Dirk Riehle's Industry and Research Publications

Sexist ads alive and well in 2015

I just saw an advertisement for software from an anti-virus company, homepage pictured below. The ad showed the woman flirting with the man (licking her lips, sliding her finger along the rim of the glass) while an overlaid text box was saying: “You don’t have to understand it, you just have to install it.” The man was intently talking to her.

Ignoring the derogatory depiction of the woman as a dummy, what I never understood about ads like this: Who are they marketing to? It can’t be women, can it? So they are marketing to men, suggesting men feel good when explaining something to women where they assume they don’t understand much about it? And how does the sexual innuendo help?

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