Introduction:
Advertising is the main element of business marketing. This is the process through which the companies detail their products and services to the customers and ensure that all the qualities of the products and services cater the needs of the consumers. Today is the age of advertising as one can find them in any media be it a television or social media like Facebook or Instagram. This allows the companies to expose the products and services to people and maximize the sales. Now this includes marketing strategies so that the consumers feel more attracted to the products and services even without even knowing the offers (Aziz et al., 2021). This is the reason why the companies use various techniques to present the products and services detailing the benefits. Now advertisement has become an art which like the other mass entertainment needs to acknowledge various factors. There are social, cultural and economic factors that determine how the consumers are responding towards the advertisements. The advertise campaigns have undergone changes depending upon the globalization and change of perspectives of consumers at global lever. This paper will be analyzing now the automobile advertisements have recorded evolution from the gender specificity to gender equality.
Element of Business Marketing
Women stereotyping is a very common aspect for advertisement industry because the representation is always used for an attraction purpose. The portrayal of women in advertisement of any product is common around the world be it made for the women or not. Women models are used for the makeup products, fashion, household and FMCG products in every advertising industry. They are used in the form of product often and play in various roles. For instance, they can sell the household products, they are housewives working all day for their families (Eisend, 2019). When it is an advertisement of FMCG product, they can be college students, working women or film actors who influence consumers to purchase the products they seem to be using. Model are used for showing up the makeup products and apparels. The highest paid models like Gigi Hadid and Kendle Jenner earn millions by showcasing the products on behalf of the companies. Now this portal of women are used as the simple of tenderness and delicacy but often portray sensuous roles like in the advertisements of perfume or body wash products (Stavrianea, Theodosis & Kamenidou, 2020).
Now the evolution of advertisement and the usage of women models in the products and service marketing have recorded certain changes. It seems that attraction for sensuous advertisements is growing and women models are selling the products they do not even use. for instance in the advertisement of men’s clothes, FMCG for men like deodorant, after shave or the beard oil also have seductive women models. However, the evolution of advertisement has not only acknowledge the negative utilization of the women models. A stronger characters are also being used to portray.
According to World Federation of Advertisers, the process of stereotyping the when in certain roles is decreasing as awareness of gender equality is being promoted in the society. The social and cultural factors to portray women in the expected roles are being eliminated I various ways. For instance a sharp contract in the advertisement roles in automobile industry can be found as the advisements associate men with a stronger and dominating position to drive the cars with women sitting beside him (Varghese & Kumar, 2022). Similarly the advertisements like a man is imposing a woman with an exclusive high end model of car is being rejected by the audience. The portrayal of women not having the capacity to possess a car of her own or drive a man to the destination is gradually changing. According to the data published by World Federation of Advertisers, 25% advertisement of automobile industry all over the world use men in featuring men to drive the car and only 5% use women (Coleman, Zayer & Karaca, 2020). Therefore it can be quite natural to question that if every male product needs women model to make them attractive, then why automobile is contradicting this picture.
A research conducted by Unilever in 2015 has shown that 40% of women cannot relate to the objects they are seeing in the advertisements. Moreover, there are so many clichés in the car advertisements like mountainous roads, a dangerous roads, and a city at night. There are dramatic moments in these advertisements like a car splashes through a stream and the man sitting in the driver seat seems to be determines and strong to overcome the perilous path. It seems that women drivers cannot do the same. This ironically details that the car does not have the capacity to overcome the stream but it is the man to drive it. Some of the car advertisements quite strategically avoid showing any driver in the advertisement but the tone and cues they show in the few seconds’ advertisement are clearly masculine (Nwokoro & Ekwunife, 2020). Therefore 40% women mentioning in the survey that they cannot relate to the advertisements is not wrong.
The automobile industry portraying men to be in a stronger positive sis certainly is a guilty of gender discrimination in the process. Despite the fact that these strong, masculine, right and tough advertisements are made for the male audience, 42% of new cars are registered under women names. Therefore it can be stated that the main target audience has shifted for these automobile companies. Association of masculinity with cars are no longer related to men but the actual owner are women customers. Woman influence 85% of scar buying decisions be it for themselves of the male relatives (Stavrianea, Theodosis & Kamenidou, 2020). Main purchase decisions are dependent upon the satisfaction of the women customers hence the industry need to bring changes in the women portrayal of cars and other vehicles. The evolution of social and cultural factors in a market is also influencing most of the advertising media houses.
This evolution is completely visible in the newest commercial and campaign of Jaguar which is one of the biggest players in the global automobile industry. Recently the company has run several campaigns to promote women buyers in lead roles. Jaguar is trying to change the concept of having high end cars to impress women but having the women in the driving seat. This company is trying to make the products more relatable and relevant to women who make purchase decision in real world (Khalil & Dhanesh, 2020). The campaign named Bend the Rules has a character named mistress of mischief that is cheeky enough to drive the car and shows various features of the product name Jaguar E-PACE. The women in this advertisement does whatever she want to do and go wherever she wants to go. This kind of representation of women instead of the traditional ideology using models to show lush colors of cars with no knowledge of the mechanism is worthy (Tsichla, 2020). The changing perception of gender representation and promoting gender quality had made the advertisement more relevant and encouraging to the women customers. Similarly, in their electric car advertisement, Jaguar has taken a more cinematic approach. It has a striking bond girl walking with a computer generated Jaguar and drives her I-PACE in a dramatic storm, leaving a message “It’s just electricity – nothing to be afraid of”. This changing perceptions of women in the advisement industry has encourages many brands to rethink about using women or men models in their products especially for automobile ads. These are effective for developing emotional bond with the customers and engage them in the process.
However, social representation of women is different from culture to culture. For instance in the Islamic countries, portrayal of own models for any product or service is much limited. It is not like the western countries where women enjoy equal rights socially and legally (Rasmussen et al, 2021). This is the reason why, expecting gender equality in the advertisement in these markets is impossible as the citizens would not accept such liberal changes. Other than some of the specific countries, most of the markets have seen evolution of gender stereotypes in advertisement and the number is continuously growing.
Conclusion:
Therefore it can be concluded that a sharp change regarding women representation in the advertisement has changed over time and different generations. The perceptions regarding the identity and existence of women in the society is changing due to their contribution in the GDP and other growth factors hence women representation in the advertisement have been changing also. Previously they were used to portray the benefits of the products and services or to attract male audience to make purchase decision but now they themselves have become the consumer hence representation has also changed. In the advertisement of Jaguar as mentioned in this paper, the changes is visible completely. The cultural and sociological changes are perceived clearly through the demand sand expectation of the customers based on which the media companies are bring changes in their advertisement campaigns also.
References:
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