Blog 2

There is a great deal of diverse advertisements that utilize certain aspects of the human body that are purposely accentuated in order to subconsciously attract their audience into purchasing their product.  I chose to blog about a Tom Ford cologne advertisement that is extraordinarily blatant and obvious that they are using a woman to captivate the attention of the male viewer.

Desire is a strong emotion that advertising agencies use to attempt to manipulate and exploit in the minds of their audience to make them feel a certain way.  It is almost as if they are tricking your subconscious into making you want to buy that product.  Solomon speaks on such acts in his “Masters of desire” essay.  Solomon states, “’Manipulate’ is the word here, not ‘persuade’; for advertising campaigns are not sources of product information, they are exercises in behavior modification.”  These advertisers are playing with your head because “America is a nation of fantasizers”.  Advertisers know what your desires and fantasies are, therefore allowing them to do things such as have nude females pose with a product aimed toward a male consumer base.  You would then associate the product, in this case cologne, with your sexual desires, which is something you think about a decent amount at random points throughout the day.  For advertisers, it is all about tapping into your subconscious desires to make their money.  Just as Solomon suggests, as long as your subconscious remains your subconscious, advertisers will continue to exploit it to manipulate you.

 The advertisement is comprised of three different, but similar, pictures of an oiled up female, who is obviously beautiful.  In the largest picture, the model has a bottle of Tom Ford’s first fragrance for men between her breasts, with her own hands covering her nipples.  Her fingernails are painted red.  This is significant because men are more attracted to a woman who is wearing the color red somewhere on her body, according to a breakthrough study conducted by the University of Rochester.  Her fingernails are a main piece of the ad since you notice them almost immediately, especially because they are just hardly covering her nipples, causing the male audience to statistically be pre-determinedly more attracted to the ad than if her nails were painted any other color, or not painted at all.  In the smaller pictures, the fragrance bottle is placed between the model’s legs, covering her vagina.  In the picture on the left side, the advertisers do not show any nipple, but rather cropping the image so close to the nipple you can view about half of her entire breasts.  Her legs are also spread open, and her hands are placed in a seductive manner upon her body, which is also the case for the other two pictures.  The ad is unashamedly sex oriented. 

“Sex never fails as an attention getter” and “advertisers like to bet on a sure thing” are statements that Solomon included in his essay.  Sex and sexuality in an advertisement is a compulsive force that acts to get your full attention, hook, line and sinker.  Solomon also mentions that a substantial amount of sexual oriented advertisements are created out of desperation by returning to the sure thing in order to ensure that the client is getting their money’s worth.  I feel it is impossible to determine whether or not this is the case with this certain advertisement, based on the fact that we have no way of knowing what the ad company was thinking.

In relation to Devor, this ad coincides with her quote, “feminine styles of dress likewise display subordinate status through greater restriction of the free movement of the body, greater exposure of the bare skin, and an emphasis on sexual characteristics.”  This ad in particular deals more with the two latter statements. The woman in the ad is literally completely naked, covered only by the bottle of cologne and her hands.  She is exuding sexuality, promiscuity, attraction and desirability, which helps urge the male audience to purchase Tom Ford’s cologne.  This advertisement is a prime example of how advertisers are using desire to construct a stereotypical notion of gender through the usage of an extremely provocative image.  A link to the advertisement is here: http://adland.tv/files/imagecache/postimage/media/print/tomforformen.jpg

A link to the University of Rochester’s psychological study on how wearing red enhances men’s attraction to women is here: http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=3268