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Jeneane also blogs at Allied and Blog Sisters.
Julie Pippert at the Ravin' Picture Maven points out an ad she saw on TV for Burger King, which is on YouTube. (Did they say the 'purest beef?)
Called "The Man Ad," the ad shoots for humor using stereotypes of men as beef eating lumberjacks and demolition enthusiasts to the tune of "I Am Woman."
Spoofing stereotypes can be effective in advertising and other types of business communication, but it's also tricky territory. To actually get laughs without driving away important segments of your audience, the "spoof" has to be exaggerated and the humor intellectual enough that the audience congratulates itself for 'getting it.' In this case the ad takes a shot not just at the Male Appetite, but at women as sprout eaters, dinner servers, and cheerleaders. Using the old "I Am Woman" anthem to boot.
From a marketing professional's perspective, I say the ad misses the mark, not because of its overall objective -- depict the double-wopper as man-eating goodness -- but because it's not funny. And using such stereotypical imagery, it HAD to be funny or miss the mark completely.
Man as caveman beef eater was funny when Fred Flinstone brought it to daytime TV. It can even be funny in a professional wrestling sense of the word. But when you tread into gender and food territory, and you attempt to spoof the issue to your product marketing advantage, using a song that was important in the era of at least part of the generation you're targeting, then you better do a good job at being FUNNY.
They might get away without offending folks, as lampoons are popular, the song is old, and The Man Show popularity has given rise to plenty of male-desire-fulfillment skits. Julie Pippert notes that her husband had never even heard Helen Reddy's song, so it was all news to him.
Even so, she expresses my sentiments with her defense of what men aren't -- among which is the fast-food-bigger-burger-eating automatons the Burger King ad portrays (yeah--keep those heart attacks coming!):
Men aren't narrowly defined as one thing: MEN who are MEN. They aren't some allegedly comedic stereotype.
Men, like women, fall on a continuum. They carry a wide-range of personalities and traits that are highly dynamic.
It must be really confusing to see continuous mixed messages. It certainly is for me about myself as a woman, and what a woman is expected to be. Therefore, it must be just as confusing for men, too.
You have to find a way, in life, to fit in yourself, then to fit in with others, and ultimately to fit in a relationship. Plus you have to learn how to accept other people.
In all of this, you have to remember to think of each person as an individual.
Awfully hard to do when you are surrounded by messages of who and what each sex must be, many of which are mixed, most of which are idealistic, and all of which seem to involve some product you need to achieve these goals of self (as defined by someone else).
Amen. I'd love to know what the ad budget was for the I Am Man campaign. And I'd love to have my hands on it. ;-)
Tags: marketing, PR, tech, web2.0, gender, advertising, burger king, I am man ad, youtube = Powered by Qumana