Fem-vertising: Were Pantene #ShineStrong Advertising Campaigns Influenced by Capitalism or Feminism?

Danianese WoodsUniversity of Southern Mississippi

Medium is the Message

• Television reaches a large number of viewers and the successful transmission of the message is dependent on the way viewers encode the message.

• It is okay for the message to have different meanings and signs but there has to be one dominant factor for all viewers to understand or else the message becomes misunderstood.

Three Meanings

• The preferred meaning is the message that media producers intended for and accepted by the audience.

• The negotiated meaning is how the audience partly agrees with the message.

• The oppositional meaning is that the audience has interpreted the intended message but rejects and disagrees with it, (Hall, 1980).

Pantene Analysis

• Semiotic and ideological critique of two Pantene commercials by analyzing the denotative and connotative meanings

• The ideologies of femininity and feminism were used in the analysis of the Pantene ads

• Examination of how the brand was able to promote civic issues of feminism while generating a profit

Labels Against Women Ad

• In November 2013, Pantene launched a commercial in the Philippines that shed light on the concept of double standards of gender in the workplace.

• The 60-second commercial portrayed men and women performing similar actions but were labeled differently.

• It opened up of the discussion about gender bias especially with the use of a hash tag to direct the conversation to social media.

• Labels Video

Labels Against Women Ad• The preferred reading

of the commercial shows how similar actions can have two different meanings if the audience is told to view it that way.

• The men have positive words and the women have negative words associated with them

• Non-verbal actions change meaning depending on gender

Boss Bossy

Dedicated Selfish

Sorry, Not Sorry Ad: Why are women always apologizing?

• In June 2014, the company released another commercial that depicted several situations in which women were apologizing as if it were a second nature response.

• It points to the bias of how women have to be apologetic and submissive to men.

• The second half of the ad is edited without the apology to show the differences.

• Apologetic “space filler”

Sorry, Not Sorry Ad

• Depicts various ways that women interrupt or get interrupted

• Women give power to other people and become passive

• When edited without the apology, the women do not seem warm and soft, politeness changes to rudeness

Capitalism or Feminism?• The Pantene commercials incorporate feminist

elements because the ads deconstruct established systems of knowledge by showing their masculine bias and the gender politics framing and informing them

• Advertisers change the mindset of what is feminine and establish positive associations with feminine terms.

• Most consumers of the brand are women, so the ads are appealing to women that identify with feminism or female empowerment.

#ShineStrong

•But was it the advertisers’ intention to advocate for gender equality in the workplace and home or just a tactic to sell the shampoo?•Pantene is selling shampoo, although the product is never seen.•Will a bottle of shampoo give women the confidence and strength they need to face adversity?•Overall, it’s a creative tactic to utilize the current trends of feminism to sell a beauty product.