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!