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Optician glasses...

Optician glasses


Date: January 1, 1970

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A full colour advert on an optician’s shop selling sunglasses. An image of a young woman wearing very large stylish sun glasses is used to promote the offer.

This advert may be used to:
1. Raise discussions about how age in adverts can exclude certain categories of women, even where age is relevant to the product.
2. Demonstrate how using only one gender in an advert can miss part of the traget market.
 
Trainer’s notes
In the Mirror on the Media Advertising research conducted by GL both women and men felt that only showing a young woman subtly sends the message that older women don’t exist, even though glasses are key to their daily lives. The product is equally relevant to men. One man argues that the way “FREE” is written in the advertisement gives the impression that the woman is being given for free. The face of a woman with very big fashionable glasses is used to sell the product which is also portrayed as high class. The advert would have been much more successful if there was a man present in it, as this would have shown that the target market is both male and female.
 
Discussion questions
1. Who is this advert targeting ? Does it make sense for the product?
2. What sterotypes face older people ? Is this different for men and women ?
 
Training exercises
1. Use digital image techniques to put an old woman in the advert instead of a young woman. What difference does this make? Would you buy the product?
2. Review adverts from newspapers and magazines for various products. What is the average age ? To what extent are older men and women featured? How does this compare with the actual buying power of older people ?
3. How does this compare with the findings of the GMBS, that older women are virtually non-existant in the news ?
 
Additional training material
Refer to the findings on older women being virtually non existent in the news in the Gender and Media Baseline Study reports, both regional and national.
 
Related GL Commentaries


Download : GB glasses Maur 04 12 06 LR

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