mind in the media

So, I went to see a film the other night at a cinema here in Paris. As always, there were numerous ads that came before. But one in particular started and I was immediately entranced. Maybe it's the dancer in me, or maybe it's just me loving clean, beautiful advertisements.

Just thought I'd share.

In the annals of advertising imagery, few brand symbols are more iconic and recognizable than the Sun-Maid raisin girl.Nevertheless, Sun-Maid recently decided to join Betty Crocker, Aunt Jemima and Mrs. Butterworth's in giving the female face of their product a substantial makeover from a young, early 20th-century girl into a buxom, modern young woman, leading some to say that the newly made-over raisin girl looks like a Barbie Doll in Amish attire Since 1915, the face of Sun-Maid has been Lorraine Collett Petersen, who, according to the company's website , "was discovered drying her black hair curls in the sunny backyard of her parents' home in Fresno, California." Petersen was then asked to pose for a watercolor painting holding a basket of grapes while wearing a sunbonnet.

In the years since, the company has tweaked its trademark design occasionally to keep up with the times, but every variation has always been based on the original pose by Petersen. The new computer-animated version of the Sun-Maid girl currently featured in television advertisements is a departure from the classic design that harkened back to a time when "life was much simpler, more rural, a lot less hectic."Naturally, the revamped look hasn't gone unnoticed, rankling both ends of the political spectrum. The blog for conservative magazine The Weekly Standard noted that the new Sun-Maid girl looks "as if Julia Roberts decided to don a red bonnet and start picking grapes," while the feminist website Jezebel.com remarked that it looks as if she's had “some implants.”

Though the new look for the raisin girl has been garnering attention of late, the changes to the 90-year-old icon were actually introduced three years ago. At the time, Sun-Maid president Barry Kriebel said that the decision to make changes was inspired by the desire to educate consumers about healthy living choices.

"This is as good a time as any to get on the wave of health and nutrition,'' he said. Kriebel also noted that he felt the new look was a reasonable modernization, saying "You're not going to see her dancing or kicking up her heels out in the vineyard, but have her do what is appropriate for her to do, based on her history but also being a contemporary person living in the 21st century.''

Additionally, there's been talk that the new Sun-Maid girl might be given a name and featured in future advertisements doing some of the things modern women typically do, like going to the gym, shopping at the market, and speaking multiple languages, particularly languages native to countries where Sun-Maid, the world's largest producer and processor of raisins and other dried fruits, sells raisins. However, the image on all Sun-Maid product packaging will remain the same, as the new version will only be featured in product advertisements.



Since 2000, Dora the Explorer is a staple on Nickelodeon. After five seasons and 111 episodes (and counting), the bilingual preschool TV character has taught innumerable little girls to count in Spanish, entice a gate to open or a car to speed up merely by repeating the instruction in a foreign language, and always extols the virtues of friendship and helpfulness. Early this year - as reported by ABC -- Mattel announced that Dora would grow up a bit (and recapture the middle school market share of girls) by featuring longer hair, leaving her chubby childhood figure behind and essentially becoming more attractive. Unfortunately, the company at first only revealed a silhouette of the new figure, which did look a tat racy. After the initial hubbub, Mattel quickly revealed the whole concept, and it was a lot tamer than initially assumed. The Mommy Files presents both side by side.

How many older women do you know that are genuinely like this? It seems that women over sixty five all get shrunken into two categories- little old lady clutching a purse, or a weathered cougar.

Now women ages thirty to fifty-for some reason,the media takes one look at them and decides that they will be represented with the emblem of the mom,the wife, the caregiver. If they aren't a mother,caregiver,or wife, then they are "fighting the signs of aging".

Maybe someday in the future, our media can take more into consideration the actual lifestyles of women these ages. Until then, I will continue to be uncomfortable.

Lets play fair- while this is not to play down the objectification and use of women in the media industry, men are sharing their own brand of being used as objects- stupid ones. Homer Simpson for example. Homer, a father of three and husband to a stay at home wife, goes off and works all day in the nuclear power plant, comes home, is loud, stupid, and adores the bar. Homer would be content to sit on his couch and eat doughnuts and drink beer in his underwear watching mindless T.V. Meet Peter Griffin, who also is a father of three, has a stay at home wife, likes nothing more than to get angry, make stupid choices,watch mindless television, and drink beer. Anyone seeing a pattern?

Now lets meet another version of the man as portrayed in the media- the sex fiend, who will wear, change, and try anything to get laid-or is always thinking about the opposite sex. Lets call him "the Axe man" in honor of the string of ads that seems to be about the fact that their product will get you into some female's pants.

The fact is, the media does not neglect to form stereotypes about who seems to be dominant-males. There seems to be no problem making them look like lazy, sloppy, angry,sex crazed teenage boys at heart who cannot think on their own, as shown in this video.

Hopefully the future of advertising and the media has better plans for reaching people than stereotypes and cheap ideas of what people really are like.

I unfortunately missed last week's class, but I wanted to write an entry touching on the the class prior to that. In this class we watched The Bronze Screen. A documentary-type movie reflecting on how Lations are portrayed in the media; more specifically, Hollywood. The film really put a little light some

I'll tell you why. Because Latinos are a highly diverse (read highly segmented), highly complex group of people. Let me give you a real world example: my friend Monica is a first-generation Mexican-American twenty-something living in San Francisco. She is a marketer's dream, as she is extremely trend-conscious, loves gadgets and is willing to spend a little extra to get something newer or better. She has some disposable income that she is willing to part with.

How does a marketer target Monica? Well, they've got to get to know her first. Monica is fully bilingual. She speaks both Spanish and English at the native level. She "feels" more Latina than anything else, but responds mostly to Gen X American humor a la VH-1 specials and SNL. She treasures her heritage but is completely integrated into American life. She is truly a Mexican-American.What does this mean? It means that Monica represents only one segment of the U.S. Latino market. While there are thousands more potential customers who will respond to the same things Monica responds to, there are thousands more will respond to just the opposite.

So, instead of one huge market, we have maybe ten mini-markets within the Latino market. Unfortunately, no one has been able to recognize this (at least as far as I know) or at least they haven't been successful at manifesting this knowledge.

Monica is not Western Union-ing money back to Mexico. Let that serve as a reminder that much of your Latino audience is completely different from the one you are attempting to market to in Spanish. Oh, she'll respond to an ad in Spanish (or better yet Spanglish), but it better be for something relevant; like high-end purse or a new iPod.

Until marketers realize that "Latino" is a term that we lazily use to define a community -- one that doesn't exist outside of the United States -- that is extremely diverse and comprised of people as different among themselves as they are from you, no one will truly conquer this market. Come out of your boardrooms and get to know your customer. Stop going to Hispanic marketing conferences and start thinking about who you're talking to and how."With the tremendous growth of the Latino demographic in the Unites States, companies are realizing that Latinos have a lot of purchasing power. So companies want to tap into this market, but they are recognizing that in order to do that they need more Latinos working within their organizations that understand the Latino culture. It's hard to market effectively to Latinos if you don't have any Latinos in your marketing department," he says. "Latinos tend to be brand conscious and brand loyal when it comes to making purchasing decisions, so organizations with a strong employment brand will benefit. Employment branding does not refer to an organization's products or services, but instead to an organization's reputation as an employer." What is not so clear is how businesses can best respond to this demographic shift and the growing economic power of Latinos. What should businesses do to attract and retain Latino employees? How can businesses build brand awareness and loyalty among potential Latino customers?The issue of building an employment brand that appeals to Latinos is one that Rodriguez explores in the Human Resources Strategy course he teaches at Capella University. It is also a topic that is discussed in Capella's HR Community of Practice, an online resource library of discussion boards, position papers, presentations and more that is available to Capella students with an HR background or interest.

Tying into our class from the third week in the semester where we discussed women's representation in the media, I had a friend point out a video from Germany that was incredibly disturbing.

To start of, one of the things we discussed in class was the fact that advertising has become more and more about male dominance. To be more specific; the high-fashion industry. Bondage is shown as appealing, sexy, and somehow glamourous. To be fair, the D&G ad above, ended up being pulled after an uproar of controversy. However, ads such as this one for Duncan Quinn (right) are out there, for the public to see, where sexual abuse is portrated as something that is okay. We talked about the fact that women are quite often shown in subordinate poses, even in ads for children, where the boys are rough-housing with the girls. This isn't to say that the media should sugar coat everything. I believe it is important to help spread awareness of sexual abuse. But the issue is that, on one hand there are ads suggesting that is okay, and others aiming to reach out to victims. Mixed messages over a very serious topic is the problem here.



My thoughts are this: where is advertising going if these are the types of ads that are out there? What is going to be out there in 20-30 years?

If this is the only way to break through the clutter, then we have very, very big problems ahead of us.

So, last week my childhood Disney movies were ruined by watching, Mickey Mouse Monopoly. It was rather upsetting. However, I was babysitting earlier today and as we were sitting there, watching old-school Looney Toons cartoons, I started picking up on the terrible stereotypes that were on the screen.

It started with Yosemite Sam; the short-tempered cowboy who's all about hunting with his big 'ole guns. Way to go Looney Toons. Good job on depicting the southern cowboy as a trigger-happy, pigeion-toed, verbally-challenged fella with distinct southern twang. Do we want to show our kids that it's okay to wave around two big guns and chase after bunnies? No, guns don't need to be waved around the salon as we hoot n' holler. Guns shouldn't be fired around to scare people (or bunnies) into doing what we want them to.

Oh, and then there was Speedy Gonzales "The Fastest Mouse in all Mexico", who was the real inspiration for tonight's blog. He has his oversized yellow sombrero, a white shirt and trousers, and a red kerchief. (stereotype much?) Apparently, Speedy can't speak proper english either. He talks in broken english and is called stupid. He runs around at his speedy pace yelling the classic, "Arriba!" and his mice buddies are lazy and hard-drinking. He lives in the town of Tamales, and speaks often about his desire to "eat a burrito!"

So, then I started thinking a little. Monsieur Pepé Le Pew came to mind. He is constantly going after a cat who he thinks is a skunk and simply will not take no for an answer. He is constantly manipulative, aggressive, and apparently believes "no" means "yes". This clip that I found below is a perfect example of the crazy stuff that is on the boob tube where kids are seeing Pepé Le Pew manipulate miss Pussycat into getting what his wants, her attention.



So you see, it is by no means just Disney giving kids all the wrong ideas about people, and relationships. It's in other classic tales in cartoon form. Let's just hope there are good parents there to help them sort out good from bad and right from wrong.