JWT Takes On Mother Nature
In an effort to passify those who think men are portrayed in advertising as over sexed, neanderthal morons, JWT has announced it will cease characterizing men as boob-fixated, humping jack rabbits. The change in policy follows the release of a book by one of the agency's vice presidents, Marian Salman, who says men have been mocked in advertising for far too long. While true when it comes to illustrating men as clueless buffoons as Verizon did recently, to strip away certain innate behaviors is questionable. Perhaps it's all payback for, until recently, portraying women as clueless, man-serving kitchen maids.
Salman says, "All too often in the marketing arena, we're portraying man as the victim - of his sexual organ or his lust, his emotional neediness, his overinflated ego or his sheer ineptitude." OK, true. That could be toned down a bit but do we want to re-engineer man to appear as if he's become some sexless, robotic, new age, virtue-spewing automaton?
Comments
pacify
I think that people in advertising have figured out that women actually feel more comfortable with these stereotypes of men because that would make them more manipulable and less intimidating. What could be more frightening than an intelligent and complicated man? So the first rule is : "tell em what they want to hear". They are only trying to sell their products to women who now have more spending power than ever.
You mean we aren't?
Wow, look at the boobs on that chick in the picture ... what were you saying?