Posted on 11/19/2008 5:53:45 PM PST by MyTwoCopperCoins
LONDON: The golden rule of advertising - thin models lure more people towards the product - is actually a misconception, claims a new research. The study revealed that skinny models are a ‘turn off’ to consumers in TV commercials and other advertising.
According to scientists, images of super-thin models carry no edge in encouraging young women to buy and for the majority of adult women ads showing skinny girls actually discouraged sales whereas plus size models encouraged them to buy, the study found.
To reach the conclusion, the study psychologist Phillippa Diedrichs, of the University of Queensland, Australia, created a series of ads for underwear, shampoo and a party dress.
Each ad was made twice, once using a skinny size eight model and another featuring a size 12 woman. When the ads were shown to 400 young women, they produced no difference in the likelihood for them to buy.
However, when women aged between 18 and 25 saw the adverts they felt better - and more likely to buy - after viewing the images of the larger models.
"For anything to change, research has to be convincing, not just to government and health researchers, but also to people in advertising who actually make the decisions," the Telegraph quoted Diedrichs, as saying.
"Often people make the argument that thinness sells, and that’’s why they use slim models.
"But we can change the images we see and still sell products but also make people feel better about themselves," the expert added.
There have been concerted campaigns against the ultra-thin "size zero" with fashion weeks in Madrid and Milan banning models from the catwalk who were of a weight deemed unhealthy by the Body Mass Index measure.
Frankly, it’s not clear to me that ads sell at all.
As a guy I have long been stunned, mystified, and annoyed by the prevalence of female “models” who are so skinny they look like 14 year old boys — I don’t begin to comprehend what could possess advertisers to go for anorexic teenagers..... but then someone said it’s b/c a lot of gays in the fashion biz set the trends and that begins to make some sense as an explanation — b/c I sure don’t see the sex-appeal in a lot of the famous fashion models who need to seriously pack on some weight.
Lurve your curves! “Fat-bottomed girls you make the rockin’ world go round!”
Since most of the people who dress these boy-like models are male homosexuals who, by their very nature, dislike women enough to have physical contact with men instead, then that kinda’ explains why the models are boy-like, skinny bags of bones.
Frankly, I can’t imagine anyone buying any of that crap that they show strutting down those runways with those ungodly steps with the flash bulbs flashing . . . pure garbage!
See post # 6.
That is really sick....
She’s not skinny. She’s lean with curves. Big difference.
Short answer: fashion designers are gay men. They LIKE women who look like 14 year old boys. (ahem)
“The bigger the cushion, the better the pushin’”
Has anyone else noticed that nearly all the women on British television are frumpy nowadays?
Buy OBAMA(tm)!
It’s also because they are lazy. It’s much more difficult to design and tailor clothing for the curvy female body.
By using stick thin models, much less work has to be done and the clothing is easily worn by whichever skelator is in the que.
The exaggerated strut and the facial pout/puss is what gets to me more than the bones. One seems to outdo the other.
I remember a few years ago a Visa ad of a fat guy in a dress store trying on women's clothes. Everybody was staring at him and turning away. It turned out he was one of the Redskin Hoggettes. In a Snickers commercial, a guy started to eat a Snickers bar and another guy tries to bite the other end and they end up kissing. In a Pontiac commercial, a van picks up a bunch of rough looking cowboy types. They start sharing makeup and lipstick. It turns out they're rodeo clowns. All of these advertisements were not for the product, but an attempt to use humor to normalize cross-dressing and homosexual kissing. Whether deliberately or not, the company putting up the ad dollars was not advertising their product. They were advertising homosexuality.
IMHO, most ad dollars are wasted. I quit going to Burger King because of the gay king ads. I generally give a mark against companies that have the required ad now that shows several people in an office, and the woman is ALWAYS the only competent one. The current one running is the FedEx/Kinko's thing where the guy starts drinking an entire pot of coffee for an all nighter and the female has already taken care of everything by calling Fedex. Another one like that is three guys watching construction workers and talking about how lazy they are while the woman does all the work. When she finishes the guys all high five and talk about teamwork. I think it was Fritos. The only company I think I just refuse to go to because of their ads, though, is Burger King.
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