make us feel bad that we don't live in that world.
What I'd like to do is create an awareness and lift the veil of this manipulation. Ads don't care about you, they care about your money. Your money is a vote.

What are the ads telling us?

Women are often shown as: Objects/de-humanized, hyper-sexual, stupid, and as children. Some go as far as showing violence towards women to sell products.
Let's look at these ads and see which ones you think they fit into.
What universal need to they relate to?
Are they marketed to men or women?