Marketing Used for Evil
I know a few people think marketing is evil because it’s designed to influence behaviour. Usually I disagree with them, though not categorically.
Marketing can be highly positive where it’s used as a tool to educate people about important issues, like back when we found out that eating a medium size bag of movie popcorn and a soda is equivalent to eating three McDonald’s Quarter Pounders and 12 pats of butter. That’s a good thing to know and educating the movie-popcorn-buying public resulted in immediate changes in how movie popcorn was made. Hurrah marketing.
Or the recent Method cleaning products commercial that educated while making us laugh and squirm, just a little.
Sometimes advertising — mistakenly equated with marketing — IS plain dumb, I’ll give you that. And dumb ads give all advertising, even the clever ads, a bad name.
But sometimes marketing and advertising go way beyond dumb. Take Dace, a local fashion label. Their new anorexic paper doll campaign is sure to be a winner. You can go to their website, download an anorexic paper doll, and then download a set of three fashion plates for your emaciated, famine-ravaged doll to wear.
I’d like a moment with the brilliant minds who ran with this idea and encourage them to give their collective heads a shake. In fact, I sent them an email:
“I’m appalled at your recent anorexic paper doll promotional campaign. Here’s something you may not have considered when you made that choice. Paper dolls are for little girls. Little girls are inundated with images telling them normal size is too big. Little girls grow up into young women who carry those beliefs with them. Are you hoping to reinforce the message?”
Dace blew a really great opportunity to showcase beauty, rather than an impossible beauty standard. I’m pretty disappointed that they haven’t moved beyond that whole illusion and taken a more enlightened stance. Instead, they are using advertising to perpetuate outdated views about beauty.
Two thumbs down for Dace.
If you want to give Dace two thumbs down too, you can email them at info@dace.ca, tell them on Twitter @daceclothing, or let them know via Facebook under “dace clothing.” Oh, and then there’s the old fashioned phone: 1.604.694.2442.
3 Comments - Leave a reply
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liz gaige said,
August 26, 2010 @ 3:57 pm
Yikes, twice in one day. Here is yet another ad that goes way beyond stupid. It fits the “Oh. My. God.” category. Warning, don’t read this if you want to stay deluded about how women are spoken down to in advertising. http://tinyurl.com/reallydumbad
Dace Clothing said,
September 1, 2010 @ 9:52 am
Hi Liz,
Thank you so much for your email. We appreciate your passion and understand what you are implying. However, please google the term “croquis” figures. This is a fashion illustration term. Croquis figures are used in fashion illustrations. And these dolls were created for us by a well known fashion illustrator.
We do not make children’s clothing, only women’s. We have used this illustrator in the past to create fashion drawings for our customers. And have had great success with it. Which is why we decided to do it again.
But thank you very much for your feed back. And please know that it is not our intention to project negative images to younger audiences.
Best,
Adele Tetangco
Marketing & Accounts Manager
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On Aug 26, 2010, at 3:33 PM, “Liz Gaige” wrote:
I’m appalled at your recent anorexic paper doll promotional campaign.
Here’s something you may not have considered when you made that choice. Paper dolls are for little girls. Little girls are inundated with images telling them normal size is too big. Little girls grow up into young women who carry those beliefs with them. Are you hoping to reinforce the message?
You blew a really great opportunity to showcase beauty, rather than an impossible beauty standard. I’m pretty disappointed that you haven’t moved beyond that whole illusion and taken a more enlightened stance. Instead, you’re using advertising to perpetuate outdated views about beauty.
Two thumbs down for Dace.
Liz Gaige
Market Navigators
liz gaige said,
September 2, 2010 @ 9:18 pm
Hi Adele,
Thank you for your comments. I realize the image is a fashion illustration, however, you’re not using it in your design shop, you’re using it in your advertising. And it portrays an unattainable body type to the public. Since you’re also using it as a paper dolls, which were created for young girls, you are making a connection. You can choose not to see the correlation or you can take your advertising up a notch. You’re a creative outfit, I’m sure you could uphold a higher standard if you wanted to.
Sincerely,
Liz