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What do you think of this ad? What ideas does it privilege? Underprivilege? Who is the perceived audience? Who is not? Does it operate from a rationalist paradigm? Why or why not? Is it sexist? Why or why not? What are the implicit ethical messages being transmitted here?
You can pick and choose any of these questions to answer, or come up with your own.
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Best Buy Ad:
I believe this ad just shows the true ignorance of the people in the room who brainstormed the idea of the ad, including all the writing editors and management who approved it. The basis of the ad would have a solid ground if someone had stopped to realized that only men were included in this ad when they could have easily included some women as there are plenty of inventions which were solely created by women. Here is a quick example of a 10 second google search of some inventions created by women which influenced modern technology. https://www.airfilters.com/white-papers/Inventions-by-Women-that-have-Influenced-Modern-Technology.html If any of the editors took just minutes of additional research for this they probably would have walked away with a solid ad. Bests Buy had a perceived audience of the “tech-guru” who would only look up to and respect these men and because of that would be influenced to buy something from the store, but in reality the actual audience rightfully found the issue with them showing only men in the ad. I believe it is sexist and this could have been easily avoided. -
When I think of the mentioned ads, I think of the specific audience it tries to attract. While the Superbowl has traditionally held a majority-male audience, these ads outright ignore or marginalize the female audience with its sexualization of ads catered to its targeted male audience. A rational paradigm from an epistemological sense includes the utilization of facts and numbers. It should not be surprising that men make up the majority of members who watch the Superbowl. However, this begs the question of whether or not the creators of these ads had moral intentions to begin with. I don’t think so. I think, without the people creating the ads knew it or not, that content that play on stereotypes that women are perceived as subservient, lesser or as sex objects, damage the relationship between men and women in inconsequential ways. Of course one of the ads play the stereotype of men being ugly nerds, but if he gets to kiss the hot model, do we really pity him? Other than barring or condemning such ads, it is immoral to call on specific stereotypes that glorify an innate gender divide. To justify this thought, I ask myself, “How would a woman feel if she watched the same advertisements and processed that sex or her body was the end-result of her significant other presenting her with a product from these companies?”. Is she expected to “give it up” just because she was presented with a new pair of lingerie? Is being presented something with a sexual undertone a requisite for her to “put out”? I don’t think so.
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This add is really disappointing. I don’t know if they were purposely doing this, or unknowingly left out a whole gender who also contributes to the technology industry, but either way, they failed. But don’t worry because women are featured in this ad somewhere! At the end, as Best Buy employees (major eye roll). It’s so blatantly disrespectful to women that I’m not surprised it came from a big American corporation. When you wonder about the producers of this ad thinking about what their audience will be, they obviously assume it’s going to be predominantly male, considering its the super bowl and no women could possibly be watching the super bowl (again, eye roll). But even men should see what’s wrong with this ad, the majority of men these days are not so ignorant when it comes to gender inequality to let this ad slide (at least I’d like to believe so…)
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After the watching Best Buy’s ad, I decided to watch the rest of these mentionable ads. Wow, I thought to myself, the game of advertising has and is quite alarming. I don’t know who is creating, leading, and approving ads like this one. It had me thinking that there wasn’t going to be a single woman shown in the entire ad. But just to touch all the demographic bases, Best Buy had decided to include women in over half the staff for the shot. I really don’t know what they were thinking with this. They even put the guys who made ‘words with friends’ and seemingly only for the airplane joke. It almost seems intentional in their exclusion of smart and innovative women in the industry. This can be seen even more blatantly in the Go-Daddy ad just above. With the over the top nerdy computer tech and model ‘face’ of the company making out. This berating of social stereotyping is so harmful for people and this is during an event seen by probably over half the nation. This is the corruption of minds of all ages and what’s even worse is that many can’t see the deeper meaning until pointed out to them. In all honesty, I don’t think I would’ve noticed this sexist jab if it had not been explained to me now. This is true for a lot of people who are just continuously being brainwashed by these commercials time and time again. Things won’t change until we do.
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All of these ads seem to be targeted to the older male audience, which is the majority of the committed NFL fanbase. Most ads set the image to the viewer that women are sexual objects/naggers/uncreative and men should be rewarded with sex for simple tasks. I would say most of these ads have the same sharing thread of sexism, just plainly showing disrespect for women.
To me the funniest ad was the Mr clean one, I can’t lie it was definitely goofy but made me a bit sad thinking people are putting out the image that men are lazy and when they clean they are doing something phenomenal that would drive any woman crazy.
The most difficult ad to get through was the GoDaddy one, I knew something was wrong when I heard the word “sexy”, this made me think how many times did they have to rehearse/record this ad for the director to realize it was such an idiotic ad (which they didn’t). -
Most of these ads are objectifying towards women and the worst of them treat sex as the ultimate reward for men. Males are the perceived audience and are privileged as the ones who would be providing a good or service for the woman in exchange for some type of sexual favor. None of the women in the ads are portrayed in a respectable light and most of the ads force women into the back seat of relationships. The ethical message is that a woman’s only role in a relationship is to provide sexual satisfaction for their partner and discourages their input by painting it as nagging. Rather than embracing healthy relationships and equally representing women, these ads lean into sexist stereotypes that are harmful to society. I understand that it isn’t a major corporations job to instill values in their targeted audience but when every ad seems to take the same approach it has the potential to subconsciously brainwash the (predominately male) viewer. I think that we would all benefit from a society that has more healthy relationships with more of an emphasis on love (and not sex) as a motivating factor.
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I can see where people might get the idea that this ad might be sexist in a way since all of the technology and software being presented were invented my men. if there are any of these created by women and they apply to what the ad talking about, then I would have thrown it in there just to even things out, but I’m no expert in the matter so not sure if there is any as popular as the ones presented. to me it seemed rational, because they are not lying to you, they are just presenting the audience with facts. although if you think about it, it shows all men creations being sold by women in the Best Buy workplace so there is some privilege and underprivilege people in this sort of work. I noticed how the “Words with Friends” developers were flying coach instead of first class or in a private jet where you would expect some of these tech giants to fly. So either they are really humble, or are underprivileged. I’m not sure if the ad developers were trying to share a message other than the ad itself, but to me it seemed rational. Maybe next time, show something developed by a women that relates to the ad of course.
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I think the ad was sexist and the result of misconceptions by the producers of the ad. Advertisements are designed to specifically interest the people they’re targeted towards, and for the producers to assume that only males watch the Superbowl, and moreover, that those males will only be interested in a commercial that represents men as the only successful ones, was extremely sexist on their part. It was wrong for them to stereotype men as the only watchers of sports, and also wrong to only show successful males rather than females as well. It is good that the audience was unhappy with this ad’s portrayal of men as the only successful contributors to society, because that is simply not true. You would think that Best Buy would not want to market to people who believed that anyway, but unfortunately they did.
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As a Super Bowl commercial, this ad is presumably directed at a predominately male audience. In catering to such an audience, the ad has simplified feats of modern technology and given credit to individual (mostly) white men. It appears that Best Buy attempted to appease a white male audience by showing them successful white men, which perpetuates a stereotype that men are the sole leaders of technological innovation, among other things. Almost all the men pictured are seated in nice offices or traveling, which are also markers of success and privilege that may be attractive to other men. It is highly unlikely that any of the men featured in the advertisement created “their” products entirely on their own, and the countless people of other genders and races who lent ideas, expertise, and time to such inventions have been sidelined in this ad. Feminist ethics are based on the fact that women and minorities have long been “ignored or devalued by mainstream or traditional ethics,” and this treatment has been evident for centuries. The Best Buy commercial is a prime example of sexist marketing that plays into the idea of male superiority in terms of intelligence, success, and place in society. Though nothing said in the ad is explicitly and outright sexist or offensive, the intentional erasure of work that women and minorities have contributed to technology is a poor representation of actual innovation.
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The Best Buy ad is specifically targeted at the viewers of the Super Bowl, with the large majority of the audience being presumably male. In that regard, Best Buy’s intent for the ad is clear from the outset in that it is undeniably catering to a white male demographic. This is demonstrated repeatedly through the ad perpetuating the image of successful white men and their technological inventions and achievements. However, this can absolutely be perceived as a slight against feminist ethics because it’s entirely removing the contributions of both women and minorities to the advancement of these technologies (of which they undoubtedly had a hand in creating). As a result, the ad as a whole comes off as sexist in its portrayal of male superiority in the technological sector. The brunt of the male audience might not take notice of Best Buy’s egregious implications towards women, but the rest of the viewers can understandably have negative opinions on the ad’s execution/intent.
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Since this is a super bowl commercial which costs a ridiculous amount of money it can be assumed a lot of thought was put into this. The possibility of the commercial being sexist had to have been thought about and yet it still only shows successful white guys. I honestly don’t understand why they’re showing them. I don’t see a connection between successful individuals who have proven innovations and a big company who is claiming that they also made an innovation. Then there’s the reference to Alec Baldwin with the words with friends creators who aren’t innovators, so I think since it was a super bowl commercial they thought they had to throw in comedy somehow. To me this just seems like a person with little imagination needed to promote the companies cell phone services and this was all that they could come up with, while also shrugging off how people could find it as insensitive. If I was more familiar with specifically cell phone innovators I might be able to point out a woman who’s contributed, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that there aren’t any. Considering how the commercial doesn’t make sense I really don’t think they have an audience other than the broad spectrum of people who are like the employees at the end of the commercial, so people of that income class I suppose. Their intentions very likely were not malicious, but they were insensitive. It’s just a crappy commercial over all.
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Once again we see the male patriarchy, why wouldn’t I be surprised, the ad is full of rich white men who invented these great things that have moved us forward by why exclude women from the ad? There is no possible way they wanted anyone to think of this as male patriarchy they must have had just a huge overshoot in there advertising team. And of course, they add women in but at the very end as an afterthought. Although football is predominantly watched by men it does no take away from the fact they left out so many incredible female inventors.
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Coming from a Super Bowl ad we can assume that the intended audience are the millions of Americans, predominantly male that tune in every year. The ad capitalizes on this fact by displaying predominantly male creators, even for innovations that were not truly revolutionary. There are countless other examples of woman creators who have changed the way that we can absorb and access information on our phones, yet the ad chooses to neglect them instead focusing on males.The only glimpse we have at women in technology from the ad are not innovators just pushing the product, a more subservient role. This is very much a contradiction of rational ethics and feminist ethics, by choosing not to display the whole rational truth and the effect women have had on technology it continues to inadvertently or perhaps just overtly dissuade women from entering into technological fields in general, a gross misconduct.
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This ad is strictly targeting white males, especially since it was a super bowl ad. However, I think the people who made this ad were obviously not thinking about women, and all the contributions they have made in modern technology, and therefore I think this ad is sexist. Also, plenty of females watch football,it’s a fun sport to watch and plenty of teams to choose from to like. I think this ad probably had a negative ethical impact on women who are interested in technology because, by displaying only males in the ad makes it seem like only men can invent these cool technological tools.
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What do you think of this ad? What ideas does it privilege? Underprivilege? Who is the perceived audience? Who is not? Does it operate from a rationalist paradigm? Why or why not? Is it sexist? Why or why not? What are the implicit ethical messages being transmitted here?
You can pick and choose any of these questions to answer, or come up with your own.
I think this ad is very straight forward. Considering how expensive it is to run a superbowl add the complete thing is done in 30sec. The superbowl is one of the most watched events of the year and now everyone who saw it saw that bestbuy is offering a one stop spot to buy all phones that are capable of running all apps discussed in the opener. On the surface it shows the people who created/invented the most popular apps in that time frame and says if you want to use the apps go buy a phone from best buy where they will give you the best info and deal they can offer.
However, looking through a feminist view point you would see another ad entirely. All the ap inventors are portrayed as powerful MALE business MEN. It goes further and shows no diversity from the inventors, they all fit the white privileged male stereotype. It isn’t until the white male inventor clips come to an end that a women or person of color is shown in the ad. This could be interpreted as the group of Bestbuy workers all of different color and gender not in suits but rather in blue uniforms are only capable of selling these apps and devices and not capable of being a titan of mobile media like those depicted in the previous part of the ad. -
I think that this Ad is truly just trying to explain how all these other creators accomplished these “Impossible” things and that Best Buy is trying to be a middle-man by helping you get your opportunity to use all of these advancements. It privileges the idea that people in our society have accomplished things that before would have seemed impossible like turning your words into a voice, or sending a message via text, or even video recording something on a device as small and efficient as your cell phone, and the fact that these are some really amazing things that are often over looked or taken advantage of.
Since this was made as a super bowl ad, the perceived audience would most likely be older white males, if you want to stereotype who watches the super bowl. I think the rationalist paradigm would be that many people are familiar with these applications so it will appeal to many people.
In absolutely no way do I see this ad sexist, yes women have created many different applications that we may use in our daily lives as well, however I do not believe the writers of this ad would purposefully leave them out, or morally be able to do so if being sexist was one of their concerns. I think that the ethical message being transmitted here is to give others credit for their creations and advancements while trying to also promote Best-Buy as the location that you can get access to all of these things.
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What do you think of this ad? What ideas does it privilege? Underprivilege? Who is the perceived audience? Who is not? Does it operate from a rationalist paradigm? Why or why not? Is it sexist? Why or why not? What are the implicit ethical messages being transmitted here?
I think that the ad is trying to appeal to consumers by presenting some well known applications for their phones. The appeal is meant to be amplified by presentations from the inventors of the applications. The ad privileges the idea that people have developed amazing technologies for our use, and highlights some of them to appeal to the consumer. As a Super Bowl ad, the perceived audience would be people who watch Super Bowl commercials and enjoy their over-exaggerated nature. In general, most of these people are likely men. A rationalist paradigm would be that we know Best Buy is trying to sell phones, and looking for a different motivation for why the structured the ad the way they did might be an emotional reaction to a perceived injustice. I don’t necessarily see this ad sexist, but they certainly could have included female innovators. However, I am not familiar enough with the creators of apps in general to know what well known or widely used apps on phones were created by men or women. I’m not sure there is an ethical message here. It seems more like Best Buy is just trying to hype up their products to increase sales.
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I believe that this ad is poorly produced especially for a Super Bowl ad. There was no emotional appeal and it was just a bunch of white guys advertising to the rest of the white guys watching the “big game”. I do not think this ad is sexist or has any ethical message because it does not portray much of anything at all. However, I can see why this type of ad would be accepted by the average football fan. If people of color, women of color, or women at all were to be used in the advertisement, the average football fan would complain about the “politically correct” nature of the ad because it would seem purposeful instead of the bare minimum.
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This ad by Best Buy was aired during the 2012 Superbowl where the New York Giants, led by the almighty Eli Manning, defeated the New England Patriots. This has absolutely nothing to do with the basis of the advertisement but as a Giants fan I had to point it out. The ad shows all the technological inventions made by individuals that bettered peoples daily lives. The issue at hand with the ad is that all of the inventors shown were male. The Super Bowl was watched by 111 million people that year. The breakdown of this was that of the 111 million viewers, 64 million were male while 47 million were female. Along with this, a study was done to show that off all new inventions in the world, about 70 percent were created by men. I don’t believe that this ad was a sexist ad at all. I think it was a marketing decision to have all of the inventors shown in the ad be male. If you are trying to sell beef, you are not going to target it towards Hindu people. It just doesn’t make sense. If you are trying to sell products to a predominantly male watched event, you are going to target the ad towards men. It’s how marketing works. Some may say that this ad was sexist because it didn’t include any female inventors but I think it was simply a marketing decision to try and sell to the viewers.
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In my opinion, this ad is intended for the male audience because they seem to be catering towards men’s interests. They only present male inventors and they fail to give any credit to women who have also invented technologies such as the first computer algorithm. However, I don’t see the ad as sexist because it doesn’t insinuate that women haven’t invented helpful technologies in the past just as these men have. The ad just happened to present certain inventors that were male that have innovated technology and failed to show any women inventors. I believe that the implicit ethical message of the video was that the audience should appreciate the advanced technologies that were innovated by the inventors that they were honoring, and in turn, buy these innovative technologies at Best Buy.
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Well, I’m honestly shocked that the advertisement agency sat in a board room, came up with this idea and then watched it when it was done and went “Yep, run it at the Superbowl”. Overall, it’s actually a clever ad, BUT, it really does marginalize women and ignore their contributions. Hedy Lamarr invented the broad spectrum technology that allows individuals to talk to one another over a secure line, without interruption or wires, or cables on their cell phones. With a predominantly male audience, I understand what the advertising agency was trying to do, but they really fell on their face for this one.
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The ad was run during the Superbowl with a majority male audience watching the event, however, the ad still does not really include women. The ad could be seen as sexist because the only women portrayed were the workers at best buy and not any of the creators of the apps. I believe that the marketing team should have put a female as one of the creators because women have also made contributions. The ad portrays an image that suggests that women do not have the ability to create apps. This thought may have slipped the minds of the several individuals working on the advertisement or maybe they could not reach a female developer, but I believe that BestBuy messed up with this advertisement. This advertisement could definitely be seen as sexist.
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The Best Buy Superbowl ad displayed blatant sexism. It’s really disappointing considering how much the people that made this ad got paid to think about every little detail of the ad. I’m not sure if this was intentional, but it definitely should’ve been thought of. Although the main demographic of Superbowl viewers are male, the lack of females didn’t go unnoticed. Of course, the only females in this ad are Best Buy employees. I’m sure they learned their lesson with the amount of negative publicity they got from this ad.
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I think this Super Bowl ad targets people who are able to afford purchasing a new phone. Its’ perceived audience seems be those that appreciate innovation. However, it clearly fails to highlight women and makes no attempt to share their contributions to innovation. In doing so, I think it isolates the audience to predominantly males. Thus, I think it is implicitly sexist. I think Best Buy’s marketing ideas privilege white males with a strong sense of entitlement.
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This ad shows what was produced 8 years ago. If the ad was produced today, it would likely be a little different. Today, instead of showing only white male inventors, they might show one. They would show women and different races with their inventions. Women and other races have invented many great things in this industry, but the majority of remarkable breakthroughs have been white men. This is demonstrated in the commercial. The Words with Friends part took away from the argument in my opinion. They should have represented females and other races because of their contributions to this industry. When looked at stats, it has been found that more women think the ads are the most important part. So, with the majority of women preferring the ads, shouldn’t Best Buy and other companies be trying to target them? In my opinion, no. Many married couples share cell phone plans which includes purchasing new phones. In this patriarchy society where the males typically make the money, they can afford the high price. Men are typically into technology and innovation, so this would appeal to them. Overall, I believe that this commercial is fine and shouldn’t offend anyone.
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After observing what’s presented in the 30 sec ad…
This privileges the ideas of men as creators, and misrepresents women as vendors for the creator’s goods, or a ‘hinderance’.
The first 21 seconds of this ad consist of men, most of which in their own frame entirely, room, or set, detailing their accomplishment regarding a smart phone you already have or might buy.
The instances where woman are present in the ad are at the end, where the flight attendant’s head is being cut out of frame. She clears her throat, implying the two seated men need to be quiet/set their phone to ‘airplane mode’ before the flight ‘takes off’, it’s a fake plane likely). And again, at the end, when a woman, back dropped by her fellow workers, tells you to buy these creator’s combined gadgets (a smart phone) here (Best Buy).
This makes sense for an eight year old Super Bowl commercial, but you likely won’t see the same thing today. As viewership has become fairly balanced in regards to the Super Bowl, it’s reported of 187.3 million fans, 47% are female, 53% are male. (CNBC) The article also states in previous years 2019, female viewers increased by 6% to a totaled 38%.
The intention of those who created it and the intention of what it represents are perhaps in question. A Super Bowl ad was supposed to cater towards a predominately male demographic. Did it do this? Yes.
Now, I don’t believe it’s purpose was to be sexist, as it’s an ad with the purpose to sell phones. This doesn’t mean it’s not sexist, it is, because of the exact observations stated previously. -
In watching BestBuy’s 2012 Super Bowl add, it seems quite evident the target audience is towards older/middle aged white males and trying to sell them cell phones. It is overtly stated the selling of cellphones and by the nature of all inventors being older/middle aged white males, this was likely their target audience. I do not have much knowledge on corporate marketing, but I can see if this were their target audience, it would explain the extreme lack of gender and ethnic diversity. I would not describe the add as overtly sexist but sexist undertones could very easily be drawn mainly in the complete lack of women representation as technological inventors. I base most of this on the assumption that BestBuy was trying to advertise to older/middle aged white males. For further understanding I would like to know exactly who BestBuy was trying to advertise because if the add was meant to equally appeal to men and women, I would deem the add as implicitly sexist. Regardless of target audience, I think the undertone of only showing white males as technological inventors is slightly unethical in how much of a misrepresentation of the industry it is.
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The ad can be seen as sexist due to the solely male creators that were showing off their inventions. They had women involved, but they were more or less “annoying” the men during their screen time and not one of them was viewed as a content creator. Around 1 in 4 software engineers is a woman. While over ten men were shown with their personal innovations, no women were shown. When realistically, there should have been several women innovators present. The bottom line is that the ratio of 10-0 men to women is just inaccurate. It is safe to argue that showing powerful and successful men is a marketing technique geared toward male viewers. Although this is one perspective, when looking at the percentages of difference between male and female viewers in this time period, it falls within a range of about 10%. I wouldn’t say this is reason enough to gear an ad directly towards men. On the other hand you can consider the Bachelor or Bachelorette, with a traditionally high percentage of women viewers, it makes sense to direct marketing toward females.
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This ad can be described as sexist due to the images shown. For the majority of the commercial, it displays men showing their creation or accomplishments. Then, at the end of the ad, a women speaks about how she creates an easy way to buy a phone. This can possibly be viewed as an ad that is surpressing any accomplishments of women in the technological industry. Instead, women are good at the “less complicated” part, so to speak, of technological advances, which would be the selling of the product. It can be seen undermining the role of women in the technology field because by showing only men who created such products, the image of the woman is obscured and seen as only the person who sells.
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When I first read the prompt for this ad, I thought I was going to be very torn on what I should write about. Five seconds into the ad on the second scene, I was outraged by the video before me. From only five seconds of the video, I knew the rest of it was going to hold the same outline of being entirely sexist. They created an ad of all men sharing their impressive additions to the technological world. There was no mention of Hedy Lamarr who was the inventor of WiFi or Ada Lovelace who was the world’s first computer program. Instead, Best Buy decided to feature all males and their gifts to technology. This ad is incredibly sexist and I am shocked that it passed though a whole team and was aired.
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Best Buy Ad.
I do not see how this ad at face value is sexist. It is not a secret fact that most software developers and inventors in the tech field are men. Having the creators of each respected invention with the person who created it should not be seen as sexist. A man created these things, not because he was a man but because they were the person to create it. In all honesty, it would be ethically incorrect to lie to the viewing public and portray a woman with each invention as that would take credit away from the inventor. It is also apparent that in this ad best buy is trying to appeal to men, which can be seen by having the blonde woman at the front of the best buy squad. This ad is simply marketing, with best buy targeting an audience that is more likely to spend their money at their store. If someone truly feels hurt by this ad I would advise them to spend their money at a different store and do their best not to be too butt hurt over it as it really is not a big deal. -
I think this ad is far too short to make assumptions on whether this ad was sexist or not. We know that this ad was broadcast during the Superbowl and we know that the dominant viewership is males. The ad does showcase the few innovators of this day and age and we can agree that Best Buy had left out some key female innovators as well. Best Buy’s goal was to sell their product to the audience in a short amount of time. By showing phone innovators of the past years and capping the ad off with the Best Buy team lead by a female I can’t see how this ad is sexist. Would this ad be less sexist if it showed one female innovator or strictly all female innovators? What if they showed more female innovators and less female Best Buy workers would that be approved as not sexist? I think the overall issue is how we showcase women and not where they’re showcased.
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On my first watch of the best buy ad I was surprised that the ad featured only men’s contributions to smartphone technology. I watched the ad again but the second time around I was thinking about the ad’s creators instead of the subjects. I found that the only way this ad was able to be produced with only men is because it was approved by a corporate board of mostly/ all men. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that this is sexist. The ad itself may not be viewed as sexist by some, but people need to realize that this ad is a manifestation of systemic sexism. Systemic sexism prevents women from getting on to corporate boards or from having their contributions to technology recognized.
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What do you think of this ad?
I thought this ad was quite intriguing considering it mentions the tech development from the original founders then displays Best Buy as the overall encompassing seller of those items. Although it may seem that it is very one sided (Gender of male only innovators) it seems to short of a ad to determine whether that was even the true purpose. The end showed a women who spoke on behalf of Best Buy so to me I cannot see this being a sexist ad but rather just a promotional advertisement. But if this was longer and had more innovators included and all it shows say out of 50 people introduced were all men, then there might be some issue with gender equality. -
After watching this ad I read through all of the discussion posts and was fascinated by your responses; all of the perspectives are understandable and I dont think this is an exceptional ad in any respect. Trying my best to objectively view the ad I noticed a few items which I found fascinating, but the main one is; All of the inventors in this ad are males (yes I know this is the point of the discussion, give me a sec). This ad was made in 2012, and the world of social media and youtube were a very different place back then. Let me provide some context for what was happening in 2012, the two most viewed videos of the year were Gangnam Style, and Call me Maybe. I happened to be in 8th grade, and I can personally say that there have been drastic changes in regards to inclusiveness since then, and it has been for the better. The people writing this ad likely were just happy they were able to get ahold of these inventors in the first place, and I believe their point was to show how best buy sells these products with decades of research and hard work put into them. They defiantly realized the guests were all males, and that is why they had so many women in the employee scene at the end. I do not believe it was their intention to leave women inventors out of the ad, and I believe it mere coincidence they all ended up to be men (giving them the benefit of the doubt).
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Who is the perceived audience? Is it sexist?
The audience targeted would be anyone interested in technology, male or female. Yes, the creators and founders of the technology given were males, but those just happened to be the people to discover the technology. The ad does not send a message of superiority between the two genders because it is a fact that those men discovered the technology and women could have done the same if the idea occurred to them at the time. I feel like seeing sexism in this ad would require a lot of work and microscopic analysis. -
I can see how this add can be viewed as sexist towards women. Considering the entirety of the add is spent by men saying all of their contributions to the smartphone and technology. Best Buy didn’t bother to do any research regarding women’s advancements in the field and simply portrayed the invention marked as a solely male field. Then the only women they do actually portray in the advertisement are just Best Buy employees. It almost feels as if they recognized how little female representation they had in their advertisement and decided to just squeeze some in the end so they can say it an inclusive ad.
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This 2012 Best Buy commercial attempted to be inclusive by adding the diverse group at the end of it and having a woman finish it with 3 lines. They even had the audacity to add the word, “unbiased. Wow. <— I would mention that would be a definite conversation between people, including myself in today’s environment. Who does it address? The millions of men who watch the Super Bowl, without considering the amount of women and children who are by their sides watching with them. There is little female representation and obviously no examples of the countless female inventors that have changed all of our lives over the years. It’s a based commercial, a documented example of how 2012 was and although some would argue that women have others means of representation 8 years ago, the Super Bowl is for everyone as should be the commercials. At the end of the day, the perceived audience are those who can afford to go to Best Buy.
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This ad is targeting males watching the superbowl… obviously haha which is interesting because honestly, it seems most of time at superbowl parties or bars during the superbowl, there is just as many men as there are women which is very easy to see with a quick scan of the room. You would think these developers could realize that and switch there ads around to hit both sides and bam! More revenue and interest for them, that’s their bottom line goal anyway; Bring in the $$$. I always find these types of ads interesting. Do they do this on purpose or just out of a lack of self-awareness? I find it hard to believe that they knowingly do these things, but then again, it is entirely and completely possible. This ad can very easily be tagged as sexist because as mentioned previously by some. All males showing off big accomplishments while the only females are at the end as employees… hmmm… maybe some superiority complexes making themselves known as well? All depends how you look at it I guess.
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Being a Super Bowl commercial, the intended audience for this commercial is likely targeted towards middle-aged white males. The commercial highlights man-made features/apps, illustrating all the accomplishments of white males. Then an the end of the add there’s a best buy staff, mostly women, telling you that you should buy a phone from them. The evolution of the cell phone and all of the features they offer, making it a mini computer that can fit in your pocket, is a privilege for those who can afford to get the latest technology (or latest iphone). Overall, I can see this as a sexist commercial by the lack of representation of women’s contribution.
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At the time this ad was made, I believe the idea of equality was often overlooked. In recent years, the concept of equality has exponentially promoted and studied, making sense why we see this ad as absurdly discriminating. As I’m sure its common sense, there is a copious amount of female contributions to the technology industry that there really is no excuse as to why only men are previewed. Interestingly enough, this ad was somehow approved by a corporation as large as Best Buy, which displays an absurdly high level of ignorance. If this ad was to be displayed in future Superbowl, I can only imagine the kind of backlash the company would experience.
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This ad displayed all accomplishments of men and undermined those of women. The perceived audience are Best Buy customers. It does not operate from a rationalist paradigm because of its nature and content, a corporation like Best Buy should have been rational about the content they display to the public because it influences audiences nationally. The ethical message behind the advertisement is just as the ethical teachings of the late ethicists. The female approach was never considered, and the ethics that apply to the women was never acknowledged. Just so, this advertisement does the exact same to womens’ voices.
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Honestly, upon watching the ad, I was expecting for there to be more controversy. I took it at face value, and could be overlooking some implicit sexism, but for the most part it just seemed like a shitty super bowl ad. It highlights the contributions 4 or 5 men have made toward technology, without mentioning any female contributors. I wouldn’t go so far as to imply that constitutes sexism. If they’d made an extensive list of 50 or so contributors and not one person was female, that might be more suspect, but the add was only a 30 second reel, kind of hard to make any assumptions one way or the other
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What do you think of this ad? What ideas does it privilege? Underprivilege? Who is the perceived audience? Who is not? Does it operate from a rationalist paradigm? Why or why not? Is it sexist? Why or why not? What are the implicit ethical messages being transmitted here?
You can pick and choose any of these questions to answer, or come up with your own.
In this ad, it represented a lot of male figures who were key in bringing about advances in cell phone technology. I first watched this the other day prior to thinking of it in terms of feminism but not it is very curious seeing no female representation. It begs the question why? have women not been a part of the advances in this technology? it hard to tell whether they have and have not be represented or whether men have been thought to be the leaders of the field and are this given more resources. The perceived audience is the average american man because this is played during the super bowl so showing more men makes sense. I think it was a good touch to put a lot of women at the end to show Best Buy’s diversity. I don’t think this is sexist, but the technology industry and engineering industry could be seen as such.
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This advertisement is clearly sexist. Not a single time is a woman mentioned in having helped invent new technology. Instead, it highlights all men and their accomplishments. Clearly, the creators of this ad were targeting white males as their audience. This is obvious by the way they created the ad with all white males. If the creators of this ad were trying for a different audience they would have probably included other genders. However, it is still immoral and sexist.
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I thought this ad was very poorly thought out. As a Super Bowl ad, the creators knew that their audience would mostly be white males and this ad seemed to reinforce the idea that they are supreme. This ad did not include any females despite the countless contributions they made to the technological field as well. I would not say that it is full-on sexist just because it excludes females from the ad. A sexist ad would be if they implied or stated that women are not as big of a contributor to the technological field.
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In the context of this subject, I was expecting to see a female innovator/inventor in the mix. And we have all noticed, no there was not. Out of context, I might have not noticed or even cared. But what struck me was the 3/1 ratio of women to men in the group of Best Buy employees. In my experience, I have seen either an equal number of men to women or slightly more men than women. And the one thing that definitely noticed was the phrase at the end, “lots of unbiased advice”. Unbiased advice? What does that even mean? Of course advice is going to be biased, people have their own personal methods of going about setting up technology. But does it mean that the advice doesn’t discriminate against men or women? How can advice be discriminatory? Sure, I can agree that the ad is a little discriminatory that they only featured male innovators, but if you look at the audience, the audience is primarily male. According to an infographic by AthleticBusiness, 69% of men make up the audience of football watchers. Remember, this was played during the Superbowl. So, it would make sense that there would be a lot more men than women watching these commercials.
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I think the advertisement is bias against women. Even though research show more women than men are likely to earn a college degree in the 21st century, there is still that pre-colonial mentality in society that always portray women as less worthy to attained certain carry achievement especially in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math’s) comparison to men. As portray in this advertisement. All the current famous technological innovations are discovered by men, women are only portray at the level of services industries like the flight attendant and BestBuy customer representative.
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This ad is disappointing, to say the least. The target audience seems to be white males, with no mention at all about women and their contributions in technology, and definitely comes across as sexist. I’m not sure if I’d say it was outright, or intentionally sexist, but I think that’s the whole issue here. The underlying, unintentional leaving out of women. In this ad, and in other instances, women were the forgotten voices.
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This was quite a weird ad to me as it just displays all these men who have accomplished things that changed and advanced our world and is then followed by best buy saying,”oh and we know the most about these things and have the best prices” essentially. I am not quite sure that I felt this was sexist, however. Simply because men were mostly pictured here…because the things they chose to note in the ad had literally been invented/created by those men. I get that women are totally a huge part of this industry but the ad seemed to highlight the most notable technological advances, which for whatever reason had been done by men. I felt that the targeted audience was men and probably older men, who maybe could feel some connection to these men doing these great things and than thinking, “huh maybe I do need a new phone with all these cool options,” and at the end, best buy chose to show a bunch of women and the lead of them was a woman. Above all else let’s just look at the fact that it is from 2012, people were far less easily offended and I am sure this ad had great results as most super bowl worthy ones do.
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It seems as though this add is targeting a male audience as all the technological innovations mentioned where accomplished by men and the only women appearance where the sales team from best buy. I don’t know whether this was meant to sound like “come buy our great man made invention and look at our pretty sales team” but its very easy to see how it could be interpreted that way. However there are those who have seen this and saw nothing wrong because they where just thinking about a new phone.
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I really do not like this add at all. I think that it is lacking a lot of content and is quite boring. This video is showing that they are targeting the male audience. They are very strongly showing that women are not involved in the technology or in STEM jobs. That they are only the sales personnel. I do believe that this is sexiest I really don’t feel females are able to connect with the add in any way.
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I think its quite comical that a group of people sat at a table and agreed that this ad was a good idea in this day and age. The ad pretty much showcased a handful of white men that created and run the product and the only showcase of women was in the Best Buy store. With the uptake in diversifying positions of power in society, it is crazy someone thought this was a good idea. This ad could have been tackled so differently. I don’t think we should take away the accomplishments made by these men, but I think it could have broadcasted in a smarter way.
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What do you think of this ad? What ideas does it privilege? Underprivilege? Who is the perceived audience? Who is not? Does it operate from a rationalist paradigm? Why or why not? Is it sexist? Why or why not? What are the implicit ethical messages being transmitted here?
You can pick and choose any of these questions to answer, or come up with your own.
This advertisement showcases all the technological inventions made by individuals that have helped forward mankind. What had people in an uproar was the fact that the ad is full of male inventors. It is pretty clear that they were purposefully trying to advertise to a specific demo of white males, I believe that it is sexist because they are not shining a light on other inventors of different races and sexes. This ad further perpetuates the fact that women are time and time again left out when it comes to credit due.
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I think this ad is kind of funny but there are some factors of it that kind of marginalizes women. This ad was mostly just white men and I’m guessing that the production crew meant for them to also be the directed audience. There could of been a better skit to get a broader audience and didn’t just completely ignore women.
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The ad had mainly all the men talk until the end where the best buy employee a sweet white female speaks. The perceived audience is most likely adult males due to it being a super bowl commercial. It does come off sexist. The ad mainly focused on male inventors and creators of cell phones. It gives off a picture that mainly men are inventors. When the female employee speaks it is about serving and customer service. I see this as the ad objectifying women. The people of the ad wanted to sell their goods and services to the select demographic. They are not blatantly sexist, but the exclusion of female creators and the female employee was a strategic move.
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I think that this ad could definitely be interpreted as offensive by some people. There was a lack of diversity throughout the ad. There are inventors from pretty much every demographic that have contributed to the technology in smart phones, so the representation of only white males is pretty inexcusable. It also puts a lot of value in innovation and creating something to market. I think that this really reflects American culture, which is also probably intentional as it was a super bowl commercial.
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I this is unfair to women. It seems this ad is targeted to males and is reinforcing the idea that males dominate the tech industry which is untrue considering that females have also contribute to the development of technology. The ending though did have a subliminal message. It showed females in the foreground and women speaking. Stating they have what we need. This can be seen as objectifying women
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My initial thought of the ad was it was interesting that they got the people together who invented different things that are important to the tech world. I did not realize that it was an ad for Best Buy until the end. The perceived audience of the ad is those who watched the super bowl, and those who can afford a smartphone in 2012. Those who are not the intended audience of this ad are those who did not want or could afford a smartphone. I don’t think the ad is inherently sexist because of the fact that historically speaking the people who came up with this tech were men, however, the spot with the flight attendant did come off as a little, granted this was also 2012. I do have a question if this were made today, that is would they make an effort to diversify the commercial if it was made?
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When you watch this ad you notice that all of people in it are men. I’m aware that the ad was for a super bowl commercial which is typically a male dominant audience. I still think that doesn’t make it right. It highlights that all of the creators are men. I don’t know if this is supposed to make the audience feel like they want to buy these products because of that reason. I think that this commercial could make women not want to buy the product because of the discrimination. I also think that this says something regarding the technology and engineering industry. One could perceive it as if they are subtly hinting that a woman couldn’t achieve this because there is no female representation displayed at the same level in the ad.
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This ad shows privilege towards inventions created by men, while showing a lack of support for female inventors/innovators. The perceived audience, considering it is an NFL ad, would be safe to assume that it is mainly targeted towards individuals of the male gender. It is sexist as it is completely ignoring females that have shown themselves equally as capable or even more so than their male counterparts in this field and in all other fields, as if only men could invent popular things.
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While analyzing how modern advertising intersects with rationalism and feminism, I realized the importance of thoughtful strategy and innovative solutions. During my research, I came across Progatix Software Company, which inspired me with their approach to problem-solving and creativity. That journey showed me how combining insight, design, and purpose can truly make campaigns resonate with audiences.
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