UN Women, a branch from the UN that concentrates on women’s issues has recently released an ad campaign showing searches made about women through Google’s search engine. What’s shocking to me is that this isn’t just one of a few searches that come up within Google, that people have pasted together in order to create an unsettling campaign. These are actually the top recommendations that pop when one types in: “women shouldn’t” or “women need to” into the search bar.

I feel that this ad campaigns shows a lot of what’s overlooked in society. Many people seem to be apathetic towards gender equality now that women have gained some sort of equality in terms of voting rights or rights within the workplace – leaving the greater issues to be dealt with by the ones who are actually affected by it. In a world that’s supposed to be fighting for equal rights for men and women, it’s astonishing that a globally used search engine can turn up such abhorrent search results. It’s deeply disturbing to me that somewhere in the world, someone is actually typing in those words – whether to find clarification or justification.

This ad campaign also shows that gender equality is not something that we are even close to achieving. Once again, as mentioned in my previous post, the success of this ad campaign comes down to taking something simple and piecing it together in a way that actually speaks to it’s observers. How many of us would go into the search bar with these prompts in mind? It would have been another issue that slipped our minds simply because it would have never crossed our everyday lives. The UN Women have achieved the impact they knew they would from releasing this ad campaign because it hits a chord within everyone – people who are affected by gender inequality; people who didn’t know the extent of gender inequality in present society; people who are apathetic to gender equality.
It would be a cliché to say that this campaign brings about awareness, but that’s exactly what it does – in the best and most direct way possible. It’s visible, relatable and to the point. The fact that these searches are conducted on Google, which almost everyone has access to and can experience firsthand the inequalities conveyed by these searches amplifies the affects of this campaign.

Once in a while, we see advertisements like this and realize that there are so many issues that go unaddressed and generally ignored by society because it’s not clearly observable. Once in a while, we see advertisements like this and realize that we’re much further from accomplishing the goals that we’ve set as a society than we really thought.

Sources

• http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/10/18/new-ad-campaign-uses-popular-search-terms-to-show-how-the-world-really-feels-about-women/
• http://www.cbc.ca/newsblogs/yourcommunity/2013/10/un-campaign-uses-google-autocomplete-to-highlight-gender-inequality.html

I recently stumbled upon a post on Facebook about creative advertisements that caught my attention. That in itself is already marketing at work but take a look (or two) at these 40 Impossibly Creative Advertisements  and you’ll see why it’s so captivating.

 I’ve always been so fascinated by those ads out of the hundreds that are able to capture your attention. The above image of a Mr. Clean advertisement is so simple, but it gets the point across clearly – which I believe is the highest level of marketing skills one can attain. With so many advertisements, media, marketing campaigns thrown at us everyday, it’s really hard for marketers to capture a consumer’s attention.

What I believe made these advertisements so successful is the fact that they’ve identified the strengths of their product or company and they’ve come up with a simple solution to get that point across to the consumers that they want to reach. Having worked in retail before, I’ve experienced firsthand how hard it is to get someone to buy your product – let alone listen to you talk about that product.

What they’ve done in these advertisements shows creativity and understanding of the product, placement and target market that they are trying to reach – precisely what we’re learning in class. Seeing the marketing mix put into action is interesting and helps me understand the material being taught in class. Marketing contains so many elements and levels that it’s a subject that can’t really be understood just by learning definitions. Being aware of all the marketing that’s going on around you in your daily life is just the beginning of many steps to becoming a marketing wizard.