Score advert and wider reading

 Media Factsheet - Score hair cream

Go to our Media Factsheet archive on the Media Shared drive and open Factsheet #188: Close Study Product - Advertising - Score. Our Media Factsheet archive is on the Media Shared drive: M:\Resources\A Level\Media Factsheets. If you need to access this from home you can download it here if you use your Greenford login details to access Google Drive.

Read the factsheet and answer the following questions:

1) How did advertising techniques change in the 1960s and how does the Score advert reflect this change?

• advertising agencies in the 1960s relied less on market research and leaned more toward creative instinct in planning their campaigns. Ads attempted to win over consumers with humour, candour and, above all, irony.  The “new advertising” of the 1960s took its cue from the visual medium of TV and the popular posters of the day, which featured large visuals and minimal copy for a dazzling, dramatic effect.  Print ads took on a realistic look, relying more on photography than illustration, and TV spots gained sophistication as new editing techniques were mastered.

2) What representations of women were found in post-war British advertising campaigns?

• sexism in 1960s advertising was on a much greater scale – and continued this way for many years after. with adverts speaking to a woman’s inability to open a bottle of ketchup.
• In the UK, advertising in the post-war period was characterised by campaigns that very effectively reinforced that idea that a woman’s place was in the home. Ironically, during the Second World War, propaganda posters had convinced women that their place was on farms and in factories while the men were away fighting. Post-war,  and now surplus to requirement in the workplace, the advertising industry stepped in to provide a new ‘propaganda’ campaign – one designed to make women feel useful in the domestic arena.
• The way women were addressed also changed. In the 1950s it was often a male expert who lectured to women about the virtues of a product. This changed in the 1960s: the male expert replaced by a female in a kitchen regularly extoling the virtues of a new soap powder to another female. ‘The Good Wife’ – often portrayed as something of a ‘bimbo’ - was the most common representation of women in 1960s advertising, who serviced the needs of her family and took pride and joy in housework. The long running slice-of-life ‘Oxo’ campaign (Life with Katie) also promoted the idea that women should have “man appeal”, achieved through good looks as well as  the ability to cook a decent meal. Very soon the idea of women as simple objects evolved into one of females as ‘sex objects’, perhaps encouraged by the more liberal attitudes of the sexual revolution in the latter half of the decade. By 1967 it would not be uncommon to view females as both subservient to men and wearing very little clothing – as observed in the Score advert. In the post-war period the division of labour between the sexes was clearly defined in advertising. Men were represented exclusively as the breadwinner and – more often than not - intellectually superior to their female spouses.

3) Conduct your own semiotic analysis of the Score hair cream advert: What are the connotations of the mise-en-scene in the image? You may wish to link this to relevant contexts too.

• Military uniform connotes Britain's colonial past as this ad was created 20 years after India gained independence from the British empire. The uniform that the women are wearing is hypersexualised  showing Mulvey's male gaze theory. 
• The ad utilises High key top lighting in order to make the women appear more glamorous and give it a casual more "humorous" tone.
• The actors are positioned in a way where the women are placed below the man showing the sexist beliefs of the time that women were worth less than men
• The gun is a phallic symbol that a majority of the women are looking at/reaching for this along with the slogan at the top of the ad implying that by buying this product you make yourself more desirable for women.
• The mans hair is shiny showing that he has used the product that is being advertised giving an example to the audience of what it could look like.
• The women in  the photo are heavily made up linking to Van Zoonen's theory that "women are spectacles"
• Plastic plants on white backdrop links to Britain's colonial past and links back to both hegemonic masculinity as it suggests a white man both conquering the wilderness and the women he desires.

4) What does the factsheet suggest in terms of a narrative analysis of the Score hair cream advert?

• The ‘Jungle’ Score advert is presented as an aesthetically pleasing text. The females are represented as objects of beauty – along with the man’s sleek hair. The overall image conveys consensual social attitudes towards gender in the 1960s, namely that the male is dominant and the female is subservient. The ideology embedded in the language remains exactly the same – that this a patriarchal society.

5) How might an audience have responded to the advert in 1967? What about in the 2020s?

• The 1967 male audience might read the narrative as ironic and humorous (the dominant reading?) but it is unlikely that they would challenge the underlying ideology implicit within the advert. Females, though not the target audience, might read the gender representations in an oppositional way but at the same time accept its representation of a patriarchal society as normal or inevitable. Modern audiences, including students of the media, are likely to respond in a different way, aware that its sexist narrative is outdated and, for some, offensive. However, the fact that some advertisers still use a similar technique to sell deodorant to teenage boys, it could be argued that younger male audiences would not view this narrative as problematic. Indeed how far do video games such as Grand Theft Auto 5 continue to position women as sex objects and encourage misogynistic attitudes from its audience?

6) How does the Score hair cream advert use persuasive techniques (e.g. anchorage text, slogan, product information) to sell the product to an audience?

• The Liquid hair tonic is a product of the American Bristol-Meyers Company. Like many large companies of this era, they paid much more attention to building a distinctive character for the brand. The brand message is clear: to present the product as grooming product for a ‘real’ (masculine) man. The choice of the ‘Score’ brand name is deliberate and carries very obvious connotations.

7) How might you apply feminist theory to the Score hair cream advert - such as van Zoonen, bell hooks or Judith Butler?

• All the women in the ad are meant to adhere to the beauty standards of the time with all of them being white women, this links to bell hooks' theory as she states that Black women are often ignored in media as white women are the only women depicted as desirable.
• The women in  the photo are heavily made up linking to Van Zoonen's theory that "women are spectacles"
• Butler states that gender is created through rituals, so this product would be perceived as a masculine ritual meaning that it invites men to perform their gender in line with societal beliefs.

8) How could David Gauntlett's theory regarding gender identity be applied to the Score hair cream advert?

• Gauntlett's theory regarding gender identity can be applied to the Score hair cream advert as the advert reinforces the stereotypical beliefs of society at the time, this can be seen through the positioning of the models as the man is placed on top of the others even being carried by some of the women. This links to how patriarchal society is designed so that women have to do all of the work when it comes to raising children reaffirming how women's role is to support men in their efforts.

9) What representation of sexuality can be found in the advert and why might this link to the 1967 decriminalisation of homosexuality (historical and cultural context)?

• The advert reaffirms the traditional beliefs towards heteronormative sexuality as a backlash towards the recent decriminalisation of homosexuality.

10) How does the advert reflect Britain's colonial past - another important historical and cultural context?

• Plastic plants on white backdrop links to Britain's colonial past and links back to both hegemonic masculinity as it suggests a white man both conquering the wilderness and the women he desires.

Wider reading

The Drum: This Boy Can article

Read this article from The Drum magazine on gender and the new masculinity. If the Drum website is blocked, you can find the text of the article here. Think about how the issues raised in this article link to our Score hair cream advert CSP and then answer the following questions:

1) Why does the writer suggest that we may face a "growing 'boy crisis'"?

• We are much less equipped to talk about the issues affecting boys. There’s an unconscious bias that males should simply ‘man up’ and deal with any crisis of confidence themselves. After all, men (certainly white, middle-class, Western men) are better paid, have more opportunities and are not inhumanely oppressed in some parts of the world.

2) How has the Axe/Lynx brand changed its marketing to present a different representation of masculinity?

• As Lynx/Axe found when it undertook a large-scale research project into modern male identity, men are craving a more diverse definition of what it means to be a ‘successful’ man in 2016, and to relieve the unrelenting pressure on them to conform to suffocating, old paradigms. This insight led to the step-change ‘Find Your Magic’ campaign from the former bad-boy brand.

3) How does campaigner David Brockway, quoted in the article, suggest advertisers "totally reinvent gender constructs"?

• Brockway advocates that advertisers “totally reinvent gender constructs” and dare to paint a world where boys like pink, don’t like going out and getting dirty, or aren’t career ambitious, for example.

4) How have changes in family and society altered how brands are targeting their products?

• As Miller says, the definition of “family” in places like Britain is profoundly changing – but advertising is not helping to normalise different scenarios by largely failing to portray this new normal. Joey Whincup, insight director at Creative Race, agrees that success comes down to better research and she’s witnessing a slow but growing shift towards targeting consumers on more than the usual ‘ABC1 male’ demographics. Quite a few brands still segment like this, but others are seeking “a true understanding of their target consumer; who they really are, their beliefs, their attitudes, where they are now, where they want to be in future. “These brands are not just governed by the jobs men do or their age”.

5) Why does Fernando Desouches, Axe/Lynx global brand development director, say you've got to "set the platform" before you explode the myth of masculinity?

• “This is just the beginning. The slap in the face to say ‘this is masculinity’. All these guys [in the ad] are attractive. Now we have our platform and our point of view, we can break the man-bullshit and show it doesn’t matter who you want to be, just express yourself and we will support that. “What being a man means, and what ‘success’ means, is changing and this change is for the good. The message hasn’t exploded yet but we will make it explode. We will democratise it.”