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CULTURE JAM

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This fall campaign was originally posted in 2014 by Nine West. While this message can be creative and successfully received much attention, it is offensive to some consumers.

As a women’s shoes brand, this advertisement aims to promote fashionable shoes that are suitable for women with different occasions. Senior vice president of marketing for Nine West, Erika Szychowski, says “Starter husband hunting” could also be called “night-on-the-town-shoes”.

However, I find the message that it delivers is very disappointing and offensive to me. This is quite an old fashion gender stereotype, and the message create a very shallow image of women and materialized them (“little black dress” and smokey-eye to look for Mr. Right). It seems to suggest that women’s only goal is to dress up for men, for the purpose of “hunting husband”. This advertisement fails to acknowledge women’s role in society. And I would even say that it promotes a negative attitude to women. As we are living in 21st century, women are longer limited to household chores nor to impress their men. Instead, we can work and earn equal pay as men, and we can influence society and make changes just like men do.

Moreover, this campaign fails to take into consideration for LGBT community. By directly writing “Mr. Right”, it seems to exclude other sexual orientations. Therefore, this advertisement may be found offensive to some audience.

To sum it all, instead of fostering a modern women’s attitude, this campaign by Nine West portrays women into a very shallow, single-minded, and outdated image.

 

New

I disagree with Nine West’s marketing of this campaign to gain publicity and attention. And to change the outdated gender stereotype by Nine West’s original advertisement, I have made some changes and recreated the advertisement above.

I need to admit that although Nine West went too far with its campaign message, it did a good job at the overall arrange. I have kept the original background image because I found the colour and page layout were very eye-catching. I think this digital advertisement has an elegant and sophisticated elements that sufficiently targets its consumers – mature, professional yet modern working ladies. However, I have deleted the whole original message and added my own thoughts to it. The new verbal elements is an easily understood message that creates the desired response.

First, I removed the outdated gender roles created by the campaign. I changed “Husband hunting” to “Career hunting” because I would like to promote a positive and encouraging norm in the society. We all know there is a increasing number of women participating in work-field and women are taking on men’s roles. Therefore, I like to depict this promising phenomenon by highlighting the world “Career”.

Furthermore, I wanted to create a stronger and affirmative idea of independent and professional women that can resonates with the targeted consumers (as mentioned above – modern and sophisticated office ladies). So I added words like “Confidence”, “Believe”, and “Achieve”. I would like to promote an idea that women in the society nowadays are no longer limited by their stereotypical gender roles. Instead, we as women can achieve what our goals if we believe we have the power and ability to do so. And as a women’s shoes brand, I think it is an good marketing strategy to foster this positive thinking and belief.