Score hair cream CSP

 Media Factsheet - Score hair cream

Go to our Media Factsheet archive on the Media Shared drive and open Factsheet #188: Close Study Product - Advertising - Score. Our Media Factsheet archive is on the Media Shared drive: M:\Resources\A Level\Media Factsheets. If you need to access this from home you can download it here if you use your Greenford login details to access Google Drive.

Read the factsheet and answer the following questions:

1) How did advertising techniques change in the 1960s and how does the Score advert reflect this change?

The 1960s ushered in an age of new and pioneering advertising techniques. According to AdAge (adage.com), advertising agencies in the 1960s relied less on market research and leaned more toward creative instinct in planning their campaigns. “Eschewing portrayals of elitism, authoritarianism, reverence for institutions and other traditional beliefs, ads attempted to win over consumers with humour, candour and, above all, irony.” Copy was still used to offer an explanation of the product - and to pitch to the consumer - but the visuals took on a greater importance. The ‘Jungle’ Score hair cream advert is a pre-1970 historical artefact, and

as such it lends itself to examination in relation to the historical, social and cultural contexts in which it was produced. It is particularly useful in exploring gender roles, sexuality and the advertising techniques of the 1960s.

2) What representations of women were found in post-war British advertising campaigns?

In the UK, advertising in the post-war period was characterised by campaigns that very effectively reinforced that idea that a woman’s place was in the home. Ironically, during the Second World War, propaganda posters had convinced women that their place was on farms and in factories while the men were away fighting. Post-war, and now surplus to requirement in the workplace, the advertising industry stepped in to provide a new ‘propaganda’ campaign – one designed to make women feel useful in the domestic arena.

3) Conduct your own semiotic analysis of the Score hair cream advert: What are the connotations of the mise-en-scene in the image? You may wish to link this to relevant contexts too.

The ‘Jungle’ Score advert is presented as an aesthetically pleasing text. The females are represented as objects of beauty – along with the man’s sleek hair. The overall image conveys consensual social attitudes towards gender in the 1960s, namely that the male is dominant and the female is subservient. The ‘Casino’ version of this advert portrays a similar image; that of smiling male sat a poker table surrounded by four fawning women. The ideology embedded in the language remains exactly the same – that this a patriarchal society.

4) What does the factsheet suggest in terms of a narrative analysis of the Score hair cream advert?

The Score advert identifies the man as Propp’s ‘hero’ in this narrative. The image infers that he is ‘exulted’ as the hunter-protector of his ‘tribe’. The adoration – and availability – of the females are his reward for such masculine endeavours. This has a clear appeal to the target audience of (younger) males who would identify with the male and aspire to share the same status bestowed on him. The idea of women being sexually available and falling at the feet of a man is echoed in the long running series of Lynx deodorant commercials that ran for the greater part of the early twentieth century. 

5) How might an audience have responded to the advert in 1967? What about in the 2020s?

The 1967 male audience might read the narrative as ironic and humorous (the dominant reading?) but it is unlikely that they would challenge the underlying ideology implicit within the advert. Females, though not the target audience, might read the gender representations in an oppositional way but at the same time accept its representation of a patriarchal society as normal or inevitable. Modern audiences, including students of the media, are likely to respond in a different way, aware that its sexist narrative is outdated and, for some, offensive. However, the fact that some advertisers still use a similar technique to sell deodorant to teenage boys, it could be argued that younger male audiences would not view this narrative as problematic.

6) How does the Score hair cream advert use persuasive techniques (e.g. anchorage text, slogan, product information) to sell the product to an audience?

Score hair cream uses persuasive techniques such as an anchorage text a slogan and picture of the product and a slogan this allows the audience to be more intrigued in the product itself and make them more likely to purchases it. 

7) How might you apply feminist theory to the Score hair cream advert - such as van Zoonen, bell hooks or Judith Butler?

The feminist writer Liesbet van Zoonen argues that ‘gender’ is constructed through discourse and that its meaning varies according to the cultural and historical context. The Score advert constructs a representation of women that is typical of the late 1960s - and accepted as ‘normal’. Indeed the women depicted in the advert are not dissimilarity dressed to Jane Fonda in the film Barbarella (released in the same year). Women in this era were largely represented as either domestic servants or sex objects – and in Score they might be considered both servant and sex object. Much like Laura Mulvey, van Zoonen argues that in mainstream media texts the visual and narrative codes are used to objectify the female body.

8) How could David Gauntlett's theory regarding gender identity be applied to the Score hair cream advert?

Judith Butler asserts that gender is not biologically determined but rather socially determined; learned through society. She believes that gender is a performance. Both the male and the female in the Score advert are performing the roles of the (masculine) man and the (feminine) woman in accordance with their biological sex. The advert also serves to reinforce the binary opposite gender roles ascribed by society.

9) What representation of sexuality can be found in the advert and why might this link to the 1967 decriminalisation of homosexuality (historical and cultural context)?

The 1960s are thought of as a period of contestant and change, supported by iconic images of student revolt, anti-war protests and the 1967 summer of love.

10) How does the advert reflect Britain's colonial past - another important historical and cultural context?

The reference to colonialist values can also be linked to social and cultural contexts of the ending of the British Empire. Paul Gilroy argues that despite the passing of empire, the white western world still exerts its dominance through cultural products.

Wider reading

The Drum: This Boy Can article

Read this article from The Drum magazine on gender and the new masculinity. If the Drum website is blocked, you can find the text of the article here. Think about how the issues raised in this article link to our Score hair cream advert CSP and then answer the following questions:

1) Why does the writer suggest that we may face a "growing 'boy crisis'"?

A growing global ‘boy crisis’ suggests that we could be, in fact, empowering the wrong sex. Of course, women are woefully under-represented in boardrooms and certain walks of life, with casual sexism and unconscious bias still endemic, but the difference is that we are all now familiar with the narrative around tackling these issues, thanks in no small part to groundbreaking campaigns such as ‘Like A Girl’ by Always, Sport England’s ‘This Girl Can’ and Dove’s ‘Real Beauty’.

2) How has the Axe/Lynx brand changed its marketing to present a different representation of masculinity?

As Lynx/Axe found when it undertook a large-scale research project into modern male identity, men are craving a more diverse definition of what it means to be a ‘successful’ man in 2016, and to relieve the unrelenting pressure on them to conform to suffocating, old paradigms to the step-change ‘Find Your Magic’ campaign from the former bad-boy brand.

3) How does campaigner David Brockway, quoted in the article, suggest advertisers "totally reinvent gender constructs"?

Campaigner David Brockway, who manages the Great Initiative’s Great Men project, urges the industry to be “more revolutionary”, particularly when it comes to male body image, which he says is at risk of following the negative path trodden by its female counterpart. “We’re seeing a huge rise in eating and body image disorders among young men. We can’t isolate the cause. Advertising plays its part. A 13-year-old boy of average build in one class recently told me seeing an ad made him feel fat. He didn’t mean a bit out of shape. He meant everything that goes with that feeling such as seeing himself as lazy, unaccomplished and incapable.” In order to prevent a full blown crisis of self-worth, Brockway advocates that advertisers “totally reinvent gender constructs” and dare to paint a world where boys like pink, don’t like going out and getting dirty, or aren’t career ambitious, for example.

4) How have changes in family and society altered how brands are targeting their products?

“‘Like A Girl’ opened up a mass-media dialogue for women to talk about everyday sexism, Dove’s ‘Real Beauty’ campaign allowed women to discuss lack of body confidence, and ‘This Girl Can’ opened up the conversation around anxieties in sport. Unfortunately, men don’t get this mass permission that starts with a simple, ‘did you see that ad?’”

5) Why does Fernando Desouches, Axe/Lynx global brand development director, say you've got to "set the platform" before you explode the myth of masculinity?

Gender is certainly a central and occasionally divisive issue in 2016. However, there are growing signs that a truly equal future will actually be gender less, with sex being a far less defining characteristic than it is today. After all, you cannot fully empower either gender if by empowering one you are creating divisions and dis empowering the other.