Gender differences in advertising

Gender differences in Advertising

Introduction- Have you ever noticed the differences of words used when selling a product to men and women, when actually it's exactly the same product? Take the infamous Dove adverts, selling both male and female antiperspirant.  When recently watching the female advert and the male advert I noticed instant differences in the way they are advertised. For a start there was a serious amount more talking in the female advert than the male! As I took a quick note of the adjectives used in both adverts from 2012, lasting 20 seconds each, I saw a clear difference with 4 adjectives within the male and 20 within the female… clearly there is a difference in language used when appealing to a different gender.

 

Nouns- Looking at specifics, nouns believe it or not have more involvement in one genders advertisement than the other. It has been researched and found from an article written by Jie yang from the Kristianstad University that more nouns are found within female advertisements. Although it was stated that the involvement of nouns did not account to a major difference, it would still suggest that the way in which nouns are used are different between genders. Females would appear to need more 'nouns' within advertisements, to make them more appealing. Maybe guys just don't need much encourage spending their money on beauty products…

 

Adjectives- Looking further at adjectives, the same pattern occurs and has been found from the same piece of research as mentioned from above, supporting what I found within the dove adverts.  It was found that there were a much larger proportion of adjectives used in their sample of advertisements when male and female adverts were compared. What was interesting to see however, when looking at adjectives specifically, there are many more non-neutral adjectives used within male advertisements rather than a neutral adjective that could be used for either a male or female. What that means is that if men's advertisements use adjectives, they're more focused on boosting their ego, rather than the product itself.

 

These pieces of research and the theory themselves definitely increase the reliability of falling back on the idea of Lackoff and gender differences in language. Although her general research was about Gendered language in the work place, it still shows that the way we behave is governed by the language around us. It is clear to see that differences in advertising defiantly have an impact on sales, depending on how guys and girls are approached. Maybe men and women differ a lot more than we think…. When men are being sold a product 'man language' is defiantly the way forward, whilst women may have a more open minded and softer approach to what they want to buy.

 

 

By Phoebe Pedersen