Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Stereo Typing in Commercials

This week we are asked to comment on the commercials that will display distant stereo types. The stereo types being either positive or negative are throughout advertisements that we are introduced to daily. As I began to watch these commercials I started to see a growing trend occur. I started watching TV during the daytime hours and I saw a tremendous amount of diet commercials. The diet commercials just to name a few were smart cookie, Jenny Craig, weight watchers, and curves. From my interpretation I felt that they were targeting women who are in the house during the day. I guess that was because I was watching Jerry Springer and Maury lol. But regardless of the matter I just felt that they were stereotyping women who are at home watching TV are overweight and also depressed.
Another growing trend of commercials I saw were the technical institutes advertisements. The commercials displayed mostly minority actors which showed them in a dead in job or unemployed and suggest them to " Get up off the couch and do something". I just think they are targeting mostly minorities that either just got out of high school or received there GED. It was just hard to believe that the only audience and target market are minorities. When I saw any actual college and university commercials it had a completely different look and feel to them. The commercials just had an completely different target objective in there advertisements. The commercials I am particularly talking about are the Penn State and Devry commercials.

1 comment:

Liz F. said...

That is funny that you pointed out that in the technical institute commercial there are minorities shown as oppose to the Devry commericials where the people are more universal looking. Like the only thing minorities can do are work with their hands or on machines and not use their brains. In many ways, that is implied and I think that was very interesting to point out. I hadn't even noticed before.