How Ads Got "Woke"

[Music] what's up guys helen here today i want to talk about that weird feeling i get in the pit of my stomach when hulu feeds me an ad like this bullying the metoo movement against sexual address masculinity that's right advertising but make it woke woke advertising has become an increasingly omnipresent phenomenon in our media landscape it's not enough to sell a hamburger you gotta sell a mental health revolution now i'm not saying i prefer the gross advertisements of yesteryear or even any ads at all however if you're cynical like us you probably feel a little weird about your bath soap being imbued with progressive new ideas about womanhood in the interest of maintaining a healthy skepticism toward anyone who's ultimately trying to sell me more stuff i've been wondering why does every advertisement lately seem to come furnished with a political message and what does it mean for us welcome to this wisecrack edition on how advertising got woke and hey if you hate ads woke or otherwise there's a way you can watch wisecrack videos without any brand asking you to do anything by becoming a patron you can watch all of our content ad-free it also helps us keep making great in-depth content like this video whether or not it's ad friendly check out patreon.comwisecrack or click right here to learn more we have to start by asking what exactly is a woke ad is it when spaghettios tweets about pearl harbor or is it more like when ikea decides to feature a gay couple back in 1994 or is it when nike pays colin kaepernick to be a spokesperson precisely because of his activism we'd argue that woke advertising is defined by its invocation of social causes and social movements of a given moment especially those affiliated with progress and social change so sorry spaghettios you're not woke that's not to say conservative brands don't also try to capitalize on the politics of their consumers but nobody would call that woke especially these days woke ads typically focus on identity-based issues surrounding race gender sexuality disabilities and so forth in this way the kendall jenner pepsi ad is woke because it intended to align itself with black lives matter it just failed hilariously under this definition the secret deodorant ad in the 1970s strong enough for a man made for a woman was probably somewhat woke for the feminist movement at the time but the same ethos and a cover girl add in 2020 probably not there's also the question of whether say showing a female executive in an ad is some woke affirmation of girl bosses or just you know what professional life is like today now a lot of you might be screaming all advertising is self-interested you big dum-dum companies are just trying to sell stuff to as many people as possible regardless of skin color sexual orientation or gender they're just getting with the times and targeting their customers accordingly whether that's two dudes putting their relationship through the gauntlet of building ikea furniture together or just this guy who needs an energy drink for gamers or whoever needs this pink gamer chair but economic reasons aside what if it's just really bad for society advertisements like any form of visual or literary storytelling have always been laden with values there are reflections of our culture and if our culture wants you to move to the burbs and raise a family that's what they're gonna reflect or if society wants you to get rich and hot ads will also reflect that but as values change ads naturally do too as a result and contrary to popular belief woke advertising is not at all a new phenomenon it's pretty old historically most woke advertising appealed to women overwhelmingly white by reflecting various stages of the feminist movement as explained by andy zeisler author of we were feminists once in the late 19th and early 20th century when some younger women were feeling stifled by victorian notions of idealized womanhood advertisers piggybacked off the existing feminist notion of the emancipated new woman by frequently depicting young independent gals who bucked against victorian norms and even served on juries the new woman was according to zeissler essentially a watered-down more palatable suffragette who surprised liked buying things this conflict between the advertiser-friendly new woman and the ruckus-raising hunger-striking suffragette is at the heart of the problem with woke advertising and it is maybe best illustrated by the torches of freedom campaign which very publicly debuted during a parade in 1929. it was masterminded by one edward bernays the creator of modern public relations and sigmund freud's nephew bernays believed that people bought things not based on what they needed but based on the feelings a given commodity inspired so he organized a stunt to sell cigarettes to women who were typically looked down upon if they smoked outside of their homes he paid a group of debutants to light up during new york's easter day parade and made sure the event was both captured by the press and interpreted as a protest for women's rights cigarettes were no longer just for men they were torches of freedom symbolizing female emancipation fittingly the cigarette industry would adapt its ads for the next phase of the women's movement 40 years later when virginia slims told women you've come a long way baby as they sold them cancer sticks that 1968 tagline was in itself a response to a growing threat for advertisers feminists no longer interested in traditional beauty standards housework and so on might end up buying less lipstick and clorox so some savvy brands like charlie perfume made like advertisers of yore and incorporated elements of the feminist movement depicting a liberated bold woman who held down a job and looked good while doing it without explicitly using controversial feminist language in all of these examples we can see one of the first dangers of woke advertising it dilutes the political message of a movement women who were literally not allowed to apply for a credit card without a male undersigner were asked to redirect their attention to buying the feminist perfume or the emancipatory cigarette why march at all when you can consume fittingly a similar phenomenon happened to black americans before the civil rights movement and the rise of the black middle class in the 1950s advertising to people of color was virtually non-existent advertisers had simply always targeted white americans feud in that framework mainstream ads showing black people at all was at face value sadly kind of progressive some of the first companies to even advertise in black run newspapers were you guessed it cigarette companies the reason they did it is pretty instructive internal documents for tobacco company brown and williamson report that in the case of black and hispanic communities the relatively small and often tightly knit minority community can work to bnw's marketing advantage if exploited properly and just like with the feminist movement as the burgeoning civil rights movement made headway adds began co-opting imagery associated with black power none more bluntly than this 1970 jcpenney ad that reads slack power as historian stuart ewen put it at the time the advertising industry seeking markets has generated a mass culture which reflects the spirits but not the cutting edge of this resistance but by the 1980s our contemporary brand of woke advertising was really coming into its own again aimed primarily at white women in what zeissler calls empowertizing this was a time when consumer choices exploded and consumption became elevated as a measure of liberation as cultural historian and media critic susan j douglas put it elitism and narcissism merged in a perfect appeal to forget the political already and get back to the personal which you might be able to do something about specifically by buying those designer eyeglasses you could change your small corner of the world ads would continue to capitalize off of feminist critiques of mass consumer culture as seen in this nike ad campaign in the early 90s what's so interesting about this ad is the way it specifically invokes the pain of women living in a world that judges them overwhelmingly by their appearance rather than being judged by curves it reads a woman should be judged by who she is and who she is trying to become this leads to another serious problem with woke advertising if all advertising sells dreams woke ads tend to sell the dream of respect and equality reading this ad stirs real emotions literally making oprah cry on air ad sell solutions whether it's for your leaky whatever or your untoned arms the solution nike is selling in this case is the solution to sexism you're not buying a running shoe made in a sweatshop you're buying equality and respect the guiding principle shopping but make it feminist it's also worth noting that the feminism of nike was anything but as a coalition of women's groups said at the time while the women who wear nike shoes in the united states are encouraged to perform their personal best the indonesian vietnamese and chinese women making the shoes often suffer from inadequate wages corporal punishment forced overtime and or sexual harassment women weren't the only group being targeted by woke advertising at the turn of the century though the aforementioned ikea ad was only the first of many active campaigns by corporations to court so-called queer dollars as author alexandra chason explains in her book selling out such courting of the queer market was said to signal an end to homophobia this can most visibly be seen in the rise of everything rainbow in recent decades an effective co-opting of the rainbow flag designed by gay activist gilbert baker in the late 70s everything from rainbow underwear to rainbow instagram images to rainbow chipotle burritos purport to celebrate queerness while really elevating the simple act of buying walk is and always will be extra as jason puts it when describing rainbow clothes the reduction of politics to style implies that consumption can amount to political change attempts to imbue advertising with woke messaging became increasingly more explicit throughout the 2000s best exemplified by the ubiquity of this is what a feminist looks like shirts which literalize the notion that buying the right thing signals your commitment to the cause of women's rights and in the past five years as feminism has become increasingly less taboo advertising that co-ops feminist language has become all but ubiquitous that's not surprising woke advertising generally supports the status quo with risk-averse corporations typically choosing to piggyback off of existing social change rather than furthering it in this lens it's no surprise that beyonce's 2014 feminist vmas moment was followed by an explosion of brands evoking feminism queen bee made it safe and advertising followed what's really interesting about these ads is that they have nothing to do with the product and everything to do with exploring the pain and oppression women and girls face dubbed hashtag femvertising for their purportedly feminist messaging these ads almost guaranteed to tug at the heartstrings this is already a reason to be wary remember edward bernays it's not about the product it's about the way the product makes you feel and if these sanitary napkins make you feel sad for the way your 12 year old self was pigeonholed you're more likely to buy them perhaps after seeing the rampant success of femvertising corporations have in recent years begun to explicitly draw on black activism for inspiration a procter and gamble ad from 2017 shows several black parents talking to their children about the racism they will inevitably encounter it concludes by imagining a world where such conversations are not necessary as with women's ads these ads draw on real pain while offering wish fulfillment by imagining a less racist future sound a little manipulative never is this more apparent than in that widely panned pepsi ad in which kendall jenner dissolves tensions between the police and protesters with a can of soda ironically this ad functions like a much less subtle version of 1971's i'd like to buy the world of coke aired in the midst of the vietnam war and massive social upheaval it simply implied that if everyone chilled out with a carbonated beverage wars and stuff wouldn't happen it went on to receive countless accolades inspired fan mail and as a song even charted in several countries but the jenner pepsi ad somehow crossed a threshold of believability by making all too obvious the implication that a pepsi could end racism on the other hand brands are also eager to exploit the credibility earned by activists to sell more stuff advertisers today are dealing with similar issues that they faced from social issues of the last century but maybe a little more so millennial and gen z consumers overwhelmingly say that they prefer to buy from brands that share their values or have a higher purpose that is we want to know that our coffee is helping some farmer in nicaragua send their kids to school or that our beans do or don't support the right presidential candidate but there's another force pushing this change today products are increasingly disappearing from advertisements which instead promote the more nebulous brand scholar nikki lisa cole ties this transformation to the increased outsourcing of production leaving corporations progressively more detached from the actual products they made as cole puts it companies used to stand on a product that was your name the product you made but when you don't actually make the product you have to come up with something else to sell to people that thing of course is a brand and in many cases a hashtag woke brand as a result brands are doing another new thing something we've mentioned in previous videos they're becoming people woke people the rise of social media has enabled a host of new usually painful ways for brands to interact with potential consumers and interact they do especially if it means making themselves look noble brands increasingly are placing themselves at the center of flashpoint cultural issues a bloomberg analysis found that within three weeks of the murder of george floyd 76 of the world's top 100 brands had posted at least one corporate statement about racial justice in this instagram post fisa managed to incorporate two phrases iconic to its advertising turning its slogan everywhere you want to be into where we want to be and slyly including part of their messaging accepted everywhere meanwhile zara the fast fashion company made infamous in 2016 for profiting off of child labor posted a black square that mostly yielded inpatient comments from customers complaining about late shipping this queasy moment encapsulates the uneasy relationship between commerce and social justice while some saw the quote unquote blackout as great for pr many criticized it as co-opting a campaign conceived by black musicians and activists who were drowned out amid a sea of corporate sponsored and performative black squares when the ceo of jpmorgan chase took a knee to invoke colin kaepernick diversity consultant wyvon hutchinson responded by telling the washington post that there's a lot of performative allyship going around nobody's asking for a ceo to take a knee you take the knee after you change your policies and of course as with feminism it's not a coincidence that this outpouring of corporate support comes at a time when calls and support for ending police brutality is at an all-time high in other words they'll support black lives matter when it's least controversial most convenient and financially safe to do so which is why i want to tell you right here and now that wisecrack is committed to ensuring all women can apply for and use credit cards without mail supervision and you can take a stand right now with us by taking your credit card and using it to become a patron not only will you send a strong message to sexist credit card companies but you'll get ad-free and early access to all of our videos plus higher levels get you access to cool stuff like the wisecrack discord where you can hang out with wisecrack staff and fans be sure to let everyone know in their how much you support my right to incessantly order takeout even when i have a fully stocked fridge check it out and make a stand by going to patreon.com wisecrack and as always thanks for watching peace [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Wisecrack

Views: 325,397

Keywords: digital advertising, advertising, commercials, super bowl commercials, kendall jenner pepsi ad, advertising fails, banned ads, history of, history of advertising, video essays, wisecrack, philosophy, wisecrack edition, deep or dumb, advertising on youtube, commercials that make you cry, commercials from the 90s, kendall jenner pepsi ad original, ads, advertising techniques, woke ads, colin kaepernick, woke, nike, black square, social justice, toxic masculinity, gillette commercial

Id: OfrCqnKbHKk

Length: 16min 55sec (1015 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 10 2020