the results from the students weren't quite what i'd expected in relation to the stereotypes i'd researched.
- they gave very limited answers wth no real clarity or reason behind them
- they were illogical with their decisions
- not many of them drive cars and those who did has no real say in why their parents got them for them. therefore i got limited responses in that section of the questionairre which is a really important part.
problems - i asked them very general questions leaving them a lot of room and freedom with their asnwers. however, they gave shitty answers. the problem is that if i gave them multiple choice questions then i would be limiting their options, certainly restricting the responses i'd get.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Revamped Questionnaire
Demographic Question:
- Name:
- Age:
- Genger:
- Where you live:
- Job:
If you were looking to buy an ideal car (your car of dreams where money was no issue), what are the 3 things that are most likely to sway your decision?
- looks (colour, make, style, model)
- space inside the car
- safety / protection
- is it the most recent model?
- petrol consumption / low petrol emissions
- power in the engine / top speed- accessories in the car (CD player, air conditioning , electric windows)
- low car tax
What type of car adverts do you find most interesting and entertaining?- adverts about the power of a car
- advertising the looks – SEXY CARS
- adverts about the safety of a car
- adverts regarding the practicality of a car (small, easily manoeuvrable, big boot space)
- adverts about the new and improved accessories in the car
- adverts about the advanced technology inside cars
- adverts which really don't advertise anything about the car but are entertaining to watch and thoroughly enjoyable.
Do you think that you would buy a car based solely on an advert you saw?
Do you prefer television or print adverts?
Do you have any favourite car adverts?
If so, what are the reasons for you liking these adverts?
Out of the following car adverts, write why you like/dislike them:
- Ford Ranger Opencab – where the dinosaurs play with the car like a toy yet afterwards it’s completely unharmed
- The Nissan 4x4 – the car transforms into a range of robotic animals to tackle the terrain it’s driving over
- The Citroen C4 – that transformer dancing robot car
- The Skoda Fabia – everyone loves the cake car
- The Ford Sportka – where the cats head is cut off by the sun roof
ONLY ANSWER THE FOLLOWING IF YOU DRIVE A CAR
What Car do you drive?
- make
- exact model
- how long ago did you buy it?
What were your reasons for choosing the car you own?
What features of your car are most important to you when buying it?
- price (high or low)
- looks (colour, make, style, model)
- space inside the car
- safety / protection
- is it the most recent model?
- petrol consumption / low petrol emissions
- power in the engine / top speed
- accessories in the car (CD player, air conditioning , electric windows)
- low car tax
Were you persuaded to buy that car by a certain advert you saw on TV or in Print? If so which one, and what about the advert made you want to purchase the car?
- Name:
- Age:
- Genger:
- Where you live:
- Job:
If you were looking to buy an ideal car (your car of dreams where money was no issue), what are the 3 things that are most likely to sway your decision?
- looks (colour, make, style, model)
- space inside the car
- safety / protection
- is it the most recent model?
- petrol consumption / low petrol emissions
- power in the engine / top speed- accessories in the car (CD player, air conditioning , electric windows)
- low car tax
What type of car adverts do you find most interesting and entertaining?- adverts about the power of a car
- advertising the looks – SEXY CARS
- adverts about the safety of a car
- adverts regarding the practicality of a car (small, easily manoeuvrable, big boot space)
- adverts about the new and improved accessories in the car
- adverts about the advanced technology inside cars
- adverts which really don't advertise anything about the car but are entertaining to watch and thoroughly enjoyable.
Do you think that you would buy a car based solely on an advert you saw?
Do you prefer television or print adverts?
Do you have any favourite car adverts?
If so, what are the reasons for you liking these adverts?
Out of the following car adverts, write why you like/dislike them:
- Ford Ranger Opencab – where the dinosaurs play with the car like a toy yet afterwards it’s completely unharmed
- The Nissan 4x4 – the car transforms into a range of robotic animals to tackle the terrain it’s driving over
- The Citroen C4 – that transformer dancing robot car
- The Skoda Fabia – everyone loves the cake car
- The Ford Sportka – where the cats head is cut off by the sun roof
ONLY ANSWER THE FOLLOWING IF YOU DRIVE A CAR
What Car do you drive?
- make
- exact model
- how long ago did you buy it?
What were your reasons for choosing the car you own?
What features of your car are most important to you when buying it?
- price (high or low)
- looks (colour, make, style, model)
- space inside the car
- safety / protection
- is it the most recent model?
- petrol consumption / low petrol emissions
- power in the engine / top speed
- accessories in the car (CD player, air conditioning , electric windows)
- low car tax
Were you persuaded to buy that car by a certain advert you saw on TV or in Print? If so which one, and what about the advert made you want to purchase the car?
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Essay 1
Give an account of, and evaluate, the research methods you used to investigate your chosen aspect(s) of advertising
Are car adverts specifically engineered to target gender?
The ever growing increase in competition within the car industry has led to the creation of some of the most fantastic and original adverts produced to date. With my own personal interest in cars and the expansion of its industry, I decided to investigate the relation between gender and car advertising; with the hope to finding out if car adverts are specifically engineered to target certain genders or if they are aimed at both. I was keen to discover how the industry manipulate their adverts to target gender, and to establish what both men and women wanted in a car, I would have to do extensive research into both gender and cars themselves. I hoped to attack this question on two fronts; the institutional and the audiences aspects of car adverts and what they offer – that is, finding out what different people actually liked about in cars and comparing this to what is produced by the industry. I decided that the most practical and logical way to approach my question was to produce a series of detailed and analytical questionnaires, as well as holding intense focus groups, in order to get a clear view on what different genders thought about cars and car adverts they’d seen. I though these were two great ways to get information as I’d get a variety of answers from my subjects, as well as being in complete control of all the questions aseked. Similarly, it would be necessary to contact people within the industry, and my uncle Nicholas Velody played a major part is Ford’s ‘Sportka’ advert campaign, so I decided to contact him about how he targeted gender when advertising for Ford.
However, before I tackled each of these methodologies, it made more sense to get a grip with my question before I started, so I searched the internet hoping to find someone who had done similar research into car advertising and gender. This proved very unsuccessful as there was little information relating the two together. Even more surprisingly was that I could find even less about car advertising itself, other than a book called ‘Classic Muscle Car Advertising’ by MJ Frumkin which proved very old and very irrelevant to my question on gender. I decided to approach the question differently and tackle gender in adverts, rather than cars, and this proved a lot more helpful. I would then link my findings to car adverts that I’d analyse and see if they bore a similar resemblance. I found a woman called ‘Amanda Stevens’ from ‘Splash Consulting; who had written in detail about what men and women seek in advertising, and how men make simple choices quickly, whereas women have a ‘complex range of purchasing criteria’. This gave me a grip on the differences between the genders, and gave me new ideas for research. It occurred to me that the basis for most advertising revolved on gender stereotypes, and I made a trip to the BFI library to do some more research into these gender stereotypes and hopefully would also find some information on car advertising.
At the BFI library I was actually very lucky with my findings and I stumbled across some great critical analysis of gender for my study. In Gillian Dyer’s ‘Advertising as Communication’ I found plenty of information regarding traditional cultural stereotypes within advertising. She states that “women are shown as very feminist, as 'sex objects', as housewives, mothers, and homemakers. Men however are presented in situations of authority and dominance over women”. She is therefore suggesting that the presentation of women and men mirrors their stereotypical roles in a patriarchal society, which men are dominant and women are recessive. In Jib Fowles ‘Advertising and Popular Culture’, we see this similar sense of male authority, as he suggests that adverts targeting men emphasise qualities of ‘toughness and experience’, whereas ones targeting women show ‘niceness and tenderness’. With this information, I started searching into picture advertising which led me across some very interesting and useful analysis by Judith Williamson in her famous book ‘Decoding Advertising’. Despite the fact that this book was written in 1978 with many of the models outdated, she does very thorough and detailed research into the meanings behind car adverts, namely the Monte Carlo 1975 (page 52), the Fiat132 GLS (page 52) and the Citroen GS (page 130/131). This research gave me my inspiration for my questionnaires as well as a focal point for my focus groups.
As I’d done plenty of research into the gender aspect of my question, I decided that I needed to put more of an emphasis on the actual cars. The questionnaires took a lot of consideration and I needed to be very thorough with the questions to get the right kind of responses about cars and adverts. I took me 4 drafts to get a final copy but I was very pleased with it. I’d asked demographic questions at the beginning to get a feel for who was answering the questions which would ultimately give me not only an idea of what each gender prefers in cars but also if there are other factors which affect what people want. These demographic questions involving the questioners name, age, gender, where they lived, if they were in a family, what car they owned, what their job was as well as their annual salary (if they were willing to disclose that information). I had initially planned to give me questionnaire out to students alone, as this was the most practical way for me to do this. However, it very quickly occurred to me that I was limiting my research to 17 and 18 year olds, most of who weren’t in the position to buy cars. When the results came back of the 17 I had handed out, the students had no real concept of the practicality needed to buy a car, but were completely focused on the looks and the speed of the car with no regard to price or safety. I then needed to branch out and handed the questionnaire out to family friends as well as neighbours along my street who I believed to be more capable of answering my questions. The questions themselves contained information regarding what people would want in their ideal car, as well as questions about cars that they could afford. I asked about the car they already owned, and enquired details about why they purchased their car. I also asked their preference on car adverts, which ones they liked and which ones they didn’t like, as well as asking if they would buy a car purely based on an advert they saw.
The focus groups were by far the hardest part of the process to do as it was difficult to note down what people had said while chairing the meeting and producing the material for the debate. I initially thought that a focus group of 8 would be suitable because it would allow for heated discussion, but it proved far too difficult to control so I had to limit the numbers to 4 per session. In total I held three sessions, one at school with students and two at home. Out of the twelve participants, six were male and six were female which allowed me to get detailed responses from both sexes. Each session lasted roughly two hours as I presented six television car adverts (Ford Ranger Opencab, The Nissan 4x4, The Citroen C4, The Skoda Fabia, The Ford Sportka and The New-Look Ford Mondeo) as well as 2 print adverts. As I’d found writing the replies to the adverts a hassle, I borrowed my brothers digital camcorder and recorded the conversations. This way I was able to accurately recall what was said in the focus groups and use it for me research. To make all of this easier, I uploaded my research onto an online blog I created on the internet so I could access all of my information from wherever I was. This included my focus groups, the results from the questionnaires I’d done as well as my own personal research from the internet and my trip to the BFI library.
In conclusion, the steps I took to acquiring my research involved a long and thought out process that took considerably longer than I had imagined. I never expected there to be so little information on gender and car advertising about and what I thought was going to be a project done predominantly on the internet was done mostly through my own primary research. I had to compare the results I obtained through my methodologies on car adverts and gender to secondary research done by other academics, hoping to find some similarities on the two different sections of gender and cars. I came to many roadblocks during my investigation, and what I thought was going to be a simple linear process became more jaded as my results took me off in different directions. It became hard to keep track of all my findings and that was why it was necessary for me to create a blog in order to keep everything together. I thought my findings proved very useful and through the process of trial and error I was able to find out what worked and what didn’t work, for example my draft questionnaires. I feel that I can now knowledgably talk about gender and relation to car advertising and can say with confidence that each car advert is specifically engineered to target gender, whether it be targeting one single gender or both at the same time. In hindsight, I would have critically analysed more print adverts as I feel that there is more to know. For example, different types of car adverts are printed in different magazines that target a particular gender. The adverts in Vogue magazine may vary wildly to car adverts printed in Zoo magazine.
WORDS - 1643
Are car adverts specifically engineered to target gender?
The ever growing increase in competition within the car industry has led to the creation of some of the most fantastic and original adverts produced to date. With my own personal interest in cars and the expansion of its industry, I decided to investigate the relation between gender and car advertising; with the hope to finding out if car adverts are specifically engineered to target certain genders or if they are aimed at both. I was keen to discover how the industry manipulate their adverts to target gender, and to establish what both men and women wanted in a car, I would have to do extensive research into both gender and cars themselves. I hoped to attack this question on two fronts; the institutional and the audiences aspects of car adverts and what they offer – that is, finding out what different people actually liked about in cars and comparing this to what is produced by the industry. I decided that the most practical and logical way to approach my question was to produce a series of detailed and analytical questionnaires, as well as holding intense focus groups, in order to get a clear view on what different genders thought about cars and car adverts they’d seen. I though these were two great ways to get information as I’d get a variety of answers from my subjects, as well as being in complete control of all the questions aseked. Similarly, it would be necessary to contact people within the industry, and my uncle Nicholas Velody played a major part is Ford’s ‘Sportka’ advert campaign, so I decided to contact him about how he targeted gender when advertising for Ford.
However, before I tackled each of these methodologies, it made more sense to get a grip with my question before I started, so I searched the internet hoping to find someone who had done similar research into car advertising and gender. This proved very unsuccessful as there was little information relating the two together. Even more surprisingly was that I could find even less about car advertising itself, other than a book called ‘Classic Muscle Car Advertising’ by MJ Frumkin which proved very old and very irrelevant to my question on gender. I decided to approach the question differently and tackle gender in adverts, rather than cars, and this proved a lot more helpful. I would then link my findings to car adverts that I’d analyse and see if they bore a similar resemblance. I found a woman called ‘Amanda Stevens’ from ‘Splash Consulting; who had written in detail about what men and women seek in advertising, and how men make simple choices quickly, whereas women have a ‘complex range of purchasing criteria’. This gave me a grip on the differences between the genders, and gave me new ideas for research. It occurred to me that the basis for most advertising revolved on gender stereotypes, and I made a trip to the BFI library to do some more research into these gender stereotypes and hopefully would also find some information on car advertising.
At the BFI library I was actually very lucky with my findings and I stumbled across some great critical analysis of gender for my study. In Gillian Dyer’s ‘Advertising as Communication’ I found plenty of information regarding traditional cultural stereotypes within advertising. She states that “women are shown as very feminist, as 'sex objects', as housewives, mothers, and homemakers. Men however are presented in situations of authority and dominance over women”. She is therefore suggesting that the presentation of women and men mirrors their stereotypical roles in a patriarchal society, which men are dominant and women are recessive. In Jib Fowles ‘Advertising and Popular Culture’, we see this similar sense of male authority, as he suggests that adverts targeting men emphasise qualities of ‘toughness and experience’, whereas ones targeting women show ‘niceness and tenderness’. With this information, I started searching into picture advertising which led me across some very interesting and useful analysis by Judith Williamson in her famous book ‘Decoding Advertising’. Despite the fact that this book was written in 1978 with many of the models outdated, she does very thorough and detailed research into the meanings behind car adverts, namely the Monte Carlo 1975 (page 52), the Fiat132 GLS (page 52) and the Citroen GS (page 130/131). This research gave me my inspiration for my questionnaires as well as a focal point for my focus groups.
As I’d done plenty of research into the gender aspect of my question, I decided that I needed to put more of an emphasis on the actual cars. The questionnaires took a lot of consideration and I needed to be very thorough with the questions to get the right kind of responses about cars and adverts. I took me 4 drafts to get a final copy but I was very pleased with it. I’d asked demographic questions at the beginning to get a feel for who was answering the questions which would ultimately give me not only an idea of what each gender prefers in cars but also if there are other factors which affect what people want. These demographic questions involving the questioners name, age, gender, where they lived, if they were in a family, what car they owned, what their job was as well as their annual salary (if they were willing to disclose that information). I had initially planned to give me questionnaire out to students alone, as this was the most practical way for me to do this. However, it very quickly occurred to me that I was limiting my research to 17 and 18 year olds, most of who weren’t in the position to buy cars. When the results came back of the 17 I had handed out, the students had no real concept of the practicality needed to buy a car, but were completely focused on the looks and the speed of the car with no regard to price or safety. I then needed to branch out and handed the questionnaire out to family friends as well as neighbours along my street who I believed to be more capable of answering my questions. The questions themselves contained information regarding what people would want in their ideal car, as well as questions about cars that they could afford. I asked about the car they already owned, and enquired details about why they purchased their car. I also asked their preference on car adverts, which ones they liked and which ones they didn’t like, as well as asking if they would buy a car purely based on an advert they saw.
The focus groups were by far the hardest part of the process to do as it was difficult to note down what people had said while chairing the meeting and producing the material for the debate. I initially thought that a focus group of 8 would be suitable because it would allow for heated discussion, but it proved far too difficult to control so I had to limit the numbers to 4 per session. In total I held three sessions, one at school with students and two at home. Out of the twelve participants, six were male and six were female which allowed me to get detailed responses from both sexes. Each session lasted roughly two hours as I presented six television car adverts (Ford Ranger Opencab, The Nissan 4x4, The Citroen C4, The Skoda Fabia, The Ford Sportka and The New-Look Ford Mondeo) as well as 2 print adverts. As I’d found writing the replies to the adverts a hassle, I borrowed my brothers digital camcorder and recorded the conversations. This way I was able to accurately recall what was said in the focus groups and use it for me research. To make all of this easier, I uploaded my research onto an online blog I created on the internet so I could access all of my information from wherever I was. This included my focus groups, the results from the questionnaires I’d done as well as my own personal research from the internet and my trip to the BFI library.
In conclusion, the steps I took to acquiring my research involved a long and thought out process that took considerably longer than I had imagined. I never expected there to be so little information on gender and car advertising about and what I thought was going to be a project done predominantly on the internet was done mostly through my own primary research. I had to compare the results I obtained through my methodologies on car adverts and gender to secondary research done by other academics, hoping to find some similarities on the two different sections of gender and cars. I came to many roadblocks during my investigation, and what I thought was going to be a simple linear process became more jaded as my results took me off in different directions. It became hard to keep track of all my findings and that was why it was necessary for me to create a blog in order to keep everything together. I thought my findings proved very useful and through the process of trial and error I was able to find out what worked and what didn’t work, for example my draft questionnaires. I feel that I can now knowledgably talk about gender and relation to car advertising and can say with confidence that each car advert is specifically engineered to target gender, whether it be targeting one single gender or both at the same time. In hindsight, I would have critically analysed more print adverts as I feel that there is more to know. For example, different types of car adverts are printed in different magazines that target a particular gender. The adverts in Vogue magazine may vary wildly to car adverts printed in Zoo magazine.
WORDS - 1643
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Friday, March 28, 2008
Draft Questionairre
Demographic Questions
- Name:
- Age:
- Genger:
- Where you live:
- Job:
If you were looking to buy an ideal car, what are the 3 things that are most likely to sway your decision?
- price (high or low)
- looks (colour, make, style, model)
- space inside the car
- safety / protection
- is it the most recent model?
- petrol consumption / low petrol emissions
- power in the engine / top speed
- accessories in the car (CD player, air conditioning , electric windows)
- low car tax
OTHER
What type of car adverts do you find most interesting and entertaining?
- adverts about the power of a car
- adverts about the accessories in the car
- adverts about the advanced technology inside cars
- adverts which really don't advertise anything about the car but are entertaining to watch and thoroughly enjoyable.
OTHER
Do you think that you would buy a car based solely on an advert you saw?
Do you prefer television or print adverts?
Do you have any favourite car adverts? If so, what are the reasons for you liking these adverts?
What Car do you drive?
- make
- exact model
- how long ago did you buy it?
What were your reasons for choosing the car you own? What features of your car are most important to you when buying it?
- price (high or low)
- looks (colour, make, style, model)
- space inside the car
- safety / protection
- is it the most recent model?
- petrol consumption / low petrol emissions
- power in the engine / top speed
- accessories in the car (CD player, air conditioning , electric windows)
- low car tax
Were you persuaded to buy that car by a certain advert you saw on TV or in Print? If so which one, and what about the advert made you want to purchase the car?
- Name:
- Age:
- Genger:
- Where you live:
- Job:
If you were looking to buy an ideal car, what are the 3 things that are most likely to sway your decision?
- price (high or low)
- looks (colour, make, style, model)
- space inside the car
- safety / protection
- is it the most recent model?
- petrol consumption / low petrol emissions
- power in the engine / top speed
- accessories in the car (CD player, air conditioning , electric windows)
- low car tax
OTHER
What type of car adverts do you find most interesting and entertaining?
- adverts about the power of a car
- adverts about the accessories in the car
- adverts about the advanced technology inside cars
- adverts which really don't advertise anything about the car but are entertaining to watch and thoroughly enjoyable.
OTHER
Do you think that you would buy a car based solely on an advert you saw?
Do you prefer television or print adverts?
Do you have any favourite car adverts? If so, what are the reasons for you liking these adverts?
What Car do you drive?
- make
- exact model
- how long ago did you buy it?
What were your reasons for choosing the car you own? What features of your car are most important to you when buying it?
- price (high or low)
- looks (colour, make, style, model)
- space inside the car
- safety / protection
- is it the most recent model?
- petrol consumption / low petrol emissions
- power in the engine / top speed
- accessories in the car (CD player, air conditioning , electric windows)
- low car tax
Were you persuaded to buy that car by a certain advert you saw on TV or in Print? If so which one, and what about the advert made you want to purchase the car?
Thursday, March 20, 2008
puclicis - renaults campaigners
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/sections/advert04.html
ADVERT COMPARISON - Honda Civic and Honda Accord
Honda Civic - In this advert three men (approx. in their thirties) are in a CarPark, one of whom is getting ready to leave in his car (Honda Civic). The other two men (led by elder of the two) interrogate the car owner (in a superior manner) about the car’s additional features, to which the car owner responds by giving a technical description of the cars engine, to the surprise of the two men.
Honda Accord - In this advert four adults (approx. in their thirties – 2 female, 2 male) are sitting down to dinner, during which the subject of the hosts car arises in conversation. It becomes apparent that the choice of car (Honda Accord) was made by the female host, and she justifies her choice through technical description of the car’s engine, to the surprise of the guests.
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/sections/advert04.html
ADVERT COMPARISON - Honda Civic and Honda Accord
Honda Civic - In this advert three men (approx. in their thirties) are in a CarPark, one of whom is getting ready to leave in his car (Honda Civic). The other two men (led by elder of the two) interrogate the car owner (in a superior manner) about the car’s additional features, to which the car owner responds by giving a technical description of the cars engine, to the surprise of the two men.
Honda Accord - In this advert four adults (approx. in their thirties – 2 female, 2 male) are sitting down to dinner, during which the subject of the hosts car arises in conversation. It becomes apparent that the choice of car (Honda Accord) was made by the female host, and she justifies her choice through technical description of the car’s engine, to the surprise of the guests.
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