I'm not a person that is easily offended, but after being bombarded by commercials that repeatedly depicted women as sluttly, simple-minded, and overbearing during the SuperBowl, I found myself wondering...
Is sexism back???
I knew godaddy.com was going to come with their usual selection of women flashing their goods, so that's not what set me off. But it was the back to back sets of Bud Light's "book club" , Megan Fox in the Motorola commercial, FloTV's "Injury Report", TeleFlora's "Mr. Warmth", and one of the worst offenders Dodge's "Man's Last Stand."
It got so bad that I was offended by Mark Sanchez's PSA on women taking some medical condition seriously (the fact that I can't remember which condition is a sign of how much I was fuming). All I could think of was: who in the hell is Mark Sanchez to tell ME, A WOMAN, what I should be doing with my health. (The fact that I'm a Giants fan doesn't help either.)
Did this year's marketers forget the fact that more and more women watch the Superbowl year after year, and their main motivation for watching are the commercials?!?! That means you may want to re-evaluate who your target audience is when writing that prized Superbowl creative brief.
But more importantly, marketers cannot forget that those millions of dollars spent in media time actually amounts to influence over the masses. Consistent messaging CAN change public perceptions and trends, and that's not to be taken lightly. So next time you're looking for an expensive cheap laugh during the Superbowl, try to be more creative than demeaning women (and leave Chimps alone too while you're at it). Plenty of other advertisers were able to do it right this year such as Denny's, Dorito's, E*Trade, HomeAway, Intel, and Kids, so we should all take a lesson from them. At least that's my 2 cents.
