got cool?

Chapter 7 talked a lot on the marketing of coolness. This got me to thinking of all the ways companies try to entice us as consumers to buy their items. Particularly in the youth generation, it seems to me that one of the biggest ad themes is marketing through celebrities and other popular and well known faces. For example, all of the milk ads ("got milk?") that I've seen have directly used celebrities with milk mustaches. They also use a wide variety of celebrities ranging from Batman to Miley Cyrus to KISS in order to appeal to a greater amount of viewers. When we see our favorite celebrities in any ad we automatically make a connection with it. Therefore we are attracted to the item and may be more inclined to purchase that item. This is because we typically aspire to be more like those we look up to. So by buying the products the celebrity is endorsing, it gives us the impression that we, too, will have the wow factor that the celebrity does.

Beauty this day and age is all about youth.  Older women are constantly trying to get rid of wrinkles, age spots and dark circles in order to achieve the flawless skin of the youthful models portrayed in media.  But like the dove commercial, it is hard to see who the average woman is.  That is why it has become more common to use an average woman in promoting a product.  I found the article http://beckysperfectskin.com/?t202id=42609&t202kw=
that talks about a 45 year-old woman with two children getting rid of her wrinkles.  This woman uses RezV anti aging and Dermapril as instructed by Dr. Oz.  This woman is made to seem like the average woman, as she has two children and from an everyday neighborhood in Saint Charles, Missouri.  People feel more comfortable about a product when an “average” woman uses a product and claims that it works.  It seems achievable to get that flawless skin.

Baywatch

Need I say more...?  This has numerous examples of the male gaze, and its only the opening credits!  And not just the 'male gaze' as applied to men looking at women, but also the 'male gaze' in terms of women looking at men. There are running shots of both, also when the actor/actress is standing they start low and pan up.  

I have a problem with this being referred to as male.  In an earlier post the example of Renaissance art got me thinking.  I don't believe that there are more women painted/photographed/displayed naked because it is a man constructing those things.  While that is part of it, I think it has more to do with visually the idea that the female body naked/clothed is much more beautiful then that of a mans.  It is more appealing to look at.  I don't believe that these images are constructed purely for the male viewer.  As people we are drawn to things that are attractive to us, and I'm not speaking sexually.  Similar to a female who is stopped dead in her tracks by a pair of shoes.  We crave things that are appealing to us. 

When I read about how consumer societies has become out due to “increased industrialization and bureaucratization… [meaning] a decrease in the number of small entrepreneurs and an increase in large manufactures…[creating] a contrast to feudal and rural societies of the past, in which there was proximity between producers and consumers, as in the case of a shoemaker whose shoes were sold and worn by residents in the village where he worked” it made me think of the brand The North Face. I found that The North Face is specifically made for outdoor lovers and their activities and the company began on San Francisco’s North Beach. So how is it that when I look across campus in the winter time I see more people wearing North Face apparel than anything else? Maryville isn’t located at the beach and not everyone who wears this clothing loves the outdoors. The North Face became big when they targeted students to wear their apparel around their campus. Taking their small entrepreneurship and making it industrialized. Not a bad move.