The Frito Lay chip company has just launched a disastrous new campaign to try to get women to start snacking on chips as much as their male counterparts. Faced with dropping sales, they employed some neurologists to tell them what sort of kooky advertising would get inside of those tiny lady brains. The New York Times reports:
Juniper Park used neuromarketing in a slightly different way. Ms. Nykoliation began by researching how women's brains compared with men's, so the firm could adjust the marketing accordingly. Her research suggested that the communication center in women's brains was more developed, leading her to infer that women could process ads with more complexity and more pieces of information. A memory and emotional center, the hippocampus, was proportionally larger in women, so Ms. Nykoliation concluded that women would look for characters they could empathize with.
Which apparently translates into women obsessing over the size of their thighs, melting into little animated piles of tears over random dudes, using words like "cankle," and being generally super stressed out.
For the vomit worthy results, go here. I warn you, a gag bag is totally necessary.
Thanks to Beth for the heads up.
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great. I loved baked Lays.....
jerks.
Me too, now I'm going to have to find an alternate chip-like snack.
Am I the only one who finds the advent of the word "cankles" to be disgusting? Just another thing for women to be self-conscious about. As if worrying about boobs, butts, and bellies isn't enough.
I did recently read an article in Prevention saying that cankles are good for you, though. http://www.dietsinreview.com/diet_column/02/cankles-a-sign-of-good-health/
I clicked the link, and found I had entered an alternate universe where women are reduced to gendered archetypes, each embodying a different stereotype, but all united by an obsession with weight, and self-definition through relationship status.
I also found it incredibly sad that two of the characters for this ad campaign have completely unfulfilled career dreams that will clearly never be realized, and find it even sadder that Frito-Lay has created catty superficial twits, and expected the female consumer to buy into them as complex, realistic characters. As a woman and a consumer of salty snacks, I am wholeheartedly offended and disgusted.
I had no idea Cathy Guisewite had moved from comics into advertising. I love the plausible deniability angle of using throwaway comments to pretend that their use of sexist stereotypes isn't actually reinforcing them. Like saying she's good even without a man, or that they're "whackjobs" for being happy about losing weight from being sick.
I wasn't aware that somebody revived the horrendous "Cathy" comic strip to sell chips.
Ugh.
I caught one of these mini-episodes while watching tv a week ago. Somehow my male roommate commented on how absolutely ridiculous it was before my communication-lovin' lady brain could muster the words to express the outrage stemming from my giant hippocampus. As I said in the community post, most ads include stupid stereotypes about women but this one seems to take all the biggest cliches and present them with zero character or subtlety. If they want women to empathize with characters then why are they making them into ridiculous caricatures? It's like the only interaction the ad agency has had with women is through Cathy cartoons, other television ads, and really bad chick flicks.
Apparently I'm not the only one that immediately thought of Cathy comics. That strip has run for 30 years, so I guess there is a market for this crap. Self-deprecating humor can be funny, but the ways it's done with played out topics like weight, appearance, and dating just doesn't do it for me.
Whoa... this was way too much for 10 am. The sarcasm doesn't strike the right chord. It's more like making fun OF women than using a uniquely "woman" sense of humor, which is what I think they were going for? And why do I need to feel like I'm watching Sex and the City in order to eat my potato chips?
This is all very confusing. Perhaps it was created by a man? Or a class of 5th grade girls?
It's like an alien who has never met an American woman in real life watched a bunch of romantic comedies and sitcoms and then decided this is what we were all like.
At the very least, they didn't give the black cartoon and overtly urban, sista-girl voice.
The only bad thing about the African American characters is that this cartoon (besides all the rotten sexist stereotypes) also presents an imaginary America where interracial friendships are commonplace.
I wished we lived in a country like that, but (with the exception of isolated islands of integration like the Armed Forces) we really don't.
A more realistic version of this cartoon would show the White characters and the African American characters perhaps having co-workers of the other race, but living in segregated neighborhoods and having a monoracial social circle (perhaps with the Whites having East Asian or South Asian friends or the African Americans having Latino friends).
Yes, that scenario may be more realistic, but we on top of sexism, we don't need anymore segregation promoted by the media.
I'd rather have the media reflect the real world as it is 9(and, of course, say it's bad and needs to be changed) than present an imaginary integrated world (which some folks might use as an excuse to not make the kind of racial justice changes that this society so badly needs)
This is something that really does bug me (a white lady) about advertising. Society is not as integrated as it's depicted on TV. Pairs of buddies are always a white guy and a black guy. White girls always have a black best girlfriend. People of color are featured in nearly every commercial but they tend to play second fiddle to the more prominent white characters. Anyway, a topic for another post...
I actually do have a racially/religiously/sexual orientation-lly diverse set of friends because of where I've lived and gone to school (all very diverse places). But I realize that this is far from the norm, and that having more than one race depicted in a commercial is actually ad-agency plotting to get all races to eat Lay's than it is a statement about the value of interracial friendships. I don't think it's bad, per se, to have black and white buddies in ads, movies, etc., but I do think the motives are cynical and based more around getting a big market share than anything else. So no, not really a sign of progress at all.
But... but... my best friend is black!
Frito Lay's sales aren't dropping, they rose 8% last year. What Frito Lay is seeing is that women eat snack foods far more often than men do, however the choice of what to snack on is much different.
Men tend to eat salty snacks, which is what most Frito Lay branded snacks are, big huge sources of salt. Women I know aren't big fans of salt, from the taste to the increased feeling of water retention after eating extremely salty foods (prettey darn sure men retain water too from the added salt). As a result of not particularly liking salt, women eat other snacks. Frito Lay seems either to be trying to cash in on non-salty snacks for women, or they're missing the boat if all their snacks targeted at women are still salty.
"Frito Lay's sales aren't dropping, they rose 8% last year."
Thanks for pointing that out. I know that this is a blog and not an academic article, but sometimes feministing gets extremely sloppy about citing sources (particularly unsourced statistics) or reading them through. It says clearly in the first few paragraphs that Frito-Lay's sales are very strong right now which leaves them with the resources to reach out to a demographic that's relatively untapped.
Aside from that, I'm actually surprised that so few women love salty snacks. I'm not big on sweets so I inhale plenty of sodium with my savory foods. Good thing I have low blood pressure!
Isn't it a dangerous overgeneralization to say that "Men" like salty snacks and "women" don't?
Especially if you base that conclusion on what your friends like or don't like.
I think the commenter is referring to the statistics in the New York Times article linked here. Saying one demographic tends to like one thing more than another based on a study isn't a generalization. Obviously there are going to be exceptions in every demographic (for example, I'm a woman and I love salty foods), but it's still accurate to say that women tend to eat salty foods less than men.
Where did you get that information? I definitely enjoy my salty snacks, especially during the summer time. If it's really hot outside, my appetite gets suppressed and the only thing I eat are potato chips. It's something I've been doing since I was a little kid.
I highly, HIGHLY doubt "women aren't big fans of salt."
Women may choose less salty snacks because we're constantly told we better pick fruit (or yogurt, natch) over the salty stuff if we don't want to get ZOMG FAT!11!1! But we like salt just as much as men.
I like both sweets and salt, but personally I do choose sugary snacks far more often than salty snacks.
I would be lying if I said I haven't been socially conditioned to do so. We've all seen/heard the constant references to women binging on chocolate and ice cream when they have their periods, told to 'indulge' in sweets by advertising, and told to snack on fruit and yogurt when dieting. The latter two are 'healthy' foods, but they also happen to be sweet. So there's more cultural permission to eat sweet foods than salty foods, whatever the type, if you're a woman, and that has jack shit to do with biologically ingrained food preferences.
This is where chocolate-covered peanut butter pretzels come in - salt and sweet! :)
I'm a fan of hot and salty snacks myself, it's really hard to find that tho. You either get hot, hot and sweet, sweet, salty, or sweet and salty for the most part in snacks.
Wow. That was pretty horrendous. Frito-Lay went through all that work hiring a neurologist and running tests on women's brains to come up with the same old shit that advertisers have been doing since the beginning of time. The only part I found kind of enjoyable was the character Anna in that clip. She looks like my friend Anna, if she were a cartoon and didn't have a nose.
Speaking of cartoon characters without noses, has anybody else noticed that a lot of times when cartoon characters don't have noses, they're female characters? They either don't have noses or they have really little noses. I actually like big noses, because I think they add character to a face. Maybe I'm looking too into this, but I think drawing a female cartoon character without a nose kind of symbolizes the lack of intellectual depth in that character.
Speaking as a cartoon hobbyist, I actually think that has less to do with character and intelligence than what modern makeup tries to emphasize - mascara, eyeliner, eyeshadow and etzah to make the eyes look larger, lipstick/gloss to make the lips more full. Cartoonists often eliminate facial features to make the subject more obviously a cartoon or because they're unnecessary to the bare-bones lines of the image, so for a typical female character, when other features are theoretically enhanced by makeup, the nose would be high on the list of things to remove.
THANK YOU for posting about this. I saw this ad a few days ago and it was like watching a train wreck...I couldn't actually believe how stupid it was. It's funny that at the same time, Tostitos has introduced a new campaign (www.madeforeachother.com) that involves really innovative and creative animations - the polar opposite of Frito Lay. I never thought I'd have a chip allegiance, but uh, go Tostitos!
It is a cute ad campaign, but it's by the same company. Perhaps the thing to do would be to give feedback saying, "See, this is what you do, not that."
No. I tried to watch and had to stare at a bunch of digits forming dumbers. Bo-ring. I closed the tab at 39.
Oops. That was supposed to read "numbers."
what's worse is that I can think of about a dozen girls that will totally love these ads...and then they'll go buy the chips and rent a romantic comedy....GIRLS NIGHT!!!
Could the folks at Frito Lays be even more sexist - not to mention stupid?
Take four stereotype ridden one dimensional female characters, carefully demographically balance (to create a racially integrated imaginary world that doesn't exist in reality) add every major female stereotype for the last 40 years, mix in 5 second bitelets of fake romantic comedy relationship obsession, add a healthy dose of fatophobia and, presto, sell lots of potato chips to women!
It's time to boycott Frito Lays - there are other brands of chips out there, please buy them, not Lays (and perhaps drop a line to the braintrust at Frito Lays and tell them WHY they just lost a customer)!
I couldn't get past the first video. Too much gagging (and not on snacks). I'd love to see who the brilliant minds behind this campaign are.
As ever, I am left wondering how advertising people live with themselves, when their entire career is based around manipulating and demeaning people for profit.
I'm a journalism major so I know a good handfull of advertising students. Usually they like a job that makes money while allowing for some creativity and defend their choices with "but we keep captialism running." The ones I know are good people who just don't see the way the ad industry perpetuates harmful stereotypes.
I almost can't believe these ads are real. Almost.
I love the "Only in a woman's world" tagline. Like we're zoo animals for the real people (men) to gawk at.
"Well wouldja lookit that! They're totally obsessed with the size of their asses and spend all day counting calories! Musta been born that way, as ladies 'n all!"
Joe, are you for real? Who sent you here?
Don't forget, we also live for shopping, shoes, bubble baths, helping other people even when we should say no, sappy chick flicks and lit, martinis and housework. Gag. If people actually buy into "this is what a woman is" then no wonder they are sexist.
So...they made "Sex and the City" even more simplistic and stereotype-based? With cartoon women?
I think it's interesting that movies and television shows (and, apparently, chip commercials) involving women always manage to break a single, complex person into several one-dimensional characters: The Dumb One, The Career Woman, The Slut, The Nice One. Like women are composed of only one personality attribute (and make friends with all the other attributes).
This was my email to Frito-Lay after checking out that website:
"Wow, your new ad campaign targeted toward women is so right on. Please keep the neurotic stereotypes coming, they totally make me crave crappy processed snacks. I, like most women, love it when people humiliate me and treat me like I am inherently flawed, so I will definitely throw my money at your company when I am binging on 'light' snacks and hoping they won't go straight to my thighs. Also, anytime I need to throw up and don't want to stick my finger down my throat, I can just go to your website and watch those awesome videos! Thank you so much!!!"
I know it's not worth my time, but I am feeling snarky today and it was oddly satisfying.
About the Cathy comics. When I was probably 10 years old, i read some of these comics and hoped to god i would not turn out like that when i was an adult.
I haven't watched the videos, but I looked at the character profiles under "Meet the Girls!" One of them has a "secret shame" listed: "I lost five pounds but they found me again." So they're actually telling me to be ashamed of my minor and totally natural weight fluctuations? I mean, I know that's usually insinuated, but to hear it outright...
*facepalm*
That's sort of odd also, that an add campaign for CHIPS would present characters who are so weight obsessed, because I can tell you right now most calorie counters avoid things such as chips like the plague. so just from an advestising standpoint, reminding people about their weight worries while trying to convince them to buy junk food seems counterintuitive.
And god...I looked at the characters some more and found they made one of them an "artist" type who paints and sculpts. Which at first seems like "good, they made a female character care about something besides weight and fashion" but of course she's also the only female character who's listed as "single and looking for Mr. Right" (as opposed to "single and content") and has an unrequited crush on her personal trainer. So there's still sort of that implication that it's the "weird creative" girl who ends up alone while the other ones with more "womanly" interests all have partners. Punishment for having interests or ambitions that may be slightly unconventional.
And while we're on their relationship status, how come everyone's either with or looking for only guys?
I caught this a few days ago from a post on the Community page. What drivel.
Stuff has it right on... "Wow! I sure do identify with these neurotic and insecure stereotyped cartoons! Which way to the store!?"
PS: I like all the positive comments from "real women" that Frito Lay interns have obviously been instructed to plant throughout the day.
Well, the only part I really enjoyed is at the beginning when the girl on the bench is getting vibrated by her phone. Entertaining. Unfortunately it is totally clouded by the crap that is surrounding it. I think I would have to end it before I ever became that stereotypical. Apparently, this is what advertisers think will reach us. Maybe we should boycott them and make them realize their marketing totally blows.
I agree. I thought that part was actually pretty original since the idea of a woman in a commercial getting stimulated is pretty rare -- outside of when it involves cleaning products, shampoo, and chocolate -- this one actually referenced a vibrator, even if it was only a phone.
Umm...as a Neuroscientist (biologist, actually) this "Neuromarketing" is some new age voodoo science bullshit. Physical, biological differences in the size and structure of gender brains do NOT necessarily imply radically different or enhanced function (idiots argue that because mens brains have a higher mass that men must be "smarter" because more is better, m I rite?). A "larger/better developed" hippocampus or anterior cingulate cortex does not imply ability to "process more complex information" or "are influenced in decision making by charachters they can empathise with" because the relationship between strict biological function/size/shape and actual personality, outcome and action are not well understood.
I've searched, and can't find Nykoliation's "research" in any peer reviewed journals (if someone knows where/if she's published I'd love to know...) This is sloppy JUNK science...but also proof that if you put the word "neuro" in front of something people assume whatever you are doing is highly complex, scientific, and probably right! Its the brain right! (incidentally people seem to trust whatever I say when I mention I'm a Neuroscientist...even though I study *insects*)
No wonder none of Frito-Lay's new "empathiz-able" characters are scientists. Frankly I find their four trope females a little insulting. Yoga, motherhood, customer service and clothes? Is that ALL we do?
I'm so glad to see you say this, as someone educated in the field. I think that there are two different arenas of science when it come to the sexuality of brains. One camp actually believes in research and realized that male and female brains aren't as essentially different as once thought. The other likes to ignore facts that disprove their assumptions and want to think that men can't control their sexual urges and women cry if you don't like their shoes. :/
Actually now that I've watched the whole thing I am pretty sure I won't find Nykoliation's or sources...because it's pretty hard to get an article into "Nature" or even SciAm Mind when your citations are all "Cathy cartoons" and "Sex in the City" and "A program I watched on TLC once..."
People are still touting long-dead theories as "proof" but at least it's not limited to biology. Einstein, Bohr, and Heisenberg had their doubters too. Only nobody's using physics to justify acting like total asshole.
I couldn't even get through one 2min. episode. I think I popped a blood vessel.
So...am I less of a woman because I don't act this way? I don't even know women who are this way. I'm sure they exist, but I don't want to know about it.
And they fact that they determined that only women can process complex media is equally offensive to men. Like, for men, would they just have a campaign that said "EAT CHIPS!"?
Hmmm. I'm a woman, but I think a print ad that said EAT CHIPS with a picture of delicious potato chips would be pretty convincing to me :)
Oh. My. God.
I couldn't even watch the whole 2:30.
Absolutely heinous. I hope that Sarah Haskins does a Target Women episode about this, because that is the only good thing that could possibly come out of this crap.
Most of you are completely missing the point.
I know tons of women like this. And I'm sure you do too; they just haven't made it into your circle of Certified Feminist Friends. But they're out there, and ads like these are what a lot of people want and relate to.
This is the problem.
See, the media -- but especially advertising -- won. It's influenced public discourse enough that, more than schools or families or anything else, it makes people what they are. And it's made the majority of men into Jackass wannabes and the majority of women into characters like these. And the next generation of girls and boys are going to be even more so.
Welcome to the future. I can't wait to leave.
Ugh...I find it revolting and insulting, but I agree with katemoore to a large extent. :( Won't stop me from making scathing commentary on the commercials/programs on the few occasions I actually watch TV.
Seriously, it's almost like advertising and media did me a favor by moving so far out in to the fuckwittage zone. At some point the magazines and the shows and the ads became something from another planet that I could not relate to at all/found puzzling or insulting instead of captivating and I just lost any interest. I think I'm much happier and smarter as a result :)
Yeah, marketing people, you want to know why I'm stressed out? Full load of classes, living with my grandma to take care of her after eye surgery, dad had metastatic cancer. That fact that I'm fat doesn't even enter into it at the moment. the fact that our idiot caseworker almost didn't process our income report in time for us to get our bridge Card (electronic food stamps) refilled did. Or my persistent ear infection and a back that goes out if I look at it funny. 'low fat potato crisps' are pretty low down on my priority list at the moment.
I really hate being condescended to and told how I feel by adverts.
Ugh. I watched the first one, and they weren't even advertising the chips, they were advertising themselves for at least for like 10 minutes or so. It would've been funnier if it was made by real women.
God, they even got the domain name awomansworld.com...disasterous.
I went to the Frito Lay web site and clicked on About Us and then Contact Us: http://fritolay.com/about-us/contact-us.html
I submitted this comment:
Your "Only in a Woman's World" ad campaign leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. I found about your ads on Feministing.com. You can see http://www.feministing.com/archives/014050.html#comments to see what over 50 commenters think of the ad campaign.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I love Lay's potato chips and I always used to buy Baked Lay's whenever I went to Subway. However, I won't be buying them anymore unless I see your advertising change. It's not OK to reduce women to cartoon stereotypes in order to advertise your chips.
My address was required to send this form, but I am requesting that you not send me any materials in the mail. I would certainly appreciate a response in my email, which was also provided. I look forward to hearing from you about how you will change your marketing to fit with the real women that eat your products.
Thanks,
my full name
Please go to their web site and tell them they suck!
I have to say how disheartened I was after seeing these commercials. I just put so much effort into organizing my college's first ever Eating Disorder Awareness Week (very successful, by the way) this past February. To see something like this makes me only want to work harder to raise awareness. Now, I'm practically fighting with people on the woman's world website via commenting, who are defending the company's disgusting messages!
Like women regard the "push up bra" as the greatest invention and not something like the pill?
I just saw a commercial for these snacks and had to come back and comment I was so disturbed by the way ED style behavior (at the very least eating disordered behavior) was normalized in it. In the commercial one of the women comes in to a room moving like she is in pain and saying "ow, ow" When her friends ask what is wrong she replies "4 hours of aerobics" and when they ask why she says "hot fudge sunday" and they all say "Ohhhh" in understanding terms like they understand perfectly and this is normal. WTF?! Doing 4 hours of aerobics because you ate ice cream is a sign of a serious disorder. It is really sick how this company is attempting to make women think shit like this is "normal' so we will be afraid to eat anything except their low cal snacks. Disgusting.