Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Sub-culturally diverse advertisement

Happy April fools day! Here's a joke:

I was walking by the Liquor store the other day when I noticed that the large windows were decorated with huge banner ads for "Support Dry Grad." The funny thing was, each ad portrayed a different sub-culture stereotype. There was the jock, the goth, and some others. I found it hilarious because these groups would never be caught dead together. And yet, this may be one of the only times when sub-culturally diverse advertisement might work: when it's advertising to people who have to deal with these different sub-cultures daily (eg. parents and teachers)

Culturally diverse advertisement are those that strive to depict as many cultures as possible. If you ever watched a commercial and wonder why there is always a woman, a black guy, a Mexican, and a Chinese person, this is why. It's supposed to be politically correct in a way, but it's also necessary to reach out to minorities because they represent a huge demographic that everyone wants a piece of. Cultural diversity in media is also prevalent in movies and television shows: there is always a token minority character in an action movie, etc.

Sub-culturally diverse advertisement are those that try to feature as many sub-cultures as possible. Sub-cultures exists within cultures. You can think of them as a specific and large kind of cliques. There really is no wrong way to identify a sub-culture, they can be categorized by the music they listen to, by the forms of entertainment that they enjoy, even by their sexual orientation. As you can imagine, most people exist in several sub-cultures at once while they may only live in one or two cultures at most. This is just one of the problems with sub-culturally diverse ads. It's hard to pin-point recognizable sub-culture stereotypes to use in advertisement and more often than not, you're going to end up offending someone or making people laugh. An unintentional example of this would be a couple of radio ads that I hear on Fox currently. One is the fountain tire ad that features a lifeguard (I'm a lifeguard) and the other is a Red Bull commercial about studying for Biology (I'm a student). Both are cringe-worthy and makes me turn off the radio as soon as they come on, but I'm sure others wouldn't mind listening through all of it.

The biggest problem with sub-culturally diverse advertisement is the fact that you really can't use it to target multiple sub-cultures. While people of mixed origins are used to living with each other and have come to expect ads to feature a cultural mosaic, those in different sub-cultures really don't have any reason to associate themselves with any other sub-cultures. It may happen on the individual level, but rarely as a collective. As such, you can't really make an ad featuring both rockers and country/techno enthusiasts and expect to get a positive reaction from all groups. Rather, the fact that you're trying to associate polar opposites will most likely turn all groups featured away.

Even with individual ads and campaigns, sub-cultures pose a problem to advertisers wishing to target them. When trying to market vodka to straights and gays, Absolut uses different campaigns to target each group. However, if a few insecure macho men discover the gay targeted ads, it would no doubt cost Absolut some customers.

This is why sub-culturally diverse ads are a joke, they're impossible to use without turning people away and costing advertisers money in the long run. I made an exception above for people not directly in the featured sub-cultures, but those that deal with them daily, like teachers and parents. However, even then, there has got to be a better way to advertise to these groups without turning off potential future customers that are in the sub-cultures and will hold a grudge.

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