ABSTRACT
Advertising: Framing Men’s Perception of Women and Profiting on Creating Male Insecurity In discussing the ways that advertising and broader media is successful in gaining viewership and product allegiance, media analyst Douglas Rushkoff argues that the products that are produced for youth culture and the ads that are created to attract young people are the result of a feedback loop, whereby kids watch media to figure out how to be cool and fit in with their peer groups, while media watches kids to determine the best strategies to employ to get young people to commit to brand loyalty, whether products or TV shows.2 The broader concept involves a strategy known as anti-marketing marketing or sometimes guerrilla marketing, where marketers target their advertising to particular groups without appearing to advertise. One thing contemporary marketers have determined about youth culture is that it is a culture that will turn away from traditional advertising campaigns that simply and directly ask consumers to “buy our product.” So, they attempt to seamlessly associate their products with music, concepts, or celebrities that young people have branded “cool” in the belief that this coolness will rub off on their products. This approach, in fact, was the technique used by soft drink maker Sprite to rise from lower sales figures in the early 1990s to ultimately rival Coke and Pepsi in several larger market regions of the U.S.3 Sprite attempted to get young people to connect hip-hop culture with Sprite and the attempt was successful. It wasn’t long before many other ad agencies jumped on the anti-marketing marketing bandwagon to maximize sales to youth culture.
