Lecture Six: Gendre Responses to Advertising

In todays lecture we talked about our upcomming perception experiment assignment. We had an example test produced by Ruth to show us how to evaluate our experiment. The test was in 3 sections which all consisted of a series of pictures on a PowerPoint presentation.

The first section was a selection of 14 different print advertisments and we were shown each one for about 3-5 seconds. After all the pictures had been shown to us Ruth asked which one of the 14 print ads was most prominent in our minds by naming each one n we had a show of hands. The one most recognised generally by the class was the Nissan advert. We decided that this was mainly due to the fact that there was a large section of block colour to draw the eye in and then there were only two lines of writing which was easy to read.

The second section was this time a collection of 10 male focused advertisements, all print ads again. Again, in a group, we were asked which advert was most prominent. This time however we discussed how the advert is focused at the male population. we come to some conclusions that males prefer darker colours in their adverts like blacks, greys, browns and blues etc and that they generally remember adverts that are funny. However out of the 10 ads 90% of the females in the class remembered the Paco-Rebarno advert simply because it was a picture of a toned and semi-clothed man. Most of the males in the class though remembered an advert with a joke in it.

Then the final section was again 10 print advertisements but to contrast the second section they were all female focused. The first ad was of a man frozen outside in the snow holding a beer to keep it cold whereas there are a pair of female legs in the sauna. Now we found out that the men found out that the advert was for beer first because of the logo in the corner but in contrast the woman had noticed that there was a man outside whereas the males in the group missed that.

The aim of this lesson was to prove that men and woman are targeted differently with print and video ads aimed specifically at one sex. I also found this interesting post which is a good read:

Men vs. Women