Sex Sells

I was asked to be in Vogue but I said no. I didn't want to advertise make-up. I didn't want to be seen as a sex symbol. - Francesca Annis

For our promotional campaign project we decided to focus on how and why sex sells, and has it gone too far now?

Courtney and Whipple (1983, p.103) described sex in advertising as 'sexuality in the form of nudity, sexual imagery, innuendo and double entendre…employed as an advertising tool for a wide variety of products.' 

Watching advertisements now on television, you may notice how often sexual images are used, for example revealing clothes worn in perfume adverts. The theory behind this is that women feel as though if they buy this perfume they'll look as sexy as the model. If men watch this advertisement they'll feel as buying this perfume for their wife or girlfriend they may look as attractive as her too.

I feel if advertisers use sexual imagery in an acceptable and suitable manner it will work well., aslong as it is done tastefully.

The video below is one example. This is for DKNY fragrances, by using sexual interactions between the two models, consumers can be made to believe that buying these products will encourage themselves and their partner to be as close and as intimate as they are in the advertisement.

Advertisers also use the celebrity endorsement effect on consumers. By using famous celebrities, consumers who look up to these as models are attracted to the product, whether its their physical or social attributes.

One example of celebrity endorsement - Cheryl Cole in L'Oreal Elnett hairspray advertisement. Cheryl Cole is famous and known to be an attractive and successful woman. Using the hairspray consumers may believe they'll become as attractive as her and in turn become successful in their career.

 Not only have advertisements taken on the sexual attraction route, but music videos have too. Including one of the most famous artists Rihanna. However, her video for S&M has been banned in over 11 countries and the song is now also no longer being played before 7pm on radio stations due to it's racy lyrics.

So has sex selling gone too far? Due to the amount of times magazines have been criticized for encouraging teenagers and women to become anorexic, some say it has. Therefore we investigate this in our campaign video, interviewing people we know to see what they think...

During the process of creating our campaign, it really opened our eyes. We realised how much the 'sex sells' route is actually used because we see it so much in our daily lives, we've become accustomed to it and has become almost normal to us. 




Courtney, A.E., & Whipple, T.W. (1983).  Sex, stereotyping and advertising.  Lexington, MA: Heath

Psychogeography Project

 I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move. - Robert Louis Stephenson

The idea behind a psychogeographical project is to focus on the surroundings with an open mind and fresh eyes, to explore the surroundings and how they affect you physically and emotionally.

Myself and Michal's Psychogeography Project is based around simply exploring Leicester and visiting random places around the Town Centre. In the hope to find somewhere new and exciting or find out information we never knew about.

To make it as completely random as possible we were blindfolded in turn, spun around and placed a pin in a map of Leicester City Centre. Each of us had three pins each, these places were then visited by us. Each of these destinations we took photographs, which included a stop at The Polar Bear pub for some food!

During our journey around the centre of the city, we discovered little side streets and buildings, whilst finding out bits of history of some the places we visited. Although some stops we found were very uninteresting, as you can see in our blog http://ourjourney.tumblr.com/ which we created to note our every stop and thought.

We also created these two short clips of us choosing our stops, just to show we were not biased and that all stops were completely random.

As well as this, the map we used was edited by adding the photographs we took of each stop to show our journey.

The finished Psychogeography Map

During our 'adventure' we were completely soaked as we got stuck in a rain storm, probably the worst rain storm for a long time, with blustery winds that nearly blew us over and no protection from the thundering rain! Lets just say when we returned home, we looked like we had jumped into a swimming pool!

After doing this project, i would definately consider doing it again in other parts of the country or even other countries. The way in which you can plan to go somewhere but not know exactly know where you'll end up is a great experience and great fun. It encouraged us to find out more and educate ourselves about our surroundings.

Copyright? Copywrong?

Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet. - Mark Twain

Oxford Dictionary definition of copyright -

• the exclusive and assignable legal right, given to the originator for a fixed number of years, to print, publish, perform, film, or record literary, artistic, or musical material:  
  he issued a writ for breach of copyright making an unauthorised copy would infringe copyright [count noun]: works whose copyrights had lapsed
• [count noun] a particular literary, artistic, or musical work that is covered by copyright.
  
  As Mark Twain says, not even God can determine whether copyright is good or bad, or when copyright is overstepping the mark into controlled madness.
  Copyright has become more of a problem in more recent years due to how easy it is to share files through broadband and new modern interest into remixing original files. 
  
  Copyright policies need to not only secure artists wants but to also give enough 'breathing sapce' to encourage and flourish creativity. A good website i found http://copyright-debate.co.uk/
  has great articles written about copyright.
  
  Copyright on the one hand is a good way of preserving the rights of the owner. The owner can protect their work from being copied or re-used, otherwise all the work they've done, all their time committed to it, is in a way wasted. I can imagine if i took months maybe even years on a song, so many of my ideas and emotions put into it, for it to then to fall into someones hands to remix or re-release without my permission could be devastating. Therefore, i believe it is a necessary law. 
    
  However, as some people believe copyright can hold back creativity. Using others ideas and expanding can be a real step forward but with tight restrictions, it's not always possible. On the other hand, I do believe if people want to be creators or artists they must come up with their own original material. As in the music industry lately, there is so much money going into remixes of songs, that i find it is getting a tad monotonous. I'm in favour of old songs being brought back such as mine and a friend's favourite 'Show Me Love' by Robin S, made in 1993:

 Then in 2009 it was remixed and released by Steve Angello and Laidback Luke:

 

I'm all in favour of artists remixing and re-releasing old songs, as it's great that old songs can live on. However, there has to be some kind of clearer boundary with copyright. The amount of new artists remixes has grown into an overload, if you search for one song on YouTube or iTunes you'll find so many different variations of the song. What has happened to originality?

There has also been so much criticism about the laws of copyright with so many companies being sued over copying original material that there must be a clearer understanding. 

Film and music industries have reportedly been campaigning against websites such as PirateBay that share films and music, wanting them to be shut down. However, there hasn't been much progress as shockingly only 27% of BAFTA winning films are available online to rent or purchase, plus with 29% of the best British films and with the price of downloads higher than DVDs there is no wonder why people are still using pirate websites. www.openrightsgroup.org is great website for copyright articles, which is where i took these statistics from.

Due to the huge development of technology so much material can easily be accessed, used and abused. Despite many students in my group deciding they're against copyright, I am all up for it.

Pecha Kucha

The entertainment is in the presentation. - John McTiernan

This is the presentation we created for the topic of 'Long Tail' part of Web 2.0.

 http://www.slideshare.net/RhiiJ/long-tail-12208900

This presentation is also known as a Pecha Kucha, something i had not heard of until today. This type of presentation tends to be made of 20 short slides shown for 20 seconds each.

Web 1.0 versus Web 2.0

Web 1.0 :                                               

• Had very basic graphics
• Companies were the main focus in Web 1.0
• Was created with Dial-Up (and too many wires!)
• Included only homepages
• Involved taxonomy 
• Had a client-server 
• Content was not very portable
• Considerable technical skills needed to publish online

Web 2.0 :

• Improved graphics, encouraging users to become more involved and the internet more enjoyable
• Communities are now the main focus, instead of companies
• Created with Broadband (and now wireless!)
• Now includes blogs, giving more freedom for users to not just read but write too
• Involves tagging
• Now about Peer to Peer rather than client-server
• BitTorrents for downloading files
• More rich user experiences with applications such as Google Maps
• The ability to not only connect with the 'web master' but to other people via social netoworking sites.

Web 2.0

 

 Main concepts of Web 2.0 identified by O'Reilly are the:

•  Long tail
• Collective intelligence
• Folksonomy
• Data as the next intel inside

 Now our Pecha Kucha presentation focused on the marketing principle of the Long Tail. The simple definition of the long tail is that low in demand products can exceed the profits of the high in demand ones if there are a high number of low in demand products are available. As this graph demonstrates: 

The Long Tail

One example is the availabilty of music, whilst supermarkets and music stores will sell the most high-in-demand CD's (shown on the 'head of the long tail') , the stores would not have the room to keep the low-in-demand music products in store so therefore they will not sell them. Instead the internet and Web 2.0 has revolutionised the way we can access these niche marketed and low-in-demand products by browsing on software such as Itunes and websites such as Amazon.

Another example that has now become quite well known now is the book 'Touching the Void'. This book was written and published in 1988, an account of a near death experience. It's release was not successful. Ten years later the same kind of story was released in a book known as 'Into Thin Air' by a different author. As a result the 1988 book's sales shot up. This shows the niche market of the tail out-doing the market of the higher end.

So with Web 2.0, my Itunes playlist is forever growing, with new bands and artists that have only just begun their careers. With Amazon i can grab cheap deals on products and Facebook i'm able to connect with everyone Without Web 2.0 and it's ability of blogging, i would not be able to publish this and all these sites are constantly developing. Web 2.0 is a great step forward in technology and now there is another step forward to Web 3.0...

No Technophobe

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. - Albert Einstein

It's safe to say, technology is a major part of people's lives. Some say you can't live without it, but i beg to differ.

Older members of my family seemed to get on perfectly well years ago without a television in their living rooms, with the main attraction of the room being the fireplace. Entertaining themselves with family games and conversation. Nowadays, the sofas are all pointed towards the 40 inch television, with matching surround sound speakers, games console tucked at the side with the spaghetti junction of wires behind and the endless supply of remote controls.

Although it can bring the family together with television programmes or to play a game together but some have found their children disappear into their rooms with their eyes glued to their computer or television screens, only appearing for meals three short moments a day.  

Looking at different generations you notice that the older ones haven't quite delved into the wondrous world of technology. For example, as i sit here typing this post my parents are looking at me in confusion, "how are you doing work and watching TV and Facebook and texting?" Of course, those in my generation find it second nature to multi-task with more than one technology. My parents meanwhile struggle to turn my laptop on and on many occasion I'm teaching them what everything does. Luckily they're used to the television as this piece of equipment has been around since the 1920's and basic mobile phones for simply just texting and calling aren't a problem either. They're also becoming more skilled at using the Digital camera!

I'm definitely no Bill Gates or Steve Jobs (R.I.P) as my expertise are limited, i know how to use everything but that's as far as it goes, so a factor to technology knowledge and usage is also linked to your upbringing, personality and interests.

Now whether i could live without technology is a difficult question. Trying to even imagine what i would do without it is hard to apprehend. But it is doable.

Thanks to my Blackberry Torch stuck to my hand, it's easier to connect with my family, friends and boyfriend, to organise days and nights out with them and gossip till our ears and hands hurt.

Thanks to my Packard Bell laptop, i can browse the Internet for more clothes to buy even though my wardrobe is full to the brim. I can also connect to everyone i know and love on Facebook and the latest phase of Twitter. Plus, without it how would be writing this blog now?

Thanks to my Ipod and stereo, well i have my music everywhere i go. Something i cannot live without.

Thanks to my Nintendo Wii, exercise is never far away if i don't fancy the gym! (Which is often)

Then finally, the Television, the best technology to help you unwind after a long day blogging! A girl needs to watch her Desperate Housewives and The Big Bang Theory.