Advertisements are everywhere. Whether you’re scrolling through Instagram, watching television or waiting at a T stop, they approach you from around every corner. It’s normal — perhaps even expected — for marketing companies to exploit people’s weaknesses.
But many of these weaknesses are about physical appearance and embodiment. Women’s deodorants are catered to fulfill — from packaging to advertisement — the strictly soft feminine ideal of a woman. Men’s deodorants, on the other hand, pander to the complete opposite. They often have boastful and hypermasculine names like Adidas’ Dynamic Pulse and Axe’s Anarchy.
I’ve always found this ridiculous. When walking down CVS aisles, there’s a clear line between men’s and women’s products: razors, shampoos, soaps, deodorant, pens and even tissues.
This maintenance of strict gender roles reflects society’s expectations for individuals to conform to the gender binary — from buying the right deodorant to performing in overtly feminine or masculine ways. But marketing strategies that rely on gender ideals perpetuate unrealistic standards for everyone.
These standards are propped up by campaigns that also follow the “sex sells” logic. Product ads that have nothing to do with sex are framed in an overly dramatic and hypersexualized manner, with skinny, photoshopped women and buff men.
Sex may be appealing, but it’s incredibly detrimental to constantly show these edited, unrealistic versions of people. Nobody wants to feel embarrassed because of models that don’t exist — least of all when they’re blown up on a wall for everyone to see.
While we may not recognize it, marketing has a massive impact on the public’s minds. Halitosis, for example, was not recognized as a medical condition until Listerine decided to capitalize off of bad breath. In 1928, a Listerine advertisement was published with the term “halitosis” to target people’s social anxiety, stating that it was “unexcusable” and a cause for being unpopular.
Refusing to buy a product will not make you unattractive, unpopular or lesser-than. Advertisements suggesting those things are misleading and are setting a dangerous precedent.
And though it’s true that marketing, at its core, relies on manipulating our psychology, it doesn’t need to exploit insecurity to close the deal.
In a 2013 content marketing keynote, Jonathan Lister, vice president of LinkedIn, noted that marketers should be “changing the mantra from ‘always be closing’ to ‘always be helping.’” Instead of appealing to people’s fears, companies should be appealing to their genuine needs.
Many brands have already acted on this. Aerie, a branch of the American Eagle company, has taken steps to be more body-positive in their advertising by hiring a wider variety of women to pose in their catalogues.
Its campaign “Aerie Real” took off in 2014, aiming to display a diverse array of un-Photoshopped models. Through promotion of female empowerment, Aerie sells its products by making its audience feel comfortable with themselves and their insecurities. No tricks, no manipulation and no sexualization.
Aerie and other companies have proven that it is possible to sell products and help people by deploying non-predatory marketing campaigns. In fact, by appealing to regular women, Aerie’s sales have increased greatly year after year, at an average increase of 27 percent per year, more than doubling its total revenue from 2015.
Marketing can be harnessed for good. It can reduce stigma, unify communities and recognize important problems while supplying the solutions.
In a world that is already so fraught with problems, there is no need to use the halitosis appeal or sex appeal to create new issues out of thin air. There is no need to prey on insecurities or capitalize on stereotypes and unrealistic expectations.
It’s important to spread positive messages and stop setting impossible standards. It’s time to move into a new age of marketing and highlight the ways in which customers will legitimately benefit from using a product.
