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Today's advertisements work even harder than before to grab our attention as we become more innovative in our ways to escape them. The inventions of remote controls, DVRs, and pop up blockers, make it harder for advertisers to "catch" us. We are a generation of busy humans that just keep moving and the only way of "catching" us is to make ads that are catchy enough to make us stop and stare for a moment. In their quest to reach their target audience, they sacrifice the potential audience by making their ads, whether intentional or not, sexist or racist.

In the most recent Got Milk campaign, created by Goodby Silverstein & Partners,  the ads are targeted at men with the goal of raising awareness for milk consumption. However, on a closer inspection, one will notice that the ads are built around an invisible image of PMSing women. The Got Milk website says, "Find out how milk can help reduce the symptoms of PMS". The ad above has a headline that reads, "I'm sorry I listened to what you said and not what you meant" and a man with a scared face, holding cartons of milk. This is obviously portraying women as irrational, scary beings during their menstrual cycle. It's like comparing women to werewolves; they both transform once a month. We kill werewolves with silver and cure irrational women on their menstrual cycle with milk. Sorry, but we're not monsters.

Sadly, advertisements have always been stereotyping the roles of female and male. Females are always the housewives, and males are always the breadwinners. In a blog post by Kevin Farrell, he shows a similar portrayal of gender based advertising. Women are often the ones that have problems and need the products being advertised to fix the problem. Men, on the other hand, are always being the mighty one. In the Got Milk ads, women are indirectly seen as irrational monsters, while men are portrayed as the innocent boyfriend or husband with watery puppy eyes.



The above video is a commercial film for Canon, the company that's known for its lines of cameras. It's a very sentimental short film that simply tells the story of a man, his dead wife, and a broken DSLR Canon camera. Unlike the Got Milk ads, there's no bashing of either gender. No one is being portrayed as a monster. This commercial makes me think of three simple words: memories, pictures, canon.

I think advertising companies have a lot of pressure in that they have to come up with creative ads and they have to think of creative ways to get those ads through to the target audience. One way that advertisers can promote their product might be to follow AOL and just send everyone samples of their products. If they like it, they'll most likely go out and get the full size version of it and might even recommend it to their friends and family. Another way, that's already been implemented, is to have the consumers create the ads. Advertising companies should make ads that focus on promoting the product without bashing anyone based on gender or race. 

Sources: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_9CHsKMFtk

http://gotmilk.com/

http://unicornbooty.com/2011/06/the-differences-in-advertising-to-men-and-women/