Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Ethics of Advertising

The Super Soaker Oozinator.  This advertisement is quite controversial.  At first glance of this video I thought it was just a simple kids squirt gun, boy was I wrong!  At closer inspection you discover there's an underlying sexual innuendo.  The Oozinator, isn't your typical squirt gun.  It shoots chunky white ooze at its victims! The physical action taken to initiate the "gun" is a stroking motion very similar to male masturbation. To top it all off, the kids that are using the gun are not young children 12 and under.  The marketing for this super soaker is definitely targeted towards teenagers.  The actors in the commercial were teenagers as well, teenage boys. If the directors would have chosen teenage girls to participate in this commercial I could have seen even more controversy!  Luckily this toy is no longer on the market, Hasbro's website doesn't have it in their databases anymore.

This advertisement is pretty controversial as well. This campaign was run by "Lorgan's the Retro Store" to market their 60's merchandise.  These series of ads were featured in magazines and web in 2008.  All of them feature psychedelic colors and 60's era decor and not to mention a whited stencil of pornographic material.  one of them even had a male couple, a ménage à trois, and various sexual positions.  I won't lie most of these advertisements are quite artsy and are very cool.  Unfortunately after closer inspection it does raise some eyebrows!magazine source

This advertisement at first glance may not depict what you originally thought.  This ad was run in Portugal for MTV to teach youth to practice safe sex.  Well, safe sex definitely wasn't what I first interpreted from this advertisement. At first sight it looks like it's promoting shooting women!  The picture itself just has a bad connotation for me.  It just promotes putting women down.  If this ad campaign mayeb had a counterpart where a woman was aiming at a male's privates, maybe that would help set the mood.  This adverstiement is questionable unethical. 

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