Terre Pruitt's Blog

In the realm of health, wellness, fitness, and the like, or whatever inspires me.

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Posts Tagged ‘advertisements’

Oh We’ve Come Along Way, Baby! Yeah, Right!

Posted by terrepruitt on March 8, 2014

Dance Exercise, Nia, Nia at the City of San Jose, Nia classes in the South Bay, Nia Teacher, Nia Class, San Jose Nia, Nia San Jose, Nia workout, Nia, Zumba, PiYo, Gentle Yoga

 

 

 

The other day a friend sent me an e-mail that I should not have opened because I didn’t have time to be looking at an e-mail.  But I clicked on the link contained and the very first thing I saw made me laugh so very hard.  I sent off a quick e-mail back to her explaining my laughter and explaining that I would have to look at the rest later.  I had not sat down to look at the rest of the stuff on the link until now but the first thing I had seen keeps running through my head and making me laugh.  The subject of the e-mail was “Talk about sexist attitudes, these make me angry but that’s the way it was ‘back in the day'”.  I didn’t even read the paragraph that is included on the post until right now as I am typing this.  As I said, the first thing I saw was the first ad and it made me laugh soooooo hard.  And . . . not only did it make me laugh I had an earworm for the rest of the day AND every time I thought about the e-mail.  Yeah the tune is very catchy.

The ad on the post shows a woman in a car and the tag line is “I can’t tell which they’re whistling at . . . me or my new Chevrolet!”.  There is more blather and other information that is just too small for me to read, but it reminded me of the commercial my husband and I refer to as “Stacy’s Mom”.  There is a song playing that clearly says, “Stacy’s mom has got it goin’ on.”  What else it says I don’t know.  It is a very catchy tune.  Look at the ad yourself and tell me if the old print advertisement is not the same as the new TV commercial.

Well, what do you think?  It is clear the men in the TV commercial are participating in the dropping off of the kids from school, whereas the ones in the print ad are just standing there.  But since it is print we don’t know what they are/were doing.  But both advertisements seem pretty much the same to me.

I glanced at the rest of the ads on the link she sent me and I would bet there are ads and commercials that are pretty much the same today as they were then, but I didn’t look that close to them or give them too much thought.  I mean for Heaven’s Sake it is advertising.  The way they prey on us is by trying to make us feel inferior and telling us that we will be superior if we buy and use their product.  No matter what their product is; something we eat/drink, something we drive, something we slather on our bodies, something we wear, something we use to take something off of our bodies, no matter what they are selling us they are telling us we are not as good as we can be unless we use their product.  And sex . . . . as we all know SELLS.  So they are going to use it.  And KEEP using it, obviously – Cadillac and Chevrolet are GM products!

I mean, why is an AXE commercial any better than an ad saying a woman is nothing without a man?  Have you seen those Axe commercials?  Apparently all a man has to do to make woman swoon over him is smell good.  Yeah right, if as if THAT were the case.

Anyway . . . I just thought I would share a chuckle at the thought that we have come a long way and that advertisements and commercials from the PAST were sexist.

Oh . . .and now it is even MORE funny to me . . . because if you watch the video of “Stacy’s Mom” you will see that the commercial is even more about sex than you might have (at least more than I) originally thought!

So what do YOU think?  Do you think the commercials of today (at least this one) is that far from the ad from the past?  Share any other thoughts you have about commercials. 

Posted in Entertainment, Misc | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Sometimes Things Are Not What They Seem

Posted by terrepruitt on October 1, 2011

This is not something new to you, I am certain.  Sometimes things are not what they seem.  I get contacted almost every day by people wanting to help me advertise Nia and my business.  I am always interested because Nia is not yet a household name.  Nia is not yet as big as Zumba.  More often than not,  I listen to what the caller has to say.  I was recently disappointed after I received a call from a rather large company.  The woman identified herself as a person working for this large company.  She said that they were contacting people in my industry who might be interested in being on this company’s list of preferred service providers.  Since I had never had any dealings with this HUGE company, when she asked if she could send me some information regarding being on this preferred list I said yes.  I was curious as to how I could be a preferred service provider when I had never worked with this company or for this company.  Well, I got my answer rather quickly as this person did as she said.  She sent me an e-mail with the information within minutes of talking to me.  It seems that all one has to do to be included on this HUGE company’s preferred service provider list is pay, at the bottom of the scale, $395.00 for an ad.  Then — boom! — you are a preferred service provider.

I was disappointed, not that I wouldn’t be on the list, but I was disappointed about the list.  This list of preferred service providers is provided to the employees of this company.  If I were an employee of this to-remain-nameless-HUGE-technological-company, I would expect them to be preferring people that they have had some experience with.  I would think that, if I was employed by this company that they would be recommending people to me for some other reason then the company, the service provider, paid them.  The pricing started at $395.00 and went to $995.00, with something else (I am not certain what type of ad) for $100 each.

In addition to payment to be preferred the item that was to be advertised on this “preferred service provider list” was DISCOUNTED services.  So it was a preferred service provider list that offers discounts to the employees.  I honestly didn’t know that is how it worked.  I thought the preferred service provider list was more than just advertising.

Also, I would like to point out that while the caller said she worked for the company, she meant as a hired outside marketing company.  So . . . not only does this company have a preferred list of providers that are nothing more than people who pay for adverting in a preferred magazine of discounts for the employees, but the company doesn’t even do its own selling of ads in this “prefered service vendor list”.  So not only are the service vendors not actually preferred they aren’t even known to the company whose list they are on.

Bummer.  Just another lesson in some things not actually being what they seem.  If you are one that works for a company that has a preferred service provider list you might want to find out HOW they get to be “preferred”. I guess I just thought of preferred as one having been chosen over another, not just having paid to be so.

Posted in Misc | Tagged: , , , , , | 4 Comments »