Research Investigation

To what extent do perfume campaigns differ according to the stereotypical representations of women in advertisements dependent on the target audience, specifically focusing on Tom Ford and Chanel No5?

In this investigation I will analyse how females are represented differently in perfume advertisements dependent upon their target audience. The two texts that I will be focusing on are ‘Tom Ford’ (1) and ‘Chanel No5’ (2). I will explore the representations of women in both of these campaigns and whether they match or challenge the stereotypical representations and ideologies of women. I will also be focusing on how the two companies use different methods to sell their products and whether this has proven to be successful or not. To support my investigation I will apply certain theories including Laura Mulvey: The Male Gaze, Jean Baudrillard: Hyper Reality and the Uses and Gratifications model.

Typical stereotypes given to women are the ‘Domestic’ woman who is seen as caring and motherly and the ‘Sexualised’ woman who is often objectified and fragmented within the media. The media does a very good job of portraying stereotypes to the audience and making the audience accept and acquire this. “ Media is very effective at creating stereotypes because they are sometimes the only source of information we have about other groups and they often represent a distorted view of these groups” Straubhaar 2004 (3). Tom Ford’s perfume campaign counterparts this representation of women. This campaign clearly fragments the woman through the exploitation of women’s bodies, the woman used for this campaign has her naked body covered in the product which is an unrealistic representation of women as perfume is usually used sparsely. The woman has a tanned slim body, which the media would label as the ‘idealistic body’. “ Society’s idea of the perfect body image for women based on the average fashion model is that women should be about 5’10 and weigh no more than 8 stone, the media also tells us that women should be blonde, tanned and have big breasts" (4) which is desired by active men and passive women. The main audience for this product is men; therefore the advertising company has chosen to use a model that is tall, thin and has perfect skin which is a minority body type within women. As these advertisements are constantly injecting the audience with the 'ideal body image' women and teenagers are cultivated to believe that to be feminine means to be beautiful and beauty is something that should constantly be strived to achieve. This idea that women should strive to attain beauty can lead to low self-esteem and insecurity making more and more women consider surgery. The motivation to look perfect and boost self-esteem has resulted in an increase in plastic surgery. "In 2012 more than 236,000 cosmetic procedures were performed on patients between 13 and 19 including procedures such as nose reshaping, breast lifts, breast augmentation, liposuction and tummy tucks". (9) In order to get the target audience to buy this product, women with the 'perfect body type' are used to gain male attention as when men see this campaign they aspire to attain a woman with similar qualities to the advert by wearing the product.  This portrays the issue of body image and desires amongst the audience especially female viewers, as they perceive the image to be a perfect ideology of what they should look like and strive to attain ultimate perfection. "Girls learn from an early age the most important thing is how they look" (10). In order to be perceived as being attractive and desirable resembling what they see in the media. “A study done by D. Hargreaves and M. Tiggemann show that women and adolescents that had exposure to commercials that consist of ideal media images were dissatisfied with their bodies” (5). The advertising company have used obvious use of colour connotations relating to sex. The woman in the advertisement is wearing red nail polish, which gives connotations of lust and passion. The positioning of the perfume bottle between the woman’s legs and in-between her breasts symbolises sexual acts, therefore addressing the crude message that if men wear this perfume they will get sex.

 

The gratifications attached in the mode of address to advertise and sell this product are our primitive desires to obtain sex; this seems to be the most effective most popular method of advertising in the modern day society “There is one element that arouses the immediate interest of both men and women. Sex has the greatest universal acceptance of all strategies in advertising” Bharwada (6).  The target audience for this product is young males therefore the company has addressed this by using sex to sell their product. Most producers and advertising companies assume that if they want to sell a certain product to a male audience, the best way to do so if through sexuality and exploitation. As you are not introduced to the identity of the female model in this campaign it represents that the male has dominance over the woman and she is only there for Scopophilia, which can also be linked to The Male Gaze conducted by Laura Mulvey. There are clear elements of the male gaze shown in the Tom Ford campaign as the female model is fragmented through the use of the camera through various close up shots of her body parts, this shows the ideology of a patriarchal society as men are the bearers of the look when viewing this advert. As you cannot smell the fragrance being advertised the campaign relies heavily on the image to sell the product therefore the company must have something that stands out and makes the audience want to buy the product in the campaign, again targeting men with objectification of women to gain interest. “A significant number of print perfume adverts rely on pictorial elements alone, with no other verbal elements but brand and product names, which are also prominently displayed, thus providing enough verbal cues and contextualising elements to the advertising message” (7). One could argue different genders would respond to the mode of address differently. Men desire to be with the women represented and females desire to look like this and may learn models of behaviour in order to gain male attention. However, Tom Ford challenges the typical stereotype of a domestic woman as the woman is purely sexualised and objectified, she is seen as seductive and provocative as a pose to caring and affectionate.  The uses and gratifications model proposed by Mark Levy and Sven Windhal can be applied to Tom Ford’s advertisement, as females that see this advert may be able to personally identify with the woman shown as they can find models of behaviour, however passive males would gain entertainment when seeing this advert, this may be through escapism or diversion from reality or sexual arousal. Jean Baudrillard suggested that advertising no longer refers to real things and has become more real to the audience than reality. 'The Simulacra and Hyper Real Theory' (8). This is true of Tom Ford as there are clear elements of hyper reality, hyper reality is shown in this campaign as the audience would expect to see unrealistic representations of women as this is what we are ‘injected’ and influenced with every day through the use of the media, the hypodermic model is a clear example of this as the mass media has a direct powerful impact on its audience, giving out a clear message and has a powerful influence on behaviour change. Even though this is an obvious false representation of most women, hyper reality has taken over actual reality to make the audience accept the ideology that every woman should maintain the perfect physique in order to please the male audience.