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Print Advertisement: Nivea Moisturizer

To start off, here's some basic information about the advert. Its target audience is young women, as the main focus of the advert is a young woman, and the product is cosmetic, a product type commonly advertised to this target audience. The cosmetic in question is "Nivea Smooth Milk: Body", a type of moisturizing cream.

As the ad is written in English and comes from a German (Western) company, it can be concluded that this advert comes from a Western cultural background. Since Nivea was founded in 1911, it can be inferred that this ad was made in 2011, due to the quote "100 years skin care for life".

The ad seems to imply that physical attractiveness is the most important factor in a happy relationship, due to the happy couple featured in the image, and the slogan "For visibily smooth and touchably soft skin" (misspellings came with the ad), which seems to imply to the viewer that moisturizer brought the couple closer together (the image has them embracing each other). Obviously, since this is an advert, it emphasises the 'importance' of mosturizing and having smooth skin, which was done by showing the female model's bare back and arm (which were both smooth). In short, physical attractiveness, not personality nor any other aspect of a person, is focused on in this ad.

Despite being both the target audience and the focus of the ad, this ad does not seem to be empowering them. Rather, this ad implies that they are valued for being 'beautiful/perfect', and tries to sell them the product by trying using appeals such as the need for affiliation and need for attention. The personality and other aspect of the woman in the ad is ignored, instead drawing connections from her smooth skin to her relationship status. To me, it seems as if the ad is reducing women down to a single characteristic; beauty. Whether or not this was intentional of the ad is debatable, but it seems that the company's pursuit of getting its target audience (young women) to buy their products, has marginalised them at the same time, reinforcing the need to use cosmetics, as dictated by societal customs (meaning that the need for affiliation in this case, is not limited to the ad). Now, I don't think this is necessarily for malicious reasons, but rather, the company's economic self-interest. By using pathos, they use common insecurities (do I look good?, etc.) to get more to buy their products. This seems to be more of an industry-wide characteristic, and not limited to Nivea.  

Comments

  1. Unknown23 November 2016 at 13:58

    I definitely agree on the advertisement reducing women down to a single characteristic, in which was beauty. The man next to her helped emphasize that point, in which the product's purpose was to make connections on the smooth skin and the couple's relationship status. Directing women to the need of using such cosmetics to attract the opposite sex.

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