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Anyone else think that there's an uptick in gender-provocative advertisements recently? Adidas has now hired a biological male as a women's underwear model, with chest hair and a distinct bulge at the groin:
https://twitter.com/OliLondonTV/status/1658934499118309379
https://www.adidas.com/us/pride (It definitely is classified as women's swimwear)
There was also that other now-withdrawn Miller Lite beer ad where the woman spends her time swearing and professing how happy she is to compost images of women in bikinis. Just recently, we had the original trans beer ad that has proven very damaging to Bud Light.
Is this kind of advertising increasing, or are people noticing it more, or am I making up a trend? I suppose one could conceptualize a waves and troughs model, as advertisers tone it back after boycotts (Gillette comes to mind as having suffered from its choices). Some have argued that Gillette took an immediate and serious financial penalty from the ad, 350 million in six months. On the other hand, there have been arguments that P&G, Gillette's owner didn't suffer in the medium term, or at least that there's too much noise to tell. They stood by their advertisement choice. Perhaps merely being aggressive towards gender roles is much less risky than promoting trans.
Or maybe the conservative response to these ads is essentially random? I never heard that Gillette made another trans ad in 2019, that all got subsumed by the toxic masculinity ad. Thoughts and theories welcome.
Heckler & Koch had a bit of a social media manager oopsie earlier this week piggybacking off of the Miller Lite ad. The since deleted tweets have been replaced by something more on brand for ze German weapons company.
As much as I, a guy, would agree with deemphasizing the use of "bunnies" and booth babes, this definitely was not the play. Also doesn't help when you can probably dig up evidence of women willingly leveraging their sexuality and blending it with certain interests as a profession, which is just ammo against the scolding (pardon the pun).
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There's a quote on that.
Mostly a joke but there's something to it..
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I was hoping for a funnier apology than a picture of a photoshopped road sign. Ah well.
H&K is normally perturbed that people who aren't a national army wants to give them money. They are very boring Germans and not Austrian or Belgian or Swiss.
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As one reply mentions, this is the first time a company openly acknowledges the nature of their mistake (identity politics) rather than tip-toeing around the issue.
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