Blogs of Jake

The film "Missrepresentation" opened my eyes to a huge issue that has been looked over by everyone. I am now starting to notice this in today's advertising. I am a big NBA fan and i have noticed that the NBA spends far more time and money advertising for men's basketball rather than the WNBA. The NBA is not the only ones to do this as this is the same for most sports. This is just one of the ways that shows how women are viewed the same as men when it comes to media and advertising. I think that we as a society need to regulate more on the media's portrayal of women because not enough is being done to help stop this negative portrayal of women. A lot of shows nowadays have a male as the main character and a women as a piece to attract people to the show. Imagine the impact this can have on young girls who see this, they are going to start living by society's rules rather than being happy with who they are as an individual. I think that young girls need role mo...

After watching the film "Missrepresentaion" in class, I started to have a more observant mindset when it came to media. Although i did know that Media sometimes favors men over women, I did not know the extent of it and know that this issue is more significant then I thought.  Women are being looked down upon by the media when they shouldn't be and often receive negative attention rather than positive. This issue is big because young girls see this and form an unhealthy perspective and hold themselves to standards that are created by the media. In the film it said that around 70 percent of young teenage girls are unhappy with their bodies. This is because the media seems to only promote girls with slim bodies and rarely do we see anything different. Men on the other hand receive more positive attention in the media and aren't scrutinized like women are. This negative attention directed towards women can lead them to thinking they are not good enough or can not do cert...

After watching the Merchants of Cool in class i now realize how much us teens are targeted, and for the different reasons. Maybe the ad companies think that us teens are easier to attract than regular adults because we are more susceptible to influence. Or maybe because teens know what trends are popular and whats in style, but whatever the reason is, us teens are targeted more heavily than other groups such as little kids and adults. I think another reason for teenagers being targeted more is that we generally are more exposed to other things like the Internet and social Media which makes it easier more brands and companies to showcase themselves. We are more exposed to ads than little kids and adults so it makes sense for companies to aim their advertisements towards us since we are the most likely to actually see it.Whatever the case may be for targeting teens, we are seeing more and more companies do this. They are using various things such as music, celebrities, food, and aestheti...

In the movie "Merchants of Cool", we learned about all the things that were "cool" in the early 21st century. The ad companies tried to construct their advertisements around what was cool and in style at the time to try and appeal more to the audience. What was interesting about this is that in the movie it said that ad companies would try this and all of a sudden the trend becomes unpopular, and that companies should try and focus more on what they think will be cool. The technique of using cool trends or styles in advertising, I think are still present in today's ads. Especially with some of the bigger companies who have a larger audience. Now that this idea from the movie is in my head I cant help but notice that we still see the same approach in today's advertisements. One ad that i saw that uses this technique is one by Sprite. The ad features Lebron James and Lil Yachty. Lebron is already well known and is probably one of the best sports figures in the...

Most of the time when I am listening to music I use an app called Spotify. While I was listening to music an ad appeared, the ad was for Subway and what caught my attention was that it was very casual, which is interesting because if it is casual then it would be probably easier to overlook. I usually hate advertisements when I am listening to music because they are annoying and are usually pointless and do not interest me. This ad by Subway caught my attention because it didn't use any annoying sounds or loud music, instead the ad was just a casual conversation between two people eating Subway and talking about the sandwich. You can tell that this ad was using Plain folks as one of their techniques because this ad used regular and ordinary people to advertise their sandwich and it makes you feel like you are apart of the conversation. This wasn't like the typical ads you hear on Spotify, from my experience it is usually ads with loud sounds to catch your attention or its an ad...

While I was watching Game 1 of the NBA Western Conference Finals, I noticed that even within the game there are advertisements. If you are watching the game on T.V  or in the stands than you can see that there are advertisements on the scorers table. The scorers table is directly on the court and it is strategically placed so that people watching T.V. can see it as well. After seeing this I realized how much of our lives are consumed by ads.  Some of the ads were random and did not even have anything to do with the basketball game. If you are watching the game casually then you might not pay too much attention to it, but because we have been learning all about advertisements in the past week or two it caught my attention. One of the ads was a mountain dew ad and it used a green color font with a black background to try and help the ad stick out more amongst the game. Sadly it worked. I noticed it and for a few minutes of the game i was paying attention to all the ads that were...

            Within the past few days i have been seeing more and more advertisements that use a famous person or popular figure to help advertise their product. Companies are now using faces that we recognize and like in their commercials to try and help capture our attention better. Some may use a famous athlete and others may use well known movie star or celebrity. Earlier today i saw a State Farm commercial that had Chris Paul in it, after i watched it I wonder how using a famous figure can help influence the audience into buying whatever product that company is trying to sell. If they are using more well known and famous people then wouldn't we pay more attention to it? Seeing famous people in advertisements may persuade the casual viewer to buy their product because we may think that it is better because these celebrities use it. I think that this may ring true because celebrities are now very influential because of things like social media and now th...

      Social media can be both good and bad. It can be good because you get a chance to see what your friends are doing but sometimes we get too hooked on social media to the point where it becomes a priority. It can also make you feel certain ways towards something or someone because you cant control what goes on there. Social media can have many different views on certain issues and we are exposed to these new ideas based on who we follow or pay attention to. This can narrow our perspectives because most of us don't follow everyone therefore we are only being exposed to a finite amount of views. Luckily thanks to the HISP program i am exposed to tons of different world views and i don't just focus on one.  I try to limit myself from using too much social media because in the past i found myself consumed by it. I have found myself sometimes giving in to a certain perspective without even thinking about the multiple sides to it. It is so easy to do this because somet...