I'm asking this question because of some of the commercials I saw before Superbad tonight. A while ago there was Alesse which did a lot of advertising but never said what the product was. A shot of a package of pills was the only reference.
One of the commercials came on and it showed some women/girls frolicking and having fun with their friends. At the end a similar looking product was referenced. The audience thought it was funny even though I don't think it was supposed to be.
The next commercial was very similar and also showed a similar product. The products had names but not explicitly labelled as birth control.
I thought the tone of the ads was interesting. Girls having fun with each other, being free, dancing but not a man in sight. Presumably a man is needed to prevent what birth control pills are supposed to prevent.
I guess they are trying to create an association between being free and in control and the product without stating what they would be free of.
I wonder if these ads are a sneaky way of getting around some law that says you can't advertise these pills or are they trying to avoid getting accused of 'corrupting' young folk by encouraging them to have sex without having to worry about an unwanted pregnancy.
One other thing, I wonder if the two advertisers know their ads are played one after the other. The audience got quite a kick out of the fact there were 2 birth control ads in a row. Sort of undermines the effectiveness of both ad campaigns.
2 comments:
I believe that, by not mentioning the nature of the product in these ads (i.e. drugs), the advertisers do not have to mention all the possible side effects of said product. I'm not 100% sure about that, but I did read about the different "master formats" of advertisemtents a while ago, and a similar sort of ad about ED medication was mentioned and justified that way.
Now, I have seen a lot of commercials that state the brand of the pills. IE. I have seen an Alesse one where all through the commercial the girls are like "I'm on Alesse" I think the problem is it would take too much time to explain to those who don't know that they don't protect from STI's and as mentioned earlier the side effects. Also, I think the commercials are primarily females because in essence it is the females choice to take the pill, empowerment and so on and so forth.
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