Gender Roles in Media Communications - Essay Example

Gender Roles in Media Communications Advertising and media communications is all about conveying a single, unified message down to the target audience in a manner which meshes along well both with the client’s budget as well as the aspirations and expectations of the people for whom the brand is being marketed or advertised. It is formed on the basis of psychological and physiological movements which are studied by the advertising and marketing people so that the client (the company people) also remain happy and their business flourishes in the longer run. However, to get this very message down to the intended people is not an easy job to start with. It needs to be very targeted, precise and significant for them in order for them to take notice and understand that the particular brand connects with them in the best and most easiest of manners possible and hence they should be the ones to buy it for themselves and for this reason satisfy their need or even please themselves more than they had already expected. It is a sure tough job for the people who have to extract the perfect message which needs to be sharpened again and again before it actually gets down to the right kind of people who will make the actual purchase and therefore the product will be sold in the end. [Mitchell, 1993] However, on the flip side of the coin, this requires selling the product or the brand in the mind of the consumer before he actually decides to go and buy the very same. This is refereed as the pre-selling stage and advertising has got a lot to do with it. Psychologically speaking, children connect with what is there on the electronic and/or print media for them in the form of a message that says a lot about their preferred brand and lists down the details as to how it could benefit the toddler or a teenager for that matter. [Adler, 1993] Children can have a totally different impression on their young minds when they see some specific advertisement on television or in the print media which attracts the attention of the opposite gender and thus brings to notice their interest as to why the brand or the product is being advertised to the opposite sex alone. Children therefore need to be told the plus points of their television viewing with regards to the different brands so that they do not extract a meaning which is not actually conveyed by the company for them in the first place. For the company to see their brand thriving big time in the market with competitors having little or negligible business, it needs to build upon a base that it can erect its structure upon so that when the wind blows, it does not hamper the smooth business of this brand at all. With that it has to understand the soft natured psyche of the young ones where the impressionable minds of these children can absorb just about any kind of biasness aimed towards the opposite sex or for a particular community for that matter, as is the case. One needs to understand that the types of reactions these children have after watching these ads are quite distressing to say the least as they make an effort to find out what is being concealed from them as well as the rationale for doing the same. This makes them go out there and achieve something that is usually ethically wrong and not allowed by their parents and guardians. Their impressionable minds just cannot understand the sensitivity attached with the subject at hand and thus do one thing or the other to explore the areas where their mind takes them to. Constant guidance is the need of the hour in this case scenario as well as responsibility on the part of the advertising professionals is also very much required in the present times. As one can see, today’s child is not only much more talented but also understands what his or her parents would never have heard about in their tender ages. Advertising is a part of the social psychology and as we are discussing the persuasive part of it, hence there is a direct linkage here. Hence the branch of human psychology that deals with the behavior of groups and the influence of social factors on the children is indeed the social psychology and as we are getting the hang of things from the advertising and persuasion perspective of it, these both are seen as being quite imperative here. Also, the stereotypical setting of showing girls indoors as opposed to boys in the field and carrying out masculine acts suggest that there is a certain amount of gender ambiguity that is present in the ads of present times. These put more emphasis on the understanding that the advertising professionals of today lack imagination, creative touch and the much needed understanding of their responsibility towards the children in particular and the whole society in general. There has been a lot of hue and cry with regards to the equality rights of the women as compared to the men in the society in current times but less said the better in the real role played by the advertising professionals where they have more often than not failed to capitalize on the fact that they have perfect platform to get their act together and serve for the betterment of all concerned and more specifically the young ones, when one talks about a concise context here. Media communications demands a lot of word of mouth approach that essentially takes into consideration the fact that the more people are happy and satisfied with the brand and its related associations, the more they will buy it again and again as well as encourage their near and dear ones to take that step of having the eventual purchase on their part so as to give satisfaction to their own selves and thus indeed benefit the brand and more than that the company itself in terms of its business. But then again it is all about having positive associations here than disappointing a gender that is usually not that well presented in the ads, the result of which is in the form of wrath from all female quarters, no matter they hail from the rich strata of the society or are a part of the poor society values. [Gunter, 2005] When we talk about the specific ads that show boys as having a dominant role than the girls, we immediately come across the ones that exhibit some brands that are targeted more towards the children. Say for example, there is an ad of a candy bar that is liked more by children than adults. Now it is pretty natural to understand that boys and girls without any difference whatsoever of their genders, would like it and go for it day in day out. Yet somehow or the other, this ad will show the boy having the last laugh and the girl moaning that the boy took his bar away and ate it himself. This gives rise to a sort of gender difference between the two and thus the platform is set for the perfect war between the two. Add to that, there are adaptations for these ads where the same ad would be somewhat distorted and presented in a manner that the next sequence would demonstrate the boy losing out to the girl in this case. [Barthel, 1988] Rather than correcting their stance on the boy-girl war that they have brought to the fore, they should encourage a mutual sense of respect and care for each other, rather than the one going after the other to achieve one benefit or in some cases, more than that as well. A bad demonstration or for that matter association of a particular product according to the expectations of the consumers, who in this case are the children might just ask of them to refrain from buying this brand ever again. [Fox, 2001] This is a vital factor in the marketing and advertising world and emphasis should thus be placed on turning these children who have somewhat negative perceptions due to associations with the brands into positive customers as well as force their say in the purchases made by other family members. This is a hectic exercise on the part of the advertising professionals but must be given significance on the part of the company producing the product because one child who goes against a company’s product means that he or she asks 8 out of 10 children in his or her gang not to make that vital purchase of the product and this figure thus gets exponentially higher. Thus one has to figure out that portrayal of gender roles in children’s advertising does not make him or her feel alienated and at the mercy of the society rather the child needs to relate with the product and more so the feelings that are given a fresh lease of life. [Seiter, 1995] One needs to be pretty smart when it comes to targeting children as they have the most impressionable minds and usually do not forget whatever is imprinted on their minds since their days of childhood. Sources Mitchell, Andrew A Advertising Exposure, Memory And Choice Lawrence Erlbaum Associates 1993 Adler, Leonore Loeb International Handbook On Gender Roles Greenwood Press 1993 Gunter, Barrie Advertising To Children On TV: Content, Impact, And Regulation Lawrence Erlbaum Associates 2005 Barthel, Diane Putting On Appearances: Gender And Advertising Temple University Press 1988 Fox, Roy F Warning Advertising May Be Hazardous To Your Health: Ads Pose A Threat To Physical, Emotional, Social, And Cultural Well-Being USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Vol. 130, November 2001 Seiter, Ellen Sold Separately: Children And Parents In Consumer Culture Rutgers University Press 1995 Word Count: 1,548 Read More