Marketing

Posted by: albrechtkrausse on Oct 23, 2007 3:07 PM

Obviously. Companies of all types target their marketing. If cigarettes/tobacco are bad then please ban them. Or, at least, put REAL restrictions on thier purchase by minors. If, however, they remain legal, and there is no sign from the Democrats -or Republicans- that they will be banned then the businesses will target 'key demographics' like anyone else. Yes, it is morally wrong to sell a death-product but right now it is legal.

ps: alcohol companies also target key demographics like: euphemistically called 'urban markets' (malt liquor), 'price conscious market' (fortified wines), yuppies (expensive grain alcohol vodka in nice bottle), rednecks (NASCAR-themed Busch tallboys), hunters ('hunting edition' 30pack beer cases), college kids (cheap beer), drink-drivers (iced down tall-boy singles in gas station convenience store coolers), girls (alco-pops), etc. Again, morally bad but 'its legal'?!?

This commenter has a great point, in response to an article titled The Tobacco Industry Targets Black America, but I'm left in a conundrum. Do I reply to the commenter, indicating her own ingrained othering of women by identifying "girls" as just another niche market like "hunters" or "rednecks", in an attempt to help educate that user or not post such an off-topic comment.

As a woman, I obviously identify with a number of groups on that little list - interestingly, both the price concious market and the yuppies - but that last example makes me wonder, does albrechtkrausse think women are multifaceted enough to fit in those other groups too?

As a woman that was raised to naturally assume that we're all equal, I have a very hard time even imagining that someone could identify an entire economic or social class that had no women, but then I see news accounts of the "Iranian people rioting over gas shortages" with no women present. I think, "that't not 'people' - 'people' includes women, how can you have 'people' without women?" I wonder that every time I hear anything about the Afgahn "people" supporting the Taliban. Are they talking about "people" or are they talking about men?

But that is very tangential, back to my point.

The choice I've made is obvious. My window for commenting is small - in a day or two, we'll all have moved on to something new, and the impact of a comment will be over. Anti-feminists ready to pounce on any and all weaknesses in an argument are all over Alternet. One only has to read the comments on any and all feminist posts on that site to learn that. I don't even know if I could write a comment that was both brief and made the point about the othering of women that I am trying so hard to make here.

Of course, this ignores the fact that a lot of those alco-pops feature guys drinking them in their advertisement - actually, a lot of alcohol ads seem to assume that men are the primary buyers, at least in bulk, of alcohol. Women, at best, drink the booze, usually while trying to be sexy (for men), as opposed to just for having a good time. Then again, thats not based on any study I did.

Have any of you seen that Coors [Light?] commercial? Both woman and man are excited that something turned blue, the woman about the pregnancy test, the man about his beer. The woman then walks off, slamming the door. The man shrugs and drinks his beer. My thought is "oh, she's off to call the abortion doctor" because thats what I would do if I found myself in a relationship with someone like that. Maybe that makes me a humorless feminist, maybe it is a stupid joke, maybe it is the promotion of male irresponsibility that the entirity of the mainstream media seems to be shoving at us thats making me mad. I'll say it, any man that cares more about some stupid beer than his wife/girlfriend's pregnancy doesn't deserve to procreate. But there, I guess, is an example of alcohol marketing to "guys".

And that does it for tonight.