Advertisements have been persuading the public ever since they began to appear in the early 1900’s. Since then, advertisements have convinced the public to buy their company’s product, because without it, you cannot survive. The following four advertisements are examples of how they appeal to the people in their time period.
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Why Most Women Choose Luxor Rouge 1923
This advertisement is of a makeup company called Luxor from 1923. This ad uses sexual appeal of a very beautiful and attractive lady using their makeup product. This strategy of showing a woman with beautiful skin is very effective because the females will buy this to look more beautiful and attractive. This advertisement would also appeal to the men because they would buy this product so their wife could look as beautiful as the lady in the advertisement. To see that this product makes the lady in ad’s face look so pretty would cause the person looking at the ad to want to buy the product.
This ad relates very closely to its respected time period. The 1920’s for women was their ‘coming out party.’ This was a time period when the lives of women completely changed. The clothes of the women went from full covered outfits, to short skirts. The way women were viewed socially totally changed. This time period for women was that they were their own person, and could do anything they wanted. This was the beginning of independence for women. They started to wear makeup, and have different hairstyles. This showed their relaxed attitude along with their increased sexuality. This advertisement used the advancement of women socially to market its product.
The image above was obtained from the K-Mart paper.
This advertisement is for a shampoo company called Herbal Essences. Like the ad of Luxor above, this ad also uses sexual appeal with beautiful women with wonderful colored hair. This product is nicely marketed toward its desired market (women). The ads strategy is to leave women surprised in how extravagant the hair color looks after using this product. This leads the consumer to believe that if they use this product, their hair will also come out with equally impressive results.
This product relates to today’s time period by the need to be physically beautiful. Sexual appeal is constantly around us, and the need to be beautiful is huge for women. Every woman wants to look like a model, and the need to become one only stresses the issue of physical importance. One of the ways a woman enhances her beauty is by coloring her hair by using products such as Herbal Essences.
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Colgate's "Handy Grip" The Refill Shaving Stick 1921
This advertisement is of Colgate’s Refill Shaving Stick in 1921. This product is used like a roll on deodorant. You rub the lather from the shaving stick on your face as you would for a roll on deodorant, and then you can shave.
This ad makes its appeal by showing us how easy it is to use their product. This product is obviously targeted towards men because of the fact that it is a ‘shaving stick’, and that it shows a man using the advertised product. This ad even goes as far as comparing using the shaving stick to a shotgun. The ad says that using the refill shaving stick is just as easy as reloading a shotgun. In the advertisement, there is an image of a man reloading his gun, and another blown up image of a pair of hands actually refilling the shaving stick. This product uses an effective comparison to show how easy it is to use their product. Since most men in the respective time period probably knew how to use a shotgun, this method of advertising was effective because it was easy for any man to relate to their product.
This ad relates to its time period because the 1920’s were a time of change. There was huge economic change, and life became a little easier to live, with the use of electricity, fridges, vacuums, and other such products. This form of ease and simplicity to ones life is the idea Colgate used to sell their product. They made a product so simple and easy to use that every man would want to have it. They even state in their commercial that it is “more economical in use than powder and much more economical than cream.” This product allowed the man to avoid all the mess. Colgate used the emerging trend of ease and simplicity to ones life to advertise its product.
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This advertisement is for Crest Whitestrips. This product makes teeth whiter in a short period of time. You take the strip that the lady is holding and put them on your teeth (like putting tape on paper). All you have to do is put the strip on your teeth for a certain amount of time and over a period of time the user of the product will have whiter teeth.
Like the Colgate Refill Shaving Stick, the Crest Whitestrips appeals to us by showing how easy it is to use. This ad uses effective methods to make the consumer believe in their product. The lady has on red lipstick which focuses the direction of our eyes towards her mouth. When looking at her red lips, one cannot help but notice the bright, white teeth. You then see the product that they are advertising. She is holding the whitestrip in front of her teeth. She has her mouth open and is about to use the product. We then get a sense of how easy it is to use their product. It also leads the consumer to believe that their product works because the teeth she is about to put the strip on are white.
This product relates very closely to today’s time period. This product shows how important physical beauty is nowadays. Whether it’s fair or not, we are constantly judged from our physical appearance. From movie starts to music singers, beauty is flashed in front of us constantly. Whenever we see a famous person, or somebody on the TV or internet, we cannot help but notice their flashy (white) smile. This product effectively gives the everyday people a chance to have the white smile everybody longs for. In a just a certain amount of days and without spending all the money to get your teeth whitened from the dentist, anyone can have a brighter, whiter smile. This product uses today’s importance of physical beauty to advertise its product.
Advertising has come a long way since it first began in the early 1900’s. Although the products and the style may have changed a bit, one thing stays the same, the ability to market the product in a manner in which everybody wants to buy it.