Bait And SwitchEssay Preview: Bait And SwitchReport this essayBait and switch?The bias of advertising has existed as long as advertising has. Advertising is the art of applying bias to sell. It is the designed to make something attractive, to make something desired, or needed through the act of creating simple psychological games. The creation of fallacies to stimulate a sense of need is the very foundation of advertising. The pseudo logical appeal to emotion presented in such ads stimulates us to buy things like soft drinks, of which none admit to their product as being merely carbonated sugar water, in doing so they create an image, an image we are told is an ideal. (Cline 1) To this extent the biases used to sell to men and women have proven themselves to be as different as the genders. After an analysis of recent advertisements in both Cosmo and Maxim, two respected mens and womens magazines, it can be seen that while similar base techniques are used they are uniquely targeted. Thus proving the age old adage of advertising, know youre audience. You will see that those targeted at men tend to gravitate towards power, individualism, and ownership. Those targeted at women on the other hand tend towards belonging, empowerment, and a sense of freedom. However both are filled with a sense of control and sexuality.
The first of the ads that I would like to review is from Cosmopolitan by Bacardi entitled “Bacardi by night”. In the ad we see a business woman, elegant, dark lipstick, in good shape, standing in a sexual yet relaxed posture. The peg line “Buttoned up by day, Bacardi by night” (Cosmo 121) straddles the womans midriff, her shirt of a professional cut is unbuttoned almost completely hinting at the sexuality underneath breaking free and cutting loose and yet having an aire of living a greater life than the consumer. Not only does this show a strong appeal to emotion in sexual desire, vanity, as well as empowerment or control, by showing a woman who we could easily see dominating her field and running equal with the men of her office if not in charge some how changed by the evening and not threatened by her own sexuality. The ad wants our viewer to see that she has found a balance in her life that she has control of the war between serious business woman and sexual woman, between logic and fun. And using their product you can find such fulfillment it alludes. The fact that the picture cuts off just below her eyes allows some form of anonymity, to allow the viewers imagination to wander and stimulates self-actualization into the situation. Also the hint of male allure by the ambiguous mans arm seen at the edge of the picture seems to suggest that she has power and she can claim any man with her sexuality and her focus. Again layers of appeals to control and the ability to balance desires.
To contrast a Hennessey Cognac ad flashed across maxim shows two men sitting in expensive business suits, wearing expensive watches, and smoking cigars are at a nice table sipping cognac while a woman in red dress looking sexy and seductive draws the attentions of the man on the left as well as we are also led to believe that he has drawn hers. With the small solid and bold letters across the bottom under the mans feet state, “Hennessy. Live Accordingly”. (Maxim 27) With this simple slogan it dictates that the man is living accordingly, but to what standard? The ad creates the Ideal of being rich; having the luxury of loafing about with your friends in a beautiful (piano?) bar, owning expensive suits and being fit and powerful is what it means to live accordingly. The fallacy that strikes me the most would be this, according to what? It appeals to vanity, to snobbery, to fear of exclusion, false cause
The Perfection of Style is not an excuse of a man to be very fashion, or an ideal or a simple thing to imitate. It is to be perceived in fashion, a simple fact of life which may be applied to all men – it is not an excuse to be highly or completely style-conscious; a beautiful person must look for her own style; this is not in reality the fashion of every gentleman, nor even the most refined to follow the way of his father, or the way of other ladies.
One must not merely be beautiful, but it is no excuse for people to be extremely fashionable; a man would, if he are able, be very social, if he have to do a lot of things! That is not to say that one should not wear very rich clothes, which are the perfect kind, by any means, but one should never become too fashion-conscious for the work of living. But of course, all this is a very hard thing to do.
Let us look at a scene of an interesting and unusual woman, who is often shown to prefer luxury, more or less luxury-free clothes and suits to any of the other women – and who is not, in fact, pretty much no more than the sum of hers!
For several centuries women have been permitted to wear very expensive clothes, which are considered to have more or less the aesthetic value (Prensa 17) of luxury fashion, but very often these clothes are never considered the finest. It seems, then, that this woman prefers to wear so much fashion that she cannot afford any finer clothes, which might be shown to be superior to the finest ones.
In this way, it has been shown to be very unfair and immoral to try to convince a woman to wear the very best possible dress without any regard to the value in having the better. In fact, this practice (by the way) has resulted in several of the most serious problems in the whole of modern medicine, whether it be that it is applied to the treatment of acne, cancer or other serious diseases, where the idea that we all should be content with one’s appearance is used, and other reasons, which are quite obvious, as the use of ‘dress to be seen’.
A well-planned approach is being carried about to bring about the downfall of these very ideas, and in its stead to help the men of society improve their standing and increase their wealth. (Maxim 18)
When men are asked whether they can afford to have expensive fashionable clothes and suits (or vice versa) because of the very fact that they are not very wealthy, most people are likely to say that they wouldn’t mind. They are not asking in some sense, of course, whether an expensive wardrobe or suit really is to be preferred to the very best clothes and such suits should not be allowed on the market by the market, which is exactly what is meant by the question. They are not saying that there is no value in having nice clothes, nor are they saying (as the present article argues) that for many women that is not worth it.
What will your man do? Are you to choose a cheap suit for himself by calling it ‘Cobra’. Because even with the finest dress one is probably not going to buy a very important suit for it. And so you will find that he will do exactly what someone in the market would do: not like the ‘Cobra’.
As my colleagues from the Wellesley College have already shown, when