Alicia Meehan, opinions editor
Based on recent controversial commercials, it seems that advertising companies have forgotten that they’re meant to convince people to want to buy their product. The phrase, “all publicity is good publicity” comes to mind when you look at recent advertisements. Some of which are currently circulating, and some that have already been taken down due to backlash.
Looking at a golf ad labeled violent and misogynistic and some advertisements starring Sydney Sweeney where she is nearly nude or saying things similar to Nazi ideology, the reputability of the advertising producers comes into question. Are these advertisements meant to persuade customers? Or is the bizarre and controversial content meant to generate online outrage and the negative publicity that comes with it?
Sweeney’s most recent ad has been deemed sexist by many, but especially by female athletes. The ad for a sports betting app includes a nearly, or completely, nude Sweeney who is scantily covered by various sports equipment. Some of her lines include: “Trading in sports takes balls… Need a pair?” and “Sports, sports, sports, sports.”
Beginning with focusing on the script choices, it comes across as incredibly misogynistic. Sweeney’s line about male genitalia being “required” to participate in sports gambling is outdated and upsetting. That line, paired with Sweeney holding two footballs over her breasts, hits two checkboxes under classic misogyny: praising male anatomy and reducing women to their bodies and as sexual objects.
Sweeney’s repetition of the word “sports” is condescending in tone and backed visually by her naked body. Again, the ad depicting women as objects while further demeaning them by having Sweeney say pointless things about sports portrays women as too stupid to truly have a place in sports, as athletes or in fan groups.
Multiple female athletes spoke up about their discomfort with Sweeney’s sports gambling ad, including boxing champion Skye Nicholson and Olympic skier Cassidy Gray according to ABC News. Female athletes have to work just as hard, or harder, as male athletes to secure their positions in teams, all while facing scrutiny by those who don’t believe that women are biologically fit for sports and those who aim to sexualize them for the bodies.
By presenting Sweeney in this way while seemingly representing all women in sports and sports fandom as ditzy, sexual objects, these ads clearly cater to the type of male sports fan that is misogynistic and sexist. These ads also further perpetuate those negative ideas about women, introducing more young men to these harmful ideologies.
Another bizarre commercial has been circulating, this time by Callaway Golf. In the first few seconds of the ad, a man shoves a woman to the ground for trying to pick up one of his golf clubs. The ad continues with the man making creepy faces and shoving people around while being seemingly obsessed with the golf club.
The golf ad is just weird. The beginning of the ad is very abruptly violent towards women and because it is never properly explained, the whole ad feels like its trying to depict violence towards women as funny.
An older one of Sweeney’s ad campaigns suffered from controversy, that time for American Eagle. While Sweeney does put her body on display, showing cleavage and her stomach in various poses, but with the product being clothing we don’t have to bring that talking point up again. The main issue that most people had with Sweeney’s denim campaign are the blatant undertones of Nazi ideology that come through in one of the ads.
While buttoning up her jeans, Sweeney says, “Genes are passed down from parent to offspring, determining things like hair color and personality,” and at the end, a narrator says, “Sydney Sweeney has good jeans.” Sweeney being described as having “good genes” through pun could be seen as playful but, as a blonde haired and blue-eyed Caucasian woman, it can also lean into shaky territory. Part of Nazi Germany ideology includes the belief that the pale-skinned,
blonde-haired and blue-eyed “Aryan Race” should be supreme on Earth, and countless people died because of it. Sweeney’s “good jeans” could have been a joke, but too much is at stake for it to be written off as a mistake.
This ad makes us wonder if their public relations team didn’t properly do their jobs to ensure that they wouldn’t put anything out that could be called into question, or if the goal was to create a stir. In this day and age, it’s very apparent that you should not joke around with things such as Nazism or misogyny if you want to cater your product to as big of a field as you can.
Even if we ignore the misogynistic tones, the golf ad is not very good. It doesn’t explain itself well and comes off as weird, not funny. Sweeney’s sports gambling ad does very poorly in properly advertising the gambling part of the product. While the golf ad is clearly trying to make the point that you’ll love your new golf clubs so much, you’ll get “obsessed,” Sweeney’s ads don’t even try to mention how much money you could make or any other aspect of gambling.
The company is seemingly relying on sexuality and/or shock value to make people talk about the ad rather than actually mention anything about their product itself. This is a bad tactic. Creating a buzz about a weird ad is not the same as getting people interested in a product, especially when most of the publicity is due to negative opinions on the ad. Companies should focus on what makes people want to buy their product, not on what makes people angry or uncomfortable with a commercial.
Overall, advertisement companies need to either pay better attention to the content that they put out or simply get better at writing commercials. Trying to incite or accidentally inciting outrage as a form of publicity doesn’t truly lift the product up as something that people want to buy, it just gives people another thing to talk about.