Pampers: For Every Little Miracle
Decades have progressed since the introduction of television commercial advertisements. Advertisements have been around for many years and in today’s society they are much more common. There are certain commercials that are aired at a certain time in order to capture their audience’s attention. Advertisers know when the correct times to air certain commercials are and also use that to their advantage because the product in the commercial will have more of an impact upon buyers. But many of the commercials are also stereotypical and portray the way things should be even if others do not think that way. Many commercials are after the financial content, and how much a specific gender is influenced to purchase, making this an issue because commercials should be equal among both men and women.
Whether or not we like these advertisements, we have to deal with the fact that they are and will always be a part of our daily lives if we watch television. Commercials aired throughout the day do not have the same stereotypes, for example, those aired during the day will most likely be directed toward the stay at home moms as opposed to being aired over the weekend when men are usually home. Today certain commercials for women are about shoes, clothes and diapers but while men are at home we see advertisements for beer, cars and upcoming games. Kemper states, “Ads for disposable diapers are virtually never seen during a football game any more than commercials for beer are seen during soap operas (3).” He clearly helps explain that certain commercials are only aired at certain times. Advertising companies look forward to having commercials for each gender because the more commercials the more people are convinced on a product. Therefore, setting times for these advertisements on television helps achieve this goal.
Agencies are aware of their audiences which helps them decide how much to spend on airing these advertisements and how much of a positive end result they will have. A negative aspect of this is that they have divided television because there are some programs made for each gender. There are some commercials directed toward females and some directed towards males. In “Men’s Men and Women’s Women”, Kemper states, “The gendering of programming allows the industry to provide the proper audience for advertisers by constructing shows pleasurable for the target audience to watch, and one aspect of this construction is in the gender portrayals of characters (2).” In various programming’s men are portrayed differently, for example, in soap operas men will usually be kind and mostly care about their relationships mainly with their partner whereas in comedies men will be less affectionate and caring to show their masculinity.
Therefore, the following commercial I would like to reflect on is usually aired during the day. The scene is listed first and then the phrase given for that scene. Pampers: For Every Little Miracle, begins with soothing music playing throughout the advertisement. It begins with a sonogram of a baby followed by many scenes involving mothers, fathers, families and their children. Each small scene that is showed has a caption. For example the first scene which was the sonogram has the caption “Whether he’s planned.” This form of involving outside mothers into this commercial continues with the caption because it captures the attention mainly because of the children involved with this advertisement. Listing the rest of the commercials will help to understand how the commercials tried to involve outsiders to gain feelings about using Pampers as the leading brand for their children’s diapers. A pregnant woman about to get married, follows after the sonogram with the caption “Or not.” A premature baby, “Whether she’s 3 months early.”A woman who has just given birth, “Or 10 years late.”A young woman carrying her baby, “Whether he has a young mom.”A woman handing a baby to another woman,
