In the following presentation we will take a look at television commercials for similar and different products from different sides of the Atlantic ocean. The point of watching the commercials was to try and determine whether there is a difference in the roles of men and women in comparable commercials depending on whether they were made in the United states or Europe. We tried to focus on what we saw as “popular” genres; Beer cars personal hygiene products etc.

European commercial for mercedes benz. woman at library ordering fast food. Beauty is nothing without brains.

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American commercial for another German auto manufacturer. No specific gender roles, family setting.

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The Mercedes commercial form Europe is clearly using the stereotypical idea that blonde women are not as intelligent as other women. At first glance I thought it was funny. Then I realized that I was just playing into and subscribing to the stereotype. The second commercial however seemed to stay much further from any stereotypes. What it did perpetuate was the idea that men and boys are, or should be interested and enamored with cars, however other than that the commercial seemed pretty straight forward and didn’t play into any stereotypes. Another difference is that the first commercial is using a woman to sell a car (how they thought portraying a woman as stupid would help sell cars is beyond me) the style of the car is a four door wagon so it’s a family luxury vehicle so I really don’t know what the advertisers were thinking. The second commercial uses a man woman and a kid to sell a compact 2 door. So in conclusion I am not sure what to make of it. 

European cigar commercial, very racey, male fantasy of two women in a lesbian relationship

commercial with guys playing soccer

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Unable to find american cigar ads, tobacco commercials were banned in the US back in january of 1971

Similar bans were instituted in europe also, the bans were done country by country and at different times.commercial.wmv

There really is no assessment of the Cigar commercials, the fact of the matter is what cigar commercials that we did find were questionable as to whether they were authentic or not. Many seemed to have been made too recently to be real. The videos are blatantly offensive and make stereotypes seem like understatements. I debated whether to pull the cigar slides altogether but decided against it because I thought it was interesting that something that has been against the law in most nations worldwide (tobacco advertising on TV) continues to be created on the internet.

The following is a ukrainian beer commercial

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a commercial from Germany http://www.youtube.com/v/RUy5d5VD6xA?fs=1&amp;

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American, anhieser busch , mainly focuses on tageted campaign ads. Like the wassup guys.

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At first thought I assumed that the Beer commercials would be the worst offenders of the stereotypical womanizers, using the scantily clad female for to sell the product. But as it turns out

in both European and American beer commercials seem to be much more concerned

with sports than sex. And in the case of the “Wassup” guys, the only appearance of women

is in the form of girlfriends. That was true in most of the European commercials also. The

trend seems to me to be that breweries are using men to sell to men, and women. Beer is

often thought of as a man’s drink, but the fact of the matter is women drink beer also.

While looking for Jean picture ads in my room, my mom walked in and thought I was looking at porn! This is a Calvin Klein ad, and believe me, they get much worse! I found it interesting that the guy on the floor in this picture doesn’t really show any specific gender roles.

European Commercial

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxeJCLYk630

American Commercial

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8VLdD7Nqco

It came as a shock to me that some of the jean commercials that I saw did not follow typical gender roles. In the American jean commercial, the guy throws rocks at windows and rejects the attention of attractive females. This makes you think that he is straying from the path of typical gender roles, although in the end of the commercial, you learn that it is only because he had no pants on, and he needed to get his jeans back.

Axe and Old Spice commercials take the lead in applying typical gender roles in their advertisements (said with sarcasm), because girls usually go play in the mud, and men ride horseback shirtless.

American Commercial

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yRaFLW0KIY&p=54B9DC3355D99140&playnext=1&index=5

European Commercial

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e6FC9dMOc8

From what I see in the ads from Old Spice and Axe, the companies do not always follow typical gender roles. Although some people think it would be nice to see an attractive, female covered in mud, the norm would be a sweaty and smelly male. In the Chinese advertisement, two girls washing each other is also an attractive site, but it doesn’t follow the norm. As for the axe commercial…no comment.

To conclude our presentation, we found no significant differences between American commercials and foreign commercials. As a matter of fact, some of the commercials we found did not even follow typical gender roles, and it threw off our analysis on the differences between American and foreign commercials.