Blog task: Score advert and wider reading

 Blog task: Score advert and wider reading

Complete the following tasks and wider reading on the Score hair cream advert and masculinity in advertising.

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?

The 1960s ushered in an age of new and pioneering advertising techniques. advertising agencies in the 1960s relied less on market research and leaned more toward creative instinct in planning their campaigns. Copy was still used to offer an explanation of the product - and to pitch to the consumer - but the visuals took on a greater importance. 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. This can be seen in the Score advert as it includes mostly photography rather than illustration and their visuals have great importance and creativity within the meanings they communicate.

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

According to Fain, the situation has changed radically in recent times. “Today, we’ve seen a massive shift in how women are portrayed in advertising. This is perhaps partially due to the fact that women hold around 60 percent of positions in (US) advertising agencies. Women are more prevalent in the workplace and, therefore, have more

discretionary income than women in the sixties. Many modern companies are embracing the era of female empowerment.”

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.

The advert's setting promotes a jungle theme, which connotes Britain's colonial paths in reference to the man's expression, clothing and weapon. The costumes of the women shows that they are dressed provocatively and sexually objectified, reinforcing Mulvey's male gaze theory and Western Male gaze. The man's body language and facial expressions, involving a cheeky smile and him wearing a short sleeves shirt  on his tanned skin, connotes his strength and muscles reinforcing traditional male dominance coming from a society of patriarchy. Lastly, the makeup of the women sense that they should be heavily made up and presented nicely as "spectacles" according to Butler who promotes gender as a performance.

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

The Score advert identifies the man as Propp’s ‘hero’ in this narrative. The image infers that he is ‘exulted’ as the hunter-protector of his ‘tribe’. The adoration – and availability – of the females are his reward for such masculine endeavours. This has a clear appeal to the target audience of (younger) males who would identify with the male and aspire to share the same status bestowed on him. The idea of women being sexually available and falling at the feet of a man is echoed in the long running series of Lynx deodorant commercials that ran for the greater part of the early twentieth century. Even though many decades separate the Score and Lynx commercials, their message – despite changes in social attitudes - is remarkable similar. There is clearly much truth in the mantra that sex sells. Indeed, it could be argued that the advertising techniques of fifty years ago are fundamentally similar to today – if more explicit.

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

I think in a society of patriarchy in 1967, audiences would have normalised the connotations of the advert and not thought much about it, being passive consumers who accept the preferred reading. However, an audience that is more modern following laws of equality in 2020 would react differently and make an oppositional reading to the advert due to them having the opportunity to be active consumers and make their own interpretations as traditional norms have been criticised now.

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?

They use persuasive techniques such as anchorage text which provides a bit of information about their hair cream for the audience to give them enough willingness to buy the product. They also use repetition of the word Score, which is their brand name so that they can spread brand awareness. Their slogan, "get what you've always wanted" also reinforces the brand's message and core identity and has a traditional reference, which reinforces traditional gender and toxic masculinity and could reinforce colonialist values around power and control too.

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

The women's makeup in the advert has connotations of women needing to be nicely presented and heavily made up, which links to Butler's theory of gender being a performance as they are supposed to look a certain way, as Butler says like "spectacles".

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

David Gauntlett argues that both media producers and audiences play a role in constructing identities. The role of the producer in shaping ideas about masculinity is clear in the Score advert, which is undoubtedly similar to countless other media texts of that era. Surrounded by such representations, 1960s men would inevitably use these to shape their own identities and their sense of what it means to be a man in the mid-twentieth century. Similarly, women would have a clear sense about their place in the world, despite many of the social changes that were leading to greater equality both socially and sexually (for instance, through access to the contraceptive pill).

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)?

According to Paul Burston writing in The Guardian (27th July 2017), “It’s a commonly held misconception that the 1967 act legalised male homosexuality. It didn’t. It partially decriminalised it under certain conditions. In the years that followed, gay sexuality was policed more aggressively than before and the number of men arrested for breaching those conditions actually rose considerably.” Incredibly, several police constabularies actively took advantage of loop holes in the Sexual Offences act of 1967 to prosecute homosexual men engaging in consensual sex in their own homes. Research by Peter Tatchell confirms this: in 1966 some 420 men were convicted of the gay crime of gross indecency. By 1974, that number had soared by more than 300% to over 1,700 convictions.

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

The reference to colonialist values can also be linked to social and cultural contexts of the ending of the British Empire. Paul Gilroy argues that despite the passing of empire, the white western world still exerts its dominance through cultural products. In Hollywood film, for example, the white male (usually American) plays the role of the

hero, who inevitably saves the (dependent) world from disaster. The Score advert follows a similar narrative. The jungle setting, the gun, the throne all infer that the white western male has been successful in fighting off primitives or dangerous animals to save his own tribe.

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. Yet, the reality is that men commit suicide more than women, and are more likely to drop out of education and get involved in crime, drugs and binge-drinking. Moreover, as women are increasingly empowered, many men feel increasingly dis-empowered, accentuating these social problems. 

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"?

Campaigner David Brockway, who manages the Great Initiative’s Great Menproject, urges the industry to be “more revolutionary”, particularly when it comes to male body image, which he says is at risk of following the negative path trodden by its female counterpart. “We’re seeing a huge rise in eating and body image disorders among young men. We can’t isolate the cause. Advertising plays its part. A 13-year-old boy of average build in one class recently told me

seeing an ad made him feel fat. He didn’t mean a bit out of shape. He meant everything that goes with that feeling such as seeing himself as lazy, unaccomplished and incapable.” In order to prevent a full blown crisis of self-worth, 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?

To be fair on Fernando Desouches, Axe global brand development director, he knows that. And, as he says, you’ve got to “set the platform” before you explode the myth. “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.” The passion in the Argentinian’s voice is tangible; this is a man on a mission. He’s already forged partnerships with several NGOs, from CALM to Promundo to The Representation Project, and says more developments are on the horizon. The Axe repositioning has been a “difficult”, steep learning curve. Desouches argues that “men are actually more emotional than women” and that they need more empowerment than women.