Video Series Argues Billions Are Wasted Marketing to Girls
OK. Pay attention. If you are a marketer or an ad agency that markets products and services to tweens, teens and twenty-something females you owe it to yourself to spend some time viewing these videos from 3iYing, a New York based "all girl creative agency" which has filmed hundreds of girls reacting to ads for a series called Adflip. In each of the videos, girls tell us why the ads they hold in their hands cause them to flip the page and get ignored.
Commenting on the ridiculousness of many of the ads twenty year old Rosaura sees in her favorite magazine, she says there are "orgasm faces everywhere. It looks like they're climaxing right there on the page." One tween wonders why a Lot29 Juniors ad features a giant breasted girl in the ad saying, "I'm a junior and I don't look like this. What does she stuff everything in her bra?" Explaining why a Dodge ad got the flip, one girl says, "to market a car it's not like once it matches my lipstick, oh, of course I'm going to go and buy it."
3iYing Founder Heidi Dangelmaier tells us, "This series directly links massive financial waste to specific girl-market misunderstandings, and challenges the predominant methods agencies use to develop creative strategies." She's not wrong.
Oh sure, it's all an agency promotion but it's one that gives something back to the ad industry in the way of insight...for free. The promotion asks YouTube members to contribute videos to the series and there are now 159 since the project was launched a couple months ago.There's a roll up promotional video of the whole effort here.
Will Dangelmaier haul in millions from marketers eager to improve their marketing to tweens, teens and twentysomethings? We know not but we do give her big points for trying in a unique and bullshit-free manner.
Topic: Agencies, Good, Promotions, Trends and Culture, Video
Comments
It's interesting to hear the voice of the consumer, sure, but what about their ability to actually say anything about what drives their behaviour.
Unfortunately for these amusing and intelligent young ladies, their active processing says nothing of the long term effects of advertising.
SOV still drives SOM, and almost all modern effectiveness studies supports Ehrenbergs "weak theory".
Intresting .... but what's the point? So these girls don't like the ads - do they also NOT buy the products? I'd like to know that.
I think the video was great and the underlying point to it, although it isn't stated, is to show how crappy advertisements like the ones that were featured don't relate to the age group they're supposed to be targeting.
And instead, the ads are influencing an even younger generation of young pre-teen 11, 12 year old girls that read 17 magazine because they think it's cool. They're the ones who see images like this in the media and think that's the norm. A girl orgasming in a photo, a girl spreading her legs, women as sexual objects...young girls are going to grow up to think that its ok to objectify themselves and they're gonna grow up thinking that the skinny girl they see in a magazine is how they should look...which will lead to anorexia/bulimia.
I think the young girls that made this video are trying to CHANGE that image in the media so that they can change the way teens view themselves, leading them away from having sex too young or developing eating disorders...
I think the video was great and the underlying point to it, although it isn't stated, is to show how crappy advertisements like the ones that were featured don't relate to the age group they're supposed to be targeting.
And instead, the ads are influencing an even younger generation of young pre-teen 11, 12 year old girls that read 17 magazine because they think it's cool. They're the ones who see images like this in the media and think that's the norm. A girl orgasming in a photo, a girl spreading her legs, women as sexual objects...young girls are going to grow up to think that its ok to objectify themselves and they're gonna grow up thinking that the skinny girl they see in a magazine is how they should look...which will lead to anorexia/bulimia.
I think the young girls that made this video are trying to CHANGE that image in the media so that they can change the way teens view themselves, leading them away from having sex too young or developing eating disorders...
I think the video was great and the underlying point to it, although it isn't stated, is to show how crappy advertisements like the ones that were featured don't relate to the age group they're supposed to be targeting.
And instead, the ads are influencing an even younger generation of young pre-teen 11, 12 year old girls that read 17 magazine because they think it's cool. They're the ones who see images like this in the media and think that's the norm. A girl orgasming in a photo, a girl spreading her legs, women as sexual objects...young girls are going to grow up to think that its ok to objectify themselves and they're gonna grow up thinking that the skinny girl they see in a magazine is how they should look...which will lead to anorexia/bulimia.
I think the young girls that made this video are trying to CHANGE that image in the media so that they can change the way teens view themselves, leading them away from having sex too young or developing eating disorders...
I think the video was great and the underlying point to it, although it isn't stated, is to show how crappy advertisements like the ones that were featured don't relate to the age group they're supposed to be targeting.
And instead, the ads are influencing an even younger generation of young pre-teen 11, 12 year old girls that read 17 magazine because they think it's cool. They're the ones who see images like this in the media and think that's the norm. A girl orgasming in a photo, a girl spreading her legs, women as sexual objects...young girls are going to grow up to think that its ok to objectify themselves and they're gonna grow up thinking that the skinny girl they see in a magazine is how they should look...which will lead to anorexia/bulimia.
I think the young girls that made this video are trying to CHANGE that image in the media so that they can change the way teens view themselves, leading them away from having sex too young or developing eating disorders...
I think it's a little overbearing and obnoxious to think that advertising is the biggest factor in making girls anorexic or bulimic. If nothing else this series illustrates that young women are generally more sophisticated than that. I'd suggest that a bigger factor in diseases that effect younger females is simple peer pressure. As advertisers we wish we had that kind of influence. Unfortunately, the cute girl who is getting all of the attention who is a little older and a little cooler is really going to dictate all of the fashion and therefore buying decisions that young women make. End of story. Media expression is certainly a factor in eating disorders, but it's far from the only one.
I agree with much of the feedback being provided. Some of this video is insightful, but much of it is just wrong. I posted more of my thoughts to:
http://www.martyfeldmanizeme.com/2007/09/3iying-tells-advertisers-theyre-getting.html
Ugly girls who don't like the way women are portrayed in print ad campaigns, shocking. I'd rather watch 5 minutes of static. It would be a hell of a lot better than watching a bunch of painfully unaware whiners show me torn out ads from the pages of the latest crappy womens magazine, all the while offering nothing but grade school critiques and not a damn thing to do about it.
Hey uggo's did you ever think about NOT buying these magazines that seem to accost every moral fiber in your body?
Keep up the work Ad companies and you'll get extra exposure from disgruntled yet obtuse girls
The EI-EI-O marketing model is very much in evidence here.
Eyeballs >Interest>Enticing Interaction = Outcome
;P
I'm with you scourge. What I would like to see is what made them buy the clothes they're wearing. I'd bet they can't point to a single ad that did, but advertising still had a lot to do with it. Also, what kind of advertising do we need to get them to buy masks?
Agree - I love that she's wearing a Tiffany necklace while delivering the fact that advertising doesn't work. Sure - I can point to a million ads I think are wrong...but as much as I hate it, even as a consumer I know it leads me towards purchase. But - this is interesting in that this generation doesn't sit back and wait for things to happen, they make the change they want to see.