Ads have come a long way from what they used to be a couple of decades back. From the innocent utterly butterly delicious ‘Amul’ ads then to the dangerously seductive ‘Axe’ ads we see today, ads seem to be becoming more and more sex oriented all the time. I guess advertisers have figured out what sells and are exploiting all those shallow men (and women) who fall for it.
Axe ads (now followed by ads for all other deodorants for men) have got to be the most chauvinistic ads I’ve ever seen. Ads like these portray women as mindless creatures who get aroused just because a man smells of a particular brand of deodorant. Men (the target audience) are told that if they buy this product, they can get any woman they want. In spite of all the chauvinism in these ads, I can’t deny the fact that the marketing strategies of these ads actually work. So much is wrong with all their ads, but in the end it’s the sales that matter, and they seem to be doing pretty well in that department. Well, at least as consumers we know how shallow a level we’ve stooped to.
In most ads today, women are portrayed merely as objects of desire. Whether they are needed in an ad or not, they are put almost in every ad, just to increase the sale of that product. Unlike in older days, when you knew what was being advertised for with just a glance at the ad, today, the viewer has to keep guessing the product being advertised, since most of the screen space and time is unnecessarily taken up by skimpily clad women, even for products where they are not needed.
Ads today create a desire for products in their audience, be it by using overly seductive women in them, an expensive car, or by promising to make you fair in a week. Unlike the olden days, we have a lot more brands to choose from today, which means a lot more brands playing with our desires and trying to convince us to buy products by creating an artificial need for them in us. This need for most products today is created by using sensual women in ads. And the sad part is that it works!
