“I’ve never seen every part of a woman’s body so fully exploited commercially…”
Half a century ago, Lin Yutang wrote this sentence in his prose, witnessing the barbaric development of American commerce, with all kinds of large-scale advertisements from hair to toenails on the streets.
There is nothing new under the sun.
In the past two years, business has become barbaric again. Cases of insulting and objectifying women abound in leading companies around the world.
On May 17, Fu Yanjie, a women’s product maker, deliberately exaggerated “too dark” and “too unpleasant”, publicly insulting women, and provoking public anger.
In April, Japan’s Nikkei Shimbun published an advertisement for the manga “Monday’s Plump”, which was protested by UN Women.
Because the advertisement gave high school girls “supporting men with the charm of sex” and objectified women.
In March, Procter & Gamble posted in a marketing article that “women’s feet are 5 times more stinky than men’s” and “no matter how clean a woman is, her underwear is dirtier than a man’s.” As a result, it was scolded on the hot search.
In February, to promote its new sports bra, Adidas invited 25 women of different skin tones and body types to take high-definition photos of their bare breasts.
After the advertisement was hung on an outdoor billboard at the German headquarters, it was complained one after another.
In addition, the advertisement copy of Ulike’s hair removal device trying to “blind the ball” was scolded by netizens as a hot search. The awkward perspective is criticized; the Korean milk brand compares women to cows…
This inevitably makes me have a question, what is the industry upheaval? Or are netizens too sensitive?
Foreign cases, we usually see less.Presumably everyone is more familiar with domestic cases.
For example, some real estate advertisements always like to use “edge ball” copywriting or pictures to attract people.
Another example is some roadside advertisements or web games.
Among them, the most well-known is probably the hot beauty picture with coconut milk with the phrase “drinking from small to big“.
In the past, these vulgar advertisements were generally produced by small brands and local brands.
But in the past two years, the momentum of major well-known brands “stepping on the red line” has also intensified.
Especially in 2021, advertisements will roll over constantly, and each time they can hit a different thunder point.
For example, the first all-cotton era of marketing overturned in the beginning of the year. This product, which focuses on removing makeup, uses the scene of women being threatened by personal safety as a selling point in one of its “reversed” advertisements.
Although later apologized twice, netizens were not satisfied.
A month later, Yan Yuese, an internet celebrity with milk tea, also insulted women in the ad copy.
Among them, the mug’s text reads “There are many beauties who come to Chayan to buy milk tea. If you happen to know one, you can whisper to our friends: ‘I picked up a basket'”, and the tea bag’s text is “mouth I said no, the body is very honest… Let’s start with this set of sultry”, which makes people feel really uncomfortable.
Then came the ignorant talk show actor Li Dan, who blatantly violated advertising laws and spoke for his “product not used before by him”.
Especially his clever one-liner “Let women lie down and win the workplace” directly offended everyone.
In the end, it also attracted criticism from the Central Political and Legal Committee: Playing memes must have boundaries. These badly motivated advertisements are arrogant at their core and wretched in nature.
However, the obscene ads didn’t stop there.
A video by the feminine care brand Gao Jiesi repeats the mistakes of Li Dan.
The brand released a set of video advertisements on the official Douyin account, and a male model even put sanitary napkins directly on the eyes! In addition to this, he uses sanitary napkins as insoles and absorbent wipes…
There is also a “moving” advertisement by Changan Ford, which also blatantly brushed aside. I thought I would get out of the circle by “attracting attention”, but what I didn’t expect to gain was all scolding and condemnation.
And the advertisement of Haitian Soy Sauce is so vulgar that it makes people speechless.
Obviously, it is understandable that one or two brand advertisements overturned. There must be some reasons behind such frequent overturning.
After all, although these brands are not top-tier brands, they still have a certain reputation in China. After repeated hot searches and consumer criticism, can’t other brands be taken as a warning?
Otherwise, well-known brands deliberately overturned, what is the purpose?
If time goes back to three or four years ago, the most popular word on the Internet should still be “consumption upgrade”.
At that time, there were often long queues at the door of milk tea shops that cost 3 or 40 yuan a cup; Internet celebrity restaurants were springing up like mushrooms after a rain. After taking Huabei and Borrowing, they became the “Moonlight Clan” in the advertising bombardment of random flowers and charming eyes.
The rapid economic growth continues to amplify the desire for consumption, and the ultimate purpose of consumption has also changed from “buying just needed” to “buying happiness”, as the sociologist Jean Baudrillard said:
“The purpose of our consumption is no longer survival, but desire; in the process of consumption, we show our taste by spending money, and mark the class we belong to by the symbols we consume.”
Therefore, milk tea, coffee, clothing, and bags are no longer just commodities, but also become part of the chain of contempt.
At the same time, a large number of emerging and niche brands have emerged like green onions from dry land. Although they belong to different segments, the core of the advertisements are ultimately the same, and they all point to “light luxury”, “high-end experience” and “new middle class”.
At that time, no one would have thought that a sudden outbreak would change anything. Until more than two years have passed, everything has changed dramatically.
The most prominent problem caused by the epidemic is that it has a direct impact on economic development and social wealth accumulation and consumption.
According to tianyancha data, the ratio of registration and cancellation of small, medium and micro enterprises in China reached a record low in 2020. In that year, the number of small and micro enterprises registered was only 6.13 million, a decrease of 56.3% compared with 2019, while the number of annual cancellation was as high as 4.35 million, an increase of 84.3% compared with 2019, which was the historical peak level.
The situation in 2022 is not optimistic.Considering that small and medium-sized enterprises can solve more than 80% of urban employment, when these enterprises encounter a crisis, it is bound to bring serious employment problems.
In fact, it is true.
On May 16, the National Bureau of Statistics recently released that in April, the national urban survey unemployment rate increased by 0.3 percentage points over the previous month, reaching 6.1%, a new high since March 2020.
On the one hand, there is the “most drastic layoff wave in the history” repeatedly staged by big Internet companies, and on the other hand, there is the “flexible employment” of 200million people. Coupled with the rise in commodity prices caused by the Russian Ukrainian war, it seems inevitable that consumption will return to rationality.
In other words, the era of “buying happiness” has passed. Today’s young people are more willing to spend every sum of money on the blade. If you can do it, you can do it. If you can cut it, you can cut it.
Therefore, the previous advertising rhetoric of “light luxury and high-end” is no longer applicable, and how to continue to stimulate young people’s consumption has become an extremely difficult thing.
As a result, under the pressure of young people becoming less and less willing to spend money and their products becoming more and more difficult to sell, some enterprises began to choose a “sword taking the wrong path”, that is, to attract consumers without any limit.
After all, in the wave of informatization, grasping the “eyeball” of users is equivalent to grasping the “traffic password”, and with traffic blessing, it is possible to sell products.
However, why are these advertisements aimed at women?
British artist johnberg once put forward such a view about women in advertisements. He believed that “men look at women, and women look at themselves to be seen”.通俗点讲就是，含有性感元素的
Advertising is for men and women at the same time, but the difference is that men look at it to obtain some psychological and visual satisfaction, while women look at it is related to whether they want to be the same as in advertising.
You know, in 2020, in the field of e-commerce, women’s purchasing power accounted for “half” of consumers, and 70% to 80% of the purchasing groups in vertical e-commerce were women.
From this point of view, those advertisements that contain “edge ball”, “male gaze” and “insult” actually don’t care about the psychological comfort of female consumers. They are just trying to please men and hope that women really think they are “black and smelly”.
Men can bring traffic and women can drive sales. In the final analysis, everyone is just a tool to be used.
Moreover, how can such a big brand not be familiar with the rules and regulations in the advertising law? But in the face of trial and error and traffic, they are still willing to gamble on a wave of traffic.
If yes, the sales volume will be red; No, it’s a period of silence at most. In the current era of endless information, consumers’ attention will not stay on the “rollover advertising” for a long time.
I don’t deny that this can really be regarded as a means of “self-help”, but for most brands, this is definitely not a long-term plan.
Is there any other choice for the current brand?
Perhaps, from the past history, we can find some answers.
In fact, in the past 100 years, the world has experienced several economic crises. However, in terms of duration, scope and intensity, the Great Depression of 1929 must be at the top of the list.
The recession, which started in the United States and spread to the world, lasted for a decade and had a tragic impact. Later generations described it as “the wealth of the stock market evaporated like water, and the chain reaction of runs and closures spread like a plague.”
Some data show that during this period, as many as 32000 enterprises in the United States went bankrupt, nearly 10000 banks went bankrupt, and the unemployment rate reached 25%! If we add in a large number of temporary low paid jobs, it is equivalent to nearly 50% of the manpower is idle.
However, in this protracted great depression, there are still many enterprises going upstream. They not only successfully passed the long cold winter, but also continued to grow and become famous all over the world in the future.
For example, Pepsi Cola, Beatles, Muji
Pepsi, which was born in 1898, was 12 years later than Coca Cola. At that time, more than 100 brands have joined the cola market, and Coca Cola has become a dominant player in the beverage industry.
As far as Pepsi is concerned, it has neither time advantage nor scale advantage. It was not until the great depression that it finally found its chance.
At that time, Pepsi promoted its products with a low price strategy, and directly launched large bottles with a capacity twice that of Coca Cola, but the price remained the same, that is, “spend the same money and enjoy double coke”.
With this move, PepsiCo directly won a market share of 20% of the market that year when the advertising fee was only 4% of Coca Cola’s, and became famous in the first World War.
Since then, it has become the biggest competitor of Coca Cola.
Similar to Pepsi, there is Volkswagen. According to the change of American consumer demand at that time, it took the lead in launching the compact car “beetle”, which was widely pursued by consumers.In the 1990s, after the bursting of Japan’s economic foam, Japanese women in the United States, France and Italy, who were frantically buying gold, jewelry and luxury goods, also began to pursue rationality, simplicity and cost performance.
So during this period, UNIQLO and Muji rose rapidly among the Japanese who were once “arrogant” and “throwing millions of dollars”.
Now, these consumption events are being projected into the current China.
In fact, in 2018, when the transformation from high-speed to high-quality began, the young people began to return to rationality.
At that time, the popularity of pinduoduo created a business myth. In one year, Beijing became the place where pinduoduo added the most users, followed by Tianjin and Chengdu.While the new-style tea is still in the high price war, the snow ice city has also driven all the way from the suburbs of Beijing to the second ring road.
Over the past two years, people have increasingly realized that commodities should eventually return to the nature of use.
As a result, white elephant, Hongxing Erke and other domestic products have become the object of “wild consumption” of consumers because of their constant high quality and low price for many years.
During the “315” crackdown on counterfeits this year, laotan pickled cabbage brand was deeply involved in the public opinion of “pothole pickled cabbage”. Just when the major manufacturers involved were in a mess, Baixiang calmly responded that he was not afraid of the shadow! Won the support of a large number of consumers.
In addition, Wuling Hongguang, which is favored by young people, has made great efforts to sink and won the favor of consumers with its compact and practical appearance and price close to the people.
After the storm, there will be peace. Historical experience has proved that the period of low-speed economic growth also contains huge opportunities.
Epilogue
Since the founding of new China, over the past 70 years, China’s GDP has grown by about 189 times in real terms.
In the great inertia of the whole country, we have long been used to rising, rising and growing.
In recent years, the changes in the international environment and the superposition of epidemics have made more and more people have a “sense of stopping” and even feel the possibility of “cycle” coming.
This puts us in an “awkward period” of transformation from the old consumption era to the new consumption era:
The inertia of consumption habits formed during the period of rapid economic growth is still huge. However, the increase in economic uncertainty has led to sudden restraint of consumption desire in the short term.
This leads us to ask ourselves subconsciously when we consume: does this thing really have to be bought? Is this just needed? Is there a more cost-effective option?
As a result, consumers will experience longer and more complex decisions than ever before when placing orders for toiletries that undermine the acid-base effect of private areas, hair removal products that are not just needed, and “light luxury” products that are neither extravagant nor people-friendly.
At this time, those brands will naturally try their best to give hesitant consumers a “foot in the door”.
We believe that the epidemic will soon pass and the economy will soon return to normal.
However, this long pandemic has reminded us:
The essence of consumption is to improve life without pressure, within our power and with a sense of security.
At the same time, let us also note that those commodities that are usually shelved at the bottom of the shelf, which are of low quality and low price, can give us more confidence in life.
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