“With knowledge comes protection.” The fact that some need that protection more than others – some are more persuadable – has led to a frenzy of scientific research. Neuroscientists are busy trying to read the brain’s responses to various persuasive stimuli: Indeed, a study published last month in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience suggested there is a network of regions in the brain that responds to the act of being persuaded by an argument. But Kevin Dutton’s “Split-Second Persuasion” points out that, sometimes, our responses are so deep-rooted that we simply can’t resist.
Identity crisis? Is it appropriate to think of a woman as a prey or as a trophy? Well, it must work to some degree; it seems to be “scoring” with men, since it represents the basic marketing approach to pitch alcohol; after all, “boys will be boys” , but will they ever be men? The latest ontological conundrum comes to us courtesy of Heineken , which last week altered a commercial it had been running since August after complaints, surprise, of sexism. The thirty-second spot, titled “The Tiger” , shows two men attempting different tactics to pick up a lady at a wedding. The voiceover suggests the scene is like a jungle, and explains there are “two types of tigers- one who goes straight to the prey and the one who makes the prey surrender to them.” In either case, guy captures prey who submits to one of them and preserves the love triangle. Last Sunday, the brewer, in the wake of the criticism compromised; they changed the word “prey” to “prize”, which only increased the number of complaints about the company’s sexist advertising.
What better way to sell beer than to associate it with man’s most primal instinct? Here, Heineken is doing nothing any other brand from dish soap to acne medication wouldn’t do. But their execution is blatant in its misogynistic tone, whereas most brands try to be a little more subtle, putting a suggestive wink from an attractive opposite-sex person in right after the product shot.
But Heineken wants to appear smarter than the average beer, and it does so by positing males as sexual predators and females as the sexual prey. Then the commercial explains and exhibits a push-and-pull tactic used by pick-up artists in which a man shows interest, then pushes away slightly so as to say he’s not a creeper, he doesn’t need the woman, but still makes sure the “mark” — are we picking up on the misogyny yet? – knows that he’s indeed interested. She is, of course, smitten by the fact that this guy doesn’t need her and that he doesn’t approach her directly like how all the other non-Heineken-drinking idiot “tigers” go after their “prey.”
Dancing with Gramma is a means to an end not dissimilar to working with retarded children in order to bang the special programs coordinator at the Children’s hospital. And yet it still works, and maybe he’ll actually find that he enjoys working with the elderly, and he’ll change his douchebag ways, and then someone will make a movie out of it that tons of women will inadvertently drag their boyfriends to, and the economy will continue to churn out romantic comedies and beer ads that perniciously reinforce oppressive gender roles in the collective psyche, and people will continue to wonder why the divorce rate is so high.
…“It’s tapping into the brain’s hard-wired preference to be part of a group,” observes Mr. Dutton, who draws a strong connection in the book to the long-ago human discovery that safety was usually found in numbers. In other words, all those ad campaigns suggesting we buy something that’s popular are secretly trying to leverage the human instinct for self-preservation.
“Here is also a fun thing to notice: the THERE WAS A TIME thing. Remember when men were men? Real live masculine manly men of manhood and manliness? Boy, doesn’t it suck tha
n aren’t men any more, and they have to be less manly and manful in their day-to-day interactions? It’s almost as if many men fetishize a foregone time when male privilege was entirely unhampered and ran rampant (LIKE GODZILLA) through the streets and no-one ever questioned it and the performance of traditional highly privileged masculinity was never challenged! I wonder what could have brought this glorious time to an end?” ( tigerbeatdown.blogspot)“This is why( these types of commercial and ads are) problematic. It implies that, when men allow themselves to be influenced by femininity (women?), they lose something instead of gain something. Feminism is often similarly presented as a zero sum game: when women won something, men lost something. This, of course, puts men and women at odds and encourages the denigration of femininity and anti-feminist initiatives.”
ADDENDUM:
Simon Houpt: The folks at Ogilvy & Mather Canada know a thing or two about sexist ads. When the One Club for Art & Copy announced its top 10 digital campaigns of the decade this week, O&M made the list with their 2006 Evolution campaign for Dove, which began online with a bracing time-lapse film demonstrating the physical and digital manipulations that go into the creation of beauty ads. But here’s something depressing: When we watched Evolution again the other day, YouTube suggested we follow it up with something called Bikini Shakespeare, a Popcorn Indiana ad featuring bad actresses in tiny bikini bottoms (and tops made of popcorn) performing Hamlet’s immortal Act 3 soliloquy. To be or not to be sexist: Really, is that the question?