https://blogs.ubc.ca/reefchiu1/2013/01/20/whoa-look-at-the-pretty-ladies/
Recently an interesting visit to a fellow friend Reef Chiu’s blog about all the pretty ladies and fancy gadgets appearing on magazine covers and TV ads really got me thinking about just what kind of trickeries firms nowadays are doing to expand their businesses. Is school always full of flamboyant football players, whose domineering presence on the field is equally matched by their unrivalled vigour in parties? Or is it of the peculiar geniuses, who behind their nerdy appearances are in fact masterminds? Seems nowadays this is how social media portrays college students, either as die-hard party goers or the next Bill Gates, and all this attention paid to these youth in their late teens for what purpose? To sell products. To appeal to a group of people already in short demand of cash. To broadcast images of how “you should behave” to people in the most important part of their value-formation years.
No doubt this isn’t wrong. Advertising to students is just like advertising to everybody else, part of segment targeting. What is wrong however, is the misleading message that these companies are sending through their advertisements. Not all students are athletic, fit and handsome geniuses who draw attention of all the girls/guys where ever they go. Most students are just the average kind who everyday learn, eat and play. They don’t have the looks of the super models nor the brains of the crazy geniuses, but just regular folks in their late teens and early twenties trying to graduate and find jobs. And if ninety-five percent of the people who are like that aren’t represented in all the commercials, what population groups are the manufacturers trying to appeal to?
Of course the rant comes from my own recognition of myself belonging to that ninety-five percent, but still, as a customer of the ninety-five what reasons do I have to purchase a product not representing me? I am not going to change who I am to buy what’s being promoted in the papers, and maybe its time companies realize there are quite some number of us out there.
Images Courtesy of
http://www.coolwallpapershd.net/Picture/allimg/c100409/12FPH63a960-L0A.jpg
http://www.themagazine.ca/cms/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Dexters-Lab-2.jpg