Written - A bit of a structure

BLUE - WHERE QUOTES CAN BE ADDED 
RED - WHERE WEBSITE INFO CAN BE ADDED, OR YOUTUBE CLIPS. 


FIRST CHAPTER

- Advertising history, so how advertising has changed over time in terms of the techniques used and what was successful.
-How is advertisement a successful tool? What sells?
- What do the audience get sucked into, how does it influence us?

• can't buy my love quotes here, how we get sucked in, how influencial advertisement can be, how companies get to know their audience. 
• Gender and popular culture page 152 'hypodermic syringe model'

- The different gender stereotypes within advertisement i.e which products are for which gender
- Gender tones they use, wording, colour.

• Marketing segmentation - dividing a product into different categories to make it better for business
• page 22-25 of media gender and identity. media power vs people power, adorno quotes
• gender bias and sexism in advertisement http://www.genderfoodculture.com/tag/gender-bias-and-sexism-in-advertising/

SECOND CHAPTER

- Specific products that are feminine cliche's. Look at the product, how its designed, how is it advertised, how its then advertised in store
- Is celebrity endorsement used, how has this affected women and in turn how has it affected men.
- Data to back up whether it is successful to use women in advertisement
- look at diet coke too the negative aspect of making women want to lose weight for men

how in women magazines just like mens, men can be used in advertisement as sexual objects. Seen in media gender and identity page 41, 42 and 182 men as sexual beings in heat magazine

page 7 of media gender and identity how women are encouraged to be assertive

• page 152 in gender and popular culture 'early feminist researchers' into how media affects womens behaviour
• CONTRAST to media effecting women, showing that women are a little bit more clued up than to fall for it, page 153 in gender and popular culture quote rosalind balister et al. 
• bias women commercials https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Njq9wNpSXQM
• bic pen for women - ellen degreneres https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhbYbIgjjjA

THIRD CHAPTER

- Specific masculine products. Look at the product, how is it designed
- what colours and words they use
- how is it advertised, how is it advertised in store
- is celebrity endorsement ( can't buy love quotes on heroes), how has it affected women, and how has it affected men
- Data to back up whether it is successful

• media gender and identity notes on mens magazines, fhm, laddish stereotypes, semi-naked women and whether its sexist
• best razors - does what it is supposed to do, practical, advertised as a gadget

SUMMARY

- Summarise how advertisement affects audience and in turn how using gender within this affects cultures and the negative connotations it produces.
- Touch on gender neutral product advertisement and how that too can be equally as affective.

• Bill bernbach quotes on just simple advertisement, straight to the point, product specific (volkswagen)
• Effect it has on children which shapes the future of advertising - page 39 of media gender and identity about gender schematic processing theory
• the guardians 8 ads that shatter gender stereotypes http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2015/may/26/eight-ads-shatter-gender-stereotypes
• the guardian fight back against gendered toys for kids http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/apr/22/gendered-toys-stereotypes-boy-girl-segregation-equality
• bechdel test for gender bias in movies, could we apply the same context to advertisement http://www.fastcocreate.com/3021258/swedish-theaters-now-using-bechdel-test-to-rate-films-on-gender-bias

Written - Bill Bernbach's book - A history of the advertising that changed the history of advertising (notes)

HOW ADVERTISING CAN BE THE OPPOSITE, BE SIMPLE, BE JUST THE PRODUCT, AND JUST AS EFFECTIVE

• Page 27 - Volkswagen ' Bill saw the Volkswagen car for what it was, honest, simple, reliable, sensible, different. And he wanted the advertising to be that way too. The temptations and pressures to do 'mainstream' car advertising were considerable. Bill's resistance was greater. "The product. The product. Stay with the product." Simple.'
• Page 45 'All of us who professionally use the mass media are the shapers of society. We can vulgarise that society. We can brutalize it. Or we can help lift it onto a higher level.'
• 111 ' Many times advertising has to provide an emotional reason for someone to buy a product : good looks, good health, love, money, and so on'

Written - Can't buy my love - How advertising changes the way we think and feel (notes)

• Page 33 'If you're like most people you think that advertising has no influence on you. This is what advertisers want you to believe.'
• page 34 'After all they might have the kind of success that Victoria Secret did during the 1999 Super Bowl when they paraded bra-and-panty-clad models across TV screens for a mere thirty seconds, one million people turned away from the game to log on to the Website promoted in the ad. No influence?' - THE MONEY THEY PAY
• 34 Make no mistake : 'The primary purpose of the mass media is to sell audiences to advertisers. We are the product.' - HOW WE GET SUCKED IN
• 34 Although we like to think of advertisement as unimportant, it is in fact the most important aspect of the mass media. - HOW INFLUENTIAL ADVERTISEMENT ACTUALLY IS
• 40 They spend a fortune on research to learn a lot about us, using techniques like polls, trend analysis, focus groups - HOW COMPANIES GET TO KNOW THEIR AUDIENCE
• 40 Most companies these days are hiring anthropologists and psychologists to examine consumers' product choices, verbal responses, even body language for deeper meanings 
• AFFECT IT HAS ON YOUNG PEOPLE, AND FURTHERMORE EVERYONE Page 41 ' Of course, it's not only young people who are influenced by their peers. Baron's tells its advertisers, "Reach the right bird and the whole flock will follow"
• 40 Baron's magazine 'Score a bulls-eye with every ad' "direct marketing is more like dropping a smart bombs with pinpoint accuracy' 
• EFFECT IT HAS ON CHILDREN page 43 Internet ads. 'Indeed, children are especially vulnerable on the Internet, where advertising manipulates them, invades their privacy, and transforms them into customers without their knowledge. Although there are various initiatives pending, there are as yet no regulations against targeting children online.' SO IF THEY SEE GENDER BIASED ADS, IT MIGHT INFLUENCE THEM TO ACT IN A CERTAIN WAY ACCORDING TO THEIR GENDER ROLE.
• page 44 ' children are easily influenced ' which can be dangerous really.. 
• HOW DIET INDUSTRIES TARGET WOMEN, makes them self conscious about their weight. Such as diet coke... The diet coke ads with he hunky men is saying if you go on a diet, these hunky men will surround you. 
• 57 Advertisers like to tell parents that they can always turn off the tv to protect their ids from any of the negative impact of advertising. This is like telling us that we can protect our children from air pollution by making sure they never breathe. Advertising is our environment. We swim in it as fish swim in water. We cannot escape it.
• 59 we are powerfully influenced, mostly on an unconscious level, by the experience of being immersed in an advertising culture, a market-driven culture, in which all our institutions, from political to religious to educational, are increasingly for sale to the highest bidder. 
• CELEBRITY ENDORSEMENT - how it affects the audience. Page 60 ' Todays little girls constantly rate the supermodels high on their list of heroes, and most of us know them by their first names alone... Cindy, Ellie, Naomi, Iman. Imagine - these women are heroes to little girls, not because of their courage or character or good deeds, but because of their perfect features and porcelain skin.'
• Page 64 'As Sut Jhally says, "To not be influenced by advertising would be to live outside of culture. No human being lives outside of culture.'

Written - Media gender & identity - notes

About magazines, but it's the same principal :

• MENS MAGS : 
• Pg 164 , "In her book OverLoaded : Popular Culture and the Future of Feminism (2000), Imedla Wheelman argued that magazines like Loaded, FHM, and Mazim are an attempt to override the message of feminism, promoting a laddish world where women are sex objects, and changes in gender roles can be dismissed with an ironic joke. "
• 165 "Picking on instances of sexism in the magazines is simple, but it doesn't explain why men want to read these things" 
• 166 " Some critics seem to think that what-needs-to-be-expalined is the set of devices which are used to generate ironic distance or knowingness, so that sexism can be both ridiculed and enjoyed within the same moment."
• 166 : " The critics are well-meaning: we don't want to see men pushed into a laddish stereotype, or see sexism reinforced - of course not. But we really need a better understanding of the types of masculinities projected by the various magazines before we can even begin to try to asses their potential impact. "
• 172 : Men like cars, gadgets and sport " A fascination with fast vehicles and electronic gadgets is reflected in almost all of the magazines. Sport features heavily in the UK men's weeklies in terms of spectatorship and participation." " GQ man, in particular, buys his way to a sense of male specialness with expensive cars, meals, hotels, shoes, grooming products, suits and property." "Men are therefore addressed as consumers - traditionally the role of women - although here it seems that ultimately it is a sense of masculine pride which is to be bought. 
• Other headlines --- men are fascinated by bravery and danger, men need help. 
• 176 : "Before FHM, conventional wisdom had it that women read magazines from an introspective point of view, seeking help and advice for, and about, themselves. Men on the other hand, read magazines about things like sport, travel, science, business and cars. FHM realises that men will read magazines about themselves if you give them the information in the right context: irrelevant, humorous, and never taking itself too seriously." --- (This links with how you can persuade men into reading information).
• 183 : Alluring poses of semi-naked women could specifically be said to be sexist because this feeds into the objectification of women, which is a longstanding form of oppression. Since there is not a comparable historical tradition of the offensive 'objectification of men', pictures of semi-naked men do not have the same impact. This used to be a really good argument, but as time goes by we start to think that since magazines for women and those for men celebrate super-attractive people, both women and men, it probably doesn't matter in sexism terms. 
• 185 : (HOW DIFFERENT ACTUALLY ARE WE?) "The magazines don't really think that the differences are fundamental, and that the 'sexist jokiness' is based on an understanding that men and women are not very different really - an idea underlined by he fact that men's and women's magazines are becoming increasingly similar in very obvious ways."
• 185 : In general it seems most appropriate to see men's magazines as reflecting a frequently imperfect attempt to find positions for the ideas of 'women' and 'men' in a world where it's pretty obvious that the sexes are much more the same than they are different. The magazines sometimes discuss men and women as if they were different species, but this is a way of making sense of reality, rather than reality itself, and readers (hopefully) understand this. 
• WOMENS MAGS : 
• Common themes being 'sex and sexuality' 'relationships' 'men as sex objects' 'transformation and empowerment'

Written - Advertisement of what makes the 'best' product

The 'best' razor of 2015…

I'm looking at the wording..
'barber that beard' --- its a beard culture so adhering to that trend.
The ULTIMATE shaver. A GADGET

'it does what its supposed to do' --- i.e it does what it says on the tin, its practical, what all men want, and more!!

Written - How do I get sales data of a product?

I looked into Mintel Reports they do market analysis and market studies for some oral hygiene sales reports. I thought if I had data of their sales within the last 5 years in comparison to a gender specific product in the same category I could find whether or not using gender is actually a useful sales technique.
However, looking on the website to access these forms they are £1,000 and over. I have emailed Mintel to ask if they have any information free of charge.

This is the kind of report I need but it is £300

Statistics

I found a good website for the sales of different products but it is in the US

http://www.statista.com/statistics/194706/leading-us-razor-brands-in-2013-based-on-sales/

This one is mens razors in the UK but its from 2014

Sale of mens grooming products in US 2014

Leading skin care products in the UK 

Who gets the most sales out of mens razor products in UK

What sells most in skincare (2013) UK

Women

Men

Top 5 mens skincare brands sales in UK in 2014

Simple, most selling skincare brand in 2014 - look at simple's advertisement

Leading mens toiletries brand by sales in UK 2014

Practical : Could I make my own gendered toothpaste brand?

Thus far, the advertisement of toothpaste is gender neutral, and seen more of a 'family' product. I could produce two separate gendered toothpastes and market these to be gender specific. Extremely exaggerated - to show that this is the way advertisement is going. The future ( obviously mocking it

• Why toothpaste? Because physically it will be easy for me to produce a toothpaste box so I have something physical I would just need a net and design on top of that.. unlike say a razor packet that's plastic.. Thus far it has not been gendered, at least not to a big scale to for use of selling. 
• I could also pitch this idea to a big brand such as Colgate, see their reaction. 
• It allows for some illustrative designs on the box of teeth maybe? 
• I can play with the wording, feminine being pastel coloured box, calligraphic font, fruity, zesty, hints of strawberry.. males being scientific, useful, a break down of exactly what the toothpaste is going to do to our teeth. Specific flavours etc, dark coloured box, formal font. 
• I feel like theres scope to really exaggerate it and make it funny and to make a specific gender for it seems ridiculous which is what I want to say

Colgate adhere to families and couples, like colgate brings everyone together
Cute couple advertising, like hey we both brush our teeth with colgate, together.

To all you mums out there protect your kids with colgate

So where do the singletons come in? The different sexualities? The career driven that don't want kids?

They've already got gender specific kids toothpaste, strawberry flavour for girls

Imagery

celebrity endorsement

Over time  how its changed 

Some questions for a questionnaire

Sex sells 

Targetting men with health words 

Written - individual tutorial

NOTES

Question : Why do companies persist in using reductive stereotypes of gender to sell their products within advertisement?

Argument : the use of reductive/stereotyped gender is a marketing tool. On one hand this is an effective strategy and successful, but it has harmful social consequences. I.e the different genders adhere to this role or it makes them feel less of a man/woman etc.

Intro 500 words

1) history of gender stereotypes in advertising. Get a book on this. Core book to go off about the history. Define the gender stereotypes as they have been constructed. (Books also here persuasion in advertising, media gender and identity, psychology of advertising) 3,000 words

2) Cliched feminine product specific. 2,250 words - with each of these you look at the product, how it is designed, how it is advertised, how it is then advertised in store, celebrity endorsement, the effect it then has on the audience i.e is it successful, data on this..

3) Cliched masculine product specific 2,250


Have a draft of chapter 1 done in 2 weeks time

Written and Practical - Unnecessarily gendered products

Just when I am half way through my research and finally home in on what I am interested on, I come across a full tumblr page dedicated to it.

http://unnecessarilygenderedproducts.tumblr.com

Marketing segmentation 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JDmb_f3E2c

Dividing it up into smaller groups is good for business. Is it?

Narrowing it down means they sell more versions of the same product

Lego for girls - trippled the sale of lego and scored the company a 25% increase in global revenue

Same for everything, if they make two types they can sell more of the same product. Also the products are often sold at different prices. 

WHY ARE WE NOT STOPPING THIS?

This video suggests we ignore anything that is not in our section of the store, we only look at what is advertised to us. 

Written - Contacting Bic

Hi,
My name is Adele Pierce. I am currently in the last year of my Illustration degree and I have chosen the pen 'Bic for her' as a product to research in my dissertation. I am looking at how products use gender within their advertisement and whether this is a necessary and successful selling tool. I just wondered if you could shed some light on this product or point me in the direction of someone who can?
Why was this product designed for females in particular, do we as humans on a whole not use pens collectively? Does purely selling for females impact on the sales of your products? For example, have you found that more or less females have purchased the pen. Have they been offended by this much like Ellen Degeneres was when you asked her to be the mascot of the pen?
Do you think it was necessary to connote a specific gender when advertising a product?
Thank you for your time, this would really help with my dissertation research and I would be most grateful for any feedback.

Written - Contacting Snickers

I sent a message to snickers asking about their 'get some nuts' slogan

It read : 

Hi, 

My name is Adele Pierce and I am actually a student from England. I am currently in the last year of my Illustration degree and I have chosen Snickers as a product to research in my dissertation. I am looking at how products use gender within their advertisement and whether this is a necessary and successful selling tool. I just wondered if you could shed some light on the 'get some nuts' slogan, or point me in the direction of someone who can. 

Why was this slogan chosen, other than the obvious fact snickers contains nuts, the underlying message is that you are appealing to a target audience of males. Does this impact on the sales of your products? For example, have you found that less females have purchased Snickers because of this? 

Do you think it was necessary to connote a specific gender within the advertisement of Snickers? 

Thank you for your time, this would really help with my dissertation research and I would be most grateful for any feedback. 

Adele Pierce

Written - Questions for tutorial

• Who can I contact - for example products such as snickers, yorkies etc email them and ask why their target audiences are a specific gender. Also supermarkets ask why they categorise products into different gender sections. If so, what is the best way of going about this, like who do I need to speak to and how do I do that professionally. How do I word the emails etc? 
• Is a questionnaire worth doing?
• What other theorists look at gender and advertisement?
• Is there any other sites or books I can look at for advertisement 
• Structure of my essay, what do I look at first so do I look at gender specific adverts, sexism, exaggeration of sex, then look at gender neutral advertisement, how it has changed over time, then how gender is used unnessesarily for certain products, and how it could just be eliminated. What can my main focus be in terms of a theorist to back up all of my research?
• Practical idea - should i make my own gender neutral campaign or should it be an exaggeration and play on gender for a certain product and market that.
• Books - am I reading the right stuff? I don't want to get bogged down reading things that could be irrelevant 

Practical - products brainstorm

Products that I could explore that have no gender specification. Eg used by both and no gender relevance

Any of these I think would be humorous to explore as a particular gender type.

• mobile
• food - cereal, bread, veg, soup, meat, biscuits, 
• alcohol
• oral care - dental
• suncream
• sexual stuff e.g. lube
• vitamins
• shower gel
• fabric conditioners
• washing up liquid
• kitchen roll
• toilet roll
• electrical stuff e.g. lightbulbs
• cleaning products
• batteries
• gardening tools
• car products
• air fresheners
• television/dvd player
• kitchen appliances
• stationary

Instead of just looking at males I could do a male version and a female version and then a gender neutral one to see which one is most successful

Masculine illustrated packaging

Bold text, brown blue black and grey colours, specific and masculine product illustrations. Straight to the point

Feminine illustrated packaging

More pastel colours, calligraphic font, floral designs

Gender specific names for products 

• weener cleaner - soap
• manscara
• brotox
• mandle - mens candle
• broghurt
• bronut
• guyliner

Practical - Title - homing it down

I decided from my dissertation that the area I am most interested in is how advertisement uses gender unncessarily within products. 

I think this gives me a good start with practical ideas. - synthesis

PRACTICAL

Brainstorming so far I am thinking I could produce a product based on this and market it in a humorous way. In terms of marketing I could mock up a website, the logo, packaging, displays, window displays, aisle displays, leaflets and posters, an advertisement online such as a youtube clip. 

I looked at #femininemasculinity on twitter for inspiration of this. These are mens products that use gender and exaggerate it. 

I think it would be interesting to do a mens product because men get a lot of stick from feminism that is an attack on them, whereas if we support them and push equality instead I think this is a stronger message in todays society. 

I'm not sure how to go about it whether to do a product that is usually aimed at females from a male perspective, or create a product that is exaggerated to be masculine, or to create a product that is gender neutral and emphasise it being for BOTH. For example a skin care product, under the aisle of 'for anyone who has skin' that kind of thing. Shampoo for 'anyone with hair' or razors for 'anyone who's hairy' because at the end of the day they all serve the same purpose. 

I would like a really sarchastic marketing approach. I have this voice in my head of how it would be worded : 

For example toothpaste.. You sir, you over there, you look like a guy with teeth, would you like to brush them like a real man? Try our Dentaldude specifically designed for bla bla.. 

And the packaging would be strictly male. The flavours would be masculine and musk. Obviously it is ridiculous because everybody has teeth. 

Written - Dissertation prep powerpoint summary

Written - Cop Dissertation lecture - organising research project

Notes

richard.miles@leeds-art.ac.uk

• Book in the library on critical thinking skills or doing your research project - tells you how to write one
• 40 credits (400 hours of study)
• 6,900 words (990 with 10% bracket) alongside practical work
• 2.5 hours individual support (5 1/2 hour tutorials)
• come prepared, send work in advance
• DEADLINE 14TH JAN 4PM - 15 weeks time
• try have a draft submitted by christmas

Planning project

• write down questions, what do you want to ask, what do you wanna investigate, why are you doing this
• consider each on their merits and focus on two (primary and secondary)
• write an A4 'first thoughts sheet' for each
• whats the purpose of the study? is it achievable? is it researchable? e/g interviewing brands
• working title

Chose an appropriate title - An answerable thesis

• might be a title and a subtitle e.g gender biased advertisement - does bla la
• make notes of key questions that your research raises as you go along
• max 20 word title
• discuss with tutor on first tutorial
• can be changed before deadline

Project outline

• consider timings
• deadline 15 weeks - what will you do
• factor in project plan to have  a draft by xmas
• consider work/holidays/life in plan
• think about your title and then the different component parts that need researching 
• introduction comes last
• do i need to go on a visit, contact an artist, interview etc
• Do i need to read before anything else?
• factor it into a project outline
• manage practical alongside that
• do you write or make first
• factor in tutorials as targets in plan

Turnitin draft submission

• need to have submitted something into turnitin by 11th december

Literature search

• what books, videos, websites are out there
• who are the specialists
• put an end point in plan where you stop reading and start doing
• 100 hours reading - which writers/websites are most important - who is everyone mentioning?
• 5 books that are major
• 10 books that are helpful
• 20 books that can be skimmed through to support etc
• find key texts
• use online journals - www.jstor.org
• bring all of this to tutorials
• secondary sources - criticism of text ( triangulation )

References

• complete a bibliography at the START of a project 
• harvard referencing
• include name, forename, date, place, publisher, page 
• - Miles, R. (2015) 'Dissertation,' Leeds, LCA publishing.

Structure

• Use chapters
• each chapter evidence a different theoretical/methodological approach
• conclusion draws chapters together
• formal intro - aims, approaches
• move from general to specific

Module Overview

• Go to cop on estudio, module overview. Tells you what weeks tutorials are on and what you're expected to do week to week

Ethical approval

• Before you involve anyone in interviews etc check with tutors for how ethical it is

Research approaches 

• Survey
• data collect/market research
• interviews
• reflective journal
• action research
• participant observation .... which ones most useful to me?

Get more marks with primary research!