Gendered Marketing

[Cyclopea]

Post anything related to gendered marketing. Share your thoughts or interesting examples of gendered marketing, advertising and promotion.



I thought there was a thread on this topic but if there is i couldn't find it!

[Cyclopea]

http://www.heybabygame.com/info.php

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Hey Baby: A Violent Video Game Geared to Women
By MEGAN GIBSON Friday, Oct. 08, 2010
TIME.com

I'm a woman walking down the street alone. A man swaggers toward me and utters a sleazy come-on. I respond by leveling a gun in his direction and shooting him at close range. A gravestone pops up in his place, the epitaph inscribed with his last words: "I like your bounce, baby."

This is the world of Hey Baby, a computer game in which hordes of men call out pickup lines that range from fairly innocent ("Excuse me, do you have a boyfriend?") to pretty obscene ("I wanna lick you all over"). Players then choose whether to ignore the comment or shoot. The game's tagline: "It's payback time, boys."


Hey Baby, which was released in June and can be played for free at www.heybabygame.com, has raised some controversy on gaming blogs, as both men and women debate the validity of its public-service message about street harassment. Although some games are designed to provoke conversation and political action (Darfur is Dying comes to mind), Hey Baby differs in that it's designed strictly for women — a demographic that until recently wasn't thought to be particularly interested in game violence.

Hey Baby, which was created by a female designer and producer from New York City, doesn't really offer anything new in terms of the level of violence — we've seen far worse. What does surprise, however, is its reversal of the gender roles. With few exceptions (think Lara Croft from Tomb Raider or Samus Aran from the Metroid series), violent video games typically involve male heroes, and the action is largely male-on-male or, in some cases, male-on-female — such as in Grand Theft Auto, in which male characters can abuse and murder prostitutes, and in Rapelay, a Japanese game in which the male character's sole pursuit is to sexually assault women.

Female-on-male violence, however, isn't common, but new research indicates that a surprising number of women might be drawn to such games.

A study released this summer by a researcher at Belgium's Ghent University polled nearly 1,000 gamers ages 16 to 24 to determine the difference in gaming preferences between women and men. This is important information for marketers; in 2008 alone the combined sales of video and computer games was $11.7 billion. And a huge percentage of these sales are the result of female gamers, since women make up 40% of gamers and 42% of online gamers, according to the Entertainment Software Association. Clearly, what women want — in video games, at least — matters.


Of the 344 females polled, Lotte Vermeulen, the study's author, found that more than half said they didn't mind shoot-'em-up stuff. "Women are not afraid of violence in games," Vermeulen notes. "This violence, however, needs to have a humorous undertone as realistic battle scenes tend to put them off."

That's good news for the game's creator, Suyin Looui, who says she intended the over-the-top violence to be seen as a joke. Hey Baby gives women "the space to act out their ridiculous revenge fantasies," she says, "and have a laugh about it."

[Gemme]

I looked at the game and would play to let off some steam but I'm not a gamer at heart. I do, however, think it's high time that someone thought of women first in their marketing. Well, someone other than Johnson & Johnson that is.

[WheelieStrong]

i don't like the fact that product advertisers especially with kids stuff seem to tell parents they have to buy a certain product for there son and a different one for there daughter by plastering a little girl all over the advert and boxing of say a model kitchen.

What upsets me so much more is that parents and society in general seem to think that this is the way things have always been, should be now and shoud stay in future.

i don't think i'd be thinking too far out of the box to say that if products and society in general was less gender based, there could be a lot less trans folk because they could just be people and not be judged so much by what they expected to do and be like

[Cyclopea]

Originally Posted by WheelieStrong

i don't like the fact that product advertisers especially with kids stuff seem to tell parents they have to buy a certain product for there son and a different one for there daughter by plastering a little girl all over the advert and boxing of say a model kitchen.

What upsets me so much more is that parents and society in general seem to think that this is the way things have always been, should be now and shoud stay in future.

i don't think i'd be thinking too far out of the box to say that if products and society in general was less gender based, there could be a lot less trans folk because they could just be people and not be judged so much by what they expected to do and be like

Your post reminded me that it was only ten years ago (2000) that Toys R Us decided to separate their stores down the middle into a blue "boys" side and a pink "girls" side.
When I was a kid the toys were grouped by type, not gender. My sister shopped for her Barbies a few feet away from me as I shopped for my GI Joes. I liked the GI Joes because they had articulated limbs which allowed them to move more realistically than barbie who could not even bend her legs. All the figures with bendable limbs were male.
What's even more alarming about the recent gender division is that all the "gender neutral" toys I loved so much (erector sets, etc) and the science/tech toys (microscopes, chemistry sets) are now in the boy section!

What you said about marketing reminded me of a lawsuit a few years ago where someone in Sweden sued Toys R Us (successfully) for gender discrimination over their catalog because all the pictures of boys were in active poses and all the pics of girls were of them standing or sitting inactively. Lol maybe the girls legs didn't bend...

[betenoire]

I smoke and am still offended at Camel's obvious ploy to get teenage girls to smoke. Even the foil paper inside of the pack and the little camel on the filter are hot pink.

So. Fucked. Up.





I would like to play that video game that you mentioned, though. As a teenager I spent a lot of time at the arcade playing Street Fighter II. I'm sure this is a lot less complicated (like, I bet it's point and click v actually having to use button combination to do the moves) because it's a pc game (and possibly because it's for the ladies and we are too stupid to operate a game controller?) but it could be fun.

[Cyclopea]

Originally Posted by betenoire

I smoke and am still offended at Camel's obvious ploy to get teenage girls to smoke. Even the foil paper inside of the pack and the little camel on the filter are hot pink.

So. Fucked. Up.





I would like to play that video game that you mentioned, though. As a teenager I spent a lot of time at the arcade playing Street Fighter II. I'm sure this is a lot less complicated (like, I bet it's point and click v actually having to use button combination to do the moves) because it's a pc game (and possibly because it's for the ladies and we are too stupid to operate a game controller?) but it could be fun.

The "hey baby" game is pretty rudimentary- you can just click on the link above to play it, it's free. Yay Street Fighter! Tekken is good- I just got one of the newer ones for my PS2. The murderous schoolgirl characters are my fave, natch. (Did I just say "natch"?)

And OMG about the cigs !!!!!!! Holy shit.

[MsDemeanor]

Is there much of anything out there that isn't gender marketed, if not directly then indirectly by virtue of ad placement, ie, a gender-based assumption of who will be reading/watching/hearing the ad?

[betenoire]

Oh, and I forgot to mention the (discontinued) Camel Exotic Blends. Not necessarily marketed specifically to Women, but it FELT like that's what they were driving at.

They came in flavours like "champaign" "mint chocolate" "citrus" and were in collectible tins. I liked the tins so I used to buy a pack or two every time I was in the US.

I actually think that Camel is part of the axis of evil because of their habit of such obvious marketing to young people and females.

http://users.ap.net/~burntofferings/...melexotic.html

[dixie]

Originally Posted by Cyclopea

The "hey baby" game is pretty rudimentary- you can just click on the link above to play it, it's free. Yay Street Fighter! Tekken is good- I just got one of the newer ones for my PS2. The murderous schoolgirl characters are my fave, natch. (Did I just say "natch"?)

And OMG about the cigs !!!!!!! Holy shit.

I *heart* Tekken. It's my all-time fav game (well, other than Resident Evil...lol)