Topic 7. Personality, Lifestyle and Self
Chapter Reflections
- Find an example of a brand actively targeting the “PANKs” market segment. What features exist in this brand’s marketing (e.g. commercials, ads, imagery, messaging) indicate that this target market consists of professional women without children of their own?
- Consider how Dove’s video titled “Crown” (featuring Kelly Rowland), shares with us how young girls’ self-concept is shaped by their physical characteristics—in this case, specifically their hair.
- Breaking through the media mediocrity that all too often depicts women as subjects of sexual desire or commanders of a busy household, JP Morgan delivers a highly-contextualized ad that centres tennis champion, equality advocate, business mogul, and mom, Serena Williams, that depicts high degrees of self-complexity. Discuss this video in the context of “the self” and the message it is sending to the audience.
- What does it say about our culture and society when the commercials like the one created for Lane Bryant was refused airing on a major network television channel because it was deemed “unfit and inappropriate” and had failed to comply with “decency guidelines”? Would this be the the case if the models were equally as gorgeous but not plus-sized? What connections can we make between this advertisement and what we understand about self-esteem?
- Car company “Buick” has created a series of advertisements that depict the ongoing tension and interaction among our ego, id, and superego. Watch some of these commercials and discuss how these Freudian concepts are represented.
- In 2019, Peloton released a commercial featuring “Grace from Boston” that proceeded to fire up much debate on social media channels. What do experts in psychological science have to say about sex roles? Explore this Psychology Today analysis of sex roles in advertising and discuss other related themes (e.g. self-esteem) we discuss in consumer behaviour.
- Using Erik Erikson’s Psychological Stages of Development, find examples of marketing strategies (products and promotions) that align to the different stages.
- This chapters explores ideas related to self concept, self esteem, real & ideal selves, and the looking glass self. Each of these impact our decisions as consumers since we are so often looking to purchase items that fulfill our sense of “self” and shape our own self concept. With that in mind, consider how DOVE engages in advertising that speaks to these self-concept terms. What is DOVE’s intention in focusing its marketing messages on self-concept instead of say, product attributes?
