In the episode, the precinct’s captain, Captain Holt, is in an argument with his husband over the Monty Hall problem, and one of the detectives, Amy Santiago (who, incidentally, is my fictitious dream woman, because she is wonderful and adorable and I am apparently a dude who crushes on TV characters), is trying to figure out a way to explain the correct answer.
The Monty Hall problem, named for the original Let’s Make a Deal host Monty Hall*, is as follows: You’re on a game show trying to win a car, and the host asks you to pick one of three doors. Behind one of the doors is the car; the other two contain a goat. After you pick a door, the host—who knows which is the car door and which are the goat doors—will open an unpicked door revealing a goat and ask if you want to stay with the door you picked or switch to the unopened door you didn’t pick. Should you switch doors?
The answer is indisputably yes, you should switch. By switching, you double your chances of winning the car—staying gives you a 1 in 3 chance of winning the car; switching improves your chances to 2 in 3. It may be counterintuitive, but you can test this out by playing repeated simulations of the problem, either in real life or online. The result, with enough simulations, will be the same: if you stay, you’ll win the car about 33 percent of the time; if you switch, you’ll win about 67 percent of the time.
Holt is unconvinced, thinking that, once it’s down to two doors, it’s simply a 50/50 chance and switching doesn’t affect anything. Amy, who’s the sort of person who gets excited over weekend math conferences called Funky Cats and Their Feisty Stats (again: fictitious dream woman like whoa), is determined to explain why switching is the correct strategy.
Unfortunately, we never get to hear Amy’s explanation because it turns out the spat wasn’t really over the math problem but rather a dearth of boning. So let me take a stab at it.
In the Monty Hall problem, there are exactly nine scenarios that can play out: you picking Door 1 and the car being behind Door 1, 2, or 3; you picking Door 2 and the car being behind Door 1, 2, or 3; and you picking Door 3, and the car being behind Door 1, 2, or 3. They're organized in this chart:
As the chart indicates, you win the car by staying in only three of the nine scenarios. You win the car by switching in six of the nine scenarios. Thus, staying yields only a 3 in 9 (i.e., 1 in 3) chance of winning; switching yields 6 in 9 (i.e., 2 in 3) chance of winning. Thus, you should switch—it doesn’t guarantee the car, but it significantly improves your chances.
Another, perhaps less intuitive, way of thinking about it: let’s say you pick Door 1. When the host asks you to switch, he’s asking if you’d like to change your pick from "Only Door 1" to "Either Door 2 or Door 3"—in other words, asking if you’d like to change your chances from "1 in 3" to "2 in 3." The chance of your door being a car doesn’t magically increase once the goat door is opened; it remains 1 in 3, so the alternative choice is 2 in 3.
It becomes a little bit clearer if, instead of three doors, we’re playing with a million doors. When you first pick a door, you have a 0.0001 percent chance of winning a car. When the host opens 999,998 doors revealing 999,998 goats, you’re left with your door and, say, Door 784,912. You intuitively know to switch—it’s highly unlikely that you picked the right door on your first try, and Door 784,912 just looks so appealing sitting there all by itself. In essence, the offer to switch is asking if you’d like to stick with your 0.0001 percent chance of winning, or if you’d like to take the 99.9999 chance that your initial pick was wrong. Even more simply, the offer to switch is asking, "Do you think the car is behind the one door you picked, or any of the other 999,999 doors?"
With a million doors, switching makes sense. And the math stays true with 500,000 doors. And 10,000 doors. And 50 doors. And indeed, all the way down to three doors.
If the whole doors thing makes this a bit opaque, consider this mathematically identical problem: let's say I'm thinking of a (whole) number between 1 and 1,000,000. Once you pick a number, I tell you that the number I'm thinking of is either the number you picked or 784,912, and I ask you if you want to switch to 784,912. Of course you'd switch—intuition dictates that it's highly unlikely you just happened to pick the correct number out of a million, and switching just makes sense. Clearly, once you're down to two numbers, switching does affect your chances significantly; you're going from having a 1 in 1,000,000 chance to a 999,999 in 1,000,000 chance. The concept remains the same if I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 1,000,000 (99.9999 percent chance of winning if you switch), 1 and 10 (90 percent chance), 1 and 5 (80 percent chance), and, yes, 1 and 3 (about 67 percent chance).
Finally, if all of that is still unconvincing, here's maybe the simplest explanation. If you stay with your door, the only way you can win the car is if you initially picked the correct door, which has a 1 in 3 chance of happening since there's only one correct door. If you switch, the only way to win is if you initially picked a wrong door, which has a 2 in 3 chance of happening since there are two wrong doors. Basically, you probably picked the wrong door initially, so staying means you're probably going to stay with the wrong door, while switching means you're probably switching to the correct door.
In conclusion, you should definitely switch doors because Amy is right. Also, Amy is totally dreamy, even when she's shame-eating hamburgers.
God, I need a girlfriend. Or Season 3 on DVD, either one's fine.
*It’s worth noting that, on Monty Hall’s Let’s Make a Deal, this situation as described never came up on the show, and thus, the name of the problem is kind of a misnomer. It's like having a problem about funny jokes, and calling it the Big Bang Theory problem. Bazinga! (For real, that show sucks.)
On the other hand, Monty Hall himself was able to come up with the right answer to the problem pretty quickly—a lot faster than many PhDs and other math experts, in fact—so maybe he deserves to have the problem named after him after all.
Hey Arnold!, the
classic Nickelodeon animated TV series about a kid growing up in the big city,
gave us many gifts during its witty and often melancholy five-season run, not
the least of which is what I like to call the Hey Arnold! Theory of
Asymmetrical Affection.
The theory comes from “Arnold & Lila,” an episode in the
show’s third season. In it, a series of Three’s
Company-esque misunderstandings results in Arnold realizing he has feelings
for his friend Lila, who, by the end of the episode, no longer feels the same
way about him. (“I really admire you, and I treasure our friendship ever so
much,” Lila says, as a way of letting Arnold down softly. “We can still be good
friends, can’t we?”)
Afterward, while talking to another one of his friends about
what happened, Arnold makes this astute observation:
It’s funny. When you like someone, and they don’t really
like you back, it’s not so bad. But when you really like them-like them, but you find out they just like you, it
hurts.
Here’s the theory in dank meme form, which I definitely
didn’t make when a girl definitely didn’t turn me down for a date, because I’m
definitely not a grown-ass adult who turns to late 1990s cartoons to seek
comfort and wisdom when I’m feeling bummed.
It’s worth breaking down why this is true. When someone
rejects you outright—not only do they not want to go out with you, but they
don’t want anything to do with you—it sucks in the moment, but it’s easy to
console yourself. They’re rejecting me because they don’t really know me, you can think. If they knew all the things that
make me unique, if they knew my personality, my sense of humor, my quirks, then
maybe it’d be different. In short, they just don’t have enough information, so
they’re not rejecting me; they’re
rejecting their incomplete idea of me—which,
again, still kind of sucks, but you don’t take it too personally.
But when someone “partially” rejects you—that is, they like
you, but they don’t like you-like you—that
shit stings. You can’t hide behind the idea that they just don’t know you,
because they obviously do: they like you! They see what you have to offer, and
they totally appreciate it! They want you in their life—but not in that way. For
whatever reason, it’s not quite enough for them to return your feelings. Why
Arnold is right when he says it hurts is simple: they’re not rejecting you
because they don’t know you; they’re rejecting you precisely because they do know you. (And double ouches if, in
your heart of hearts, you know they’re making the right call—but that’s a
different discussion for another day.)
The Hey Arnold!
Theory of Asymmetrical Affection is often cited as evidence of the
insidiousness of the “friend zone,” which is annoying for two reasons: the
feelings Arnold is describing are a little more nuanced than the friend zone,
and, more significantly, the friend zone is bullshit.
* * *
When I was in high school, the friend zone referred to the
belief that if you’ve been friends with someone for too long, a romantic
relationship was impossible. Nobody ever seemed to have the exact figures for
how long was too long, probably because it was, again, bullshit.
It’s not that by being “just friends” for a week, or a month,
or whatever other arbitrary length of time, you magically become undateable; we
had several counterexamples all around us of people who were good friends
first, then started dating. Instead, what’s happening is that, in that time in
which you were just friends, your friend learned something about you, your
personality, or your beliefs that made you unattractive to or incompatible with
them—or, perhaps, something that seemed charming or intriguing at first became
less so after repeated exposure to it. There’s also the harsh possibility that
many find difficult to face: your friend was never attracted to you in the
first place and at no point were you ever a romantically viable prospect.
Curiously, the idea was embraced by both guys and girls,
with guys generally being the friend zoned and girls being the friend zoners. (The
friend zone seems to be a pretty heterosexual—and, indeed, heteronormative—concept.)
For guys, this provided a way to save face when he was rejected; it’s not that
he was unattractive, but rather, the inviolable laws of the friend zone are
what they are. For girls, this provided a gentle way to reject a guy—either because
they wanted to avoid upsetting the guy by offering a real reason (“you too
ugly, bro”), or occasionally because they didn’t want to think of themselves as
the type of person who’d reject a guy based on, say, the fact that he too ugly,
bro (“I’m not shallow; it’s just the friend zone”). It was an exercise in
self-delusion, with both guys and girls having incentives to perpetuate it.
That, obviously, is less than ideal. (Are we enabling guys
whose egos are so fragile that they have to comfort themselves with lies? Are
we conditioning girls to avoid expressing what they really think to make guys
feel better about themselves? Are we telling girls it’s better to be nice than
to be honest?) In practice, though, it played out harmlessly enough: the friend
zone was accepted and unchallenged, and the rejected guy could, after licking
his wounds, go back to being friends with the girl. Encouragingly, guys who
were purportedly friend zoned generally didn’t blame the girl (“Damn bitch friend zoned me!”) but rather themselves (“My bad, I waited too long”), which helped
make guys and girls less adversaries in dating and more fellow travelers bound
by the same principles.
* * *
Of course, my high school was different from other high
schools. We didn’t have lockers. Nobody went to prom, even when MTV decided to record and humiliate us. Our AP calc class was as frequently about math as it
was about playing Monopoly while watching the 2000 Nicolas Cage film The Family Man, apparently the only DVD
our media center had. And I’m pretty sure at least a part of our campus was a
repurposed Waffle House, which would explain both the smell and the despair.
This wasn't a scientific poll, but I'd say it captured our collective sentiment nicely.
So I’m not sure if I grew up with a different understanding
of the friend zone, or if the definition has changed. But now, when a man complains about the friend zone, it usually takes on a much creepier vibe: I was so nice to her, and that bitch friend
zoned me! She was just leading me on! Typical woman friend zoning me because I’m
nice, yet she’ll probably go out with some asshole who won’t treat her right!
Obviously, some caveats: There are women who do lead men on
intentionally and manipulate emotions for their own benefit (hey, free dinner!),
because women are people and some people are shitty. And yes, there are women
who find niceness unattractive and assholery attractive, because women are
people and some people have weird issues. But I feel confident that these cases
don’t represent the majority of friend zone whining.
(Also, as an aside, my pet hypothesis is that being nice isn’t
so much an inherently attractive thing, but rather an intensifier if you
already find someone attractive. Like, niceness won’t do much if someone doesn’t
think you’re cute, but if you’re cute and
it turns out you’re nice, it makes you that much cuter. It is in this way that
niceness is a lot like eyeglasses, tattoos, and impeccable grammar.)
This mindset comes from the idea that if a man does enough
nice things for a woman, he’s entitled to her time, her affection, or her body.
In this view, a woman isn’t a person with her own desires, but rather a puzzle
to be solved and a prize to be won. Or not even that—she’s a product to be
purchased, which he deserves because he paid for it with his niceness. This is
a point rebutted by an oft-memed quote misattributed to Sylvia Plath:
This betrays a serious lack of empathy. All of the men
bemoaning how nice guys get friend zoned would disagree that, if a woman he
found repulsive baked him enough cookies or gave him enough gifts, he should
ignore his own desires because she earned him and that overrides his feelings.
All of these men would recognize that they get to decide with whom they go out
and have sex, and “because she’s really, really nice and really, really likes
you!” isn’t sufficient for them to set aside their own preferences.
But they generally don’t extend that same courtesy to the
women they want to bone. And I get it—you’re the main character in your own
story, and she’s your perfect dream girl. Super
Mario Bros. taught you that if you do the right sequence of things, you
earn the right to some Tanookie Mario with Princess Toadstool, even if she has expressed no interest in you and your shoes smell like squished Goomba.
However, she’s the main
character in her own story, too, and just like you want someone you think is gorgeous
and lovely, so does she. And you might not be that person, no matter how nice
you are. It’s okay. It happens sometimes. You just have to deal.
* * *
One of the worst things about the friend zone is that it
makes some men embarrassed of their friendships with women. Being friend zoned
is seen as a mark of emasculation, and since there’s supposedly no other
purpose of being friends with a woman besides having sex with her, every platonic
friendship with a woman is viewed as an implied rejection and thus a failure.
Every act of kindness shown to a woman that doesn’t result in her ripping off
her clothes isn’t just a waste but a pathetic act of self-torture (“You picked
her up from the airport? FRIEND ZONE LEVEL 100! She had a bad day at work and
you listened to her for a few minutes without getting any ass? FRIEND ZONE
LEVEL INFINITY!”). These men will have fewer friendships with women, which
means they’ll have fewer women they care about, which means they’ll be more
accepting of whatever misogynistic nonsense they read on some creepy subreddit.
And the cycle of toxicity will self-perpetuate.
The reverse happens, too. If women are constantly suspicious
of their male friends’ motives, they may decide that male platonic friendships
are more trouble than they’re worth. Who wants to deal with the hurt when
someone you thought was a really great friend just wanted to have sex with you?
Who wants to be accused of leading someone on or berated for being a typical
woman who can’t appreciate a nice guy?
(Also, what’s the deal with people saying that if a man is
sexually attracted to a female friend, it’s proof that he’s not really her
friend, or that male-female friendships are impossible? If a woman is attractive, there’s a decent chance that at least some of her male heterosexual
friends would be pretty stoked to sleep with her. But if she doesn’t want to
sleep with them, it’s entirely possible that they’re okay with that and value
and appreciate her friendship anyway. In fact, it’s kind of fucked up that “is
sexually attracted to a woman” and “genuinely values a woman’s friendship” are often
accepted as mutually exclusive concepts—what the hell does that say about us?
In any case, as the great Mayor Diamond Joe Quimby says, it can be two things.)
* * *
During the rest of Hey
Arnold!’s run, Arnold still crushed on Lila. And Lila continued to view
Arnold as purely a platonic friend, much to his chagrin. But Arnold didn’t
accuse Lila of leading him on or complain that Lila was a stupid bitch who
friend zoned him because she couldn’t see how nice of a guy he was.
Yes, asymmetrical affection sucks for the reason Arnold
articulated perfectly, but Arnold found a way to deal with it without being a
self-pitying asshole. As with most things in life, we should all be like
Arnold.
Or maybe Gerald. That dude has a field named after him and has some pretty rad hair. Let’s be
like him, too.
For one fleeting moment, I thought Quicken Loans’s “Buy In” (or “#BuyIn”) TV commercial, the work of Minneapolis, Minn.-based agency Fallon, was a magnificent, self-aware
satire of unscrupulous lending, the devaluation of patriotism and courage,
and terrible advertising in general when the voiceover actor informed us that:
None of this makes rational sense. It only makes American
sense.
It turns out that it was none of those things. The
commercial is as sincere as it is boneheaded, which I suppose is its own sort
of magnificence. They’re right, though—no part of this ad makes rational sense.
But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let’s start with the
text of the voiceover, delivered with the sort of cocky, vaguely bullying
cadence you’d expect from, say, a creepy dudebro in his late twenties super-seriously
pressuring his buddies to stop being pussies and just hook up with that drunk
girl at a high school kegger:
The American Dream is terrifying. American history is the history
of the scary thing being the exact thing we have to do: cross that ocean, walk
on that moon, fly. None of this makes rational sense. It only makes American
sense.
Here, the hard things show us who we are. Leaving your job
to start your own thing. Having a kid when you still feel like a kid. Signing a
30-year mortgage on a home. Scary? Sure. But no match for our colossal self-belief.
We’re supposed to do scary. Without scary, we don’t get to be brave. Buy in.
No, seriously.
* * *
Art Steiber, the vice president of marketing and
sponsorships at Quicken Loans, told Ad
Age that the campaign is specifically intended to assuage the fears of
would-be homebuyers after the housing and financial crises of the last decade.
And I get it; the economy’s improving, and there are undoubtedly people for
whom homeownership is feasible but are understandably apprehensive about
pulling the trigger.
But let’s remember that the subprime mortgage crisis was precipitated
by predatory lenders hoodwinking consumers into taking out loans that they
couldn’t afford and should have never been offered. The apprehension felt by
consumers that reverberates years after the recession isn’t merely a marketing
challenge for Quicken Loans to solve; it’s the hard-won wisdom that many people
had their lives ruined for us to learn. Indeed, that fear is a good thing; it’s
the final line of defense before you get pressured into making a bad decision.
It’s unseemly for Quicken Loans to dismiss that fear so
cavalierly—and, worse still, make ignoring that fear some sort of virtuous
deed. Buying a house shouldn’t be some brave, capricious decision that doesn’t make
rational sense; it should be the result of a sober, dispassionate, realistic
analysis of your financial situation and your personal goals.
This commercial, in fact, reminds me of an infamous ad from Century 21
in 2006, just before the housing meltdown. That spot—called “The Debate”—features
a wife who’s bullying her husband into buying a house while their real
estate agent joins in on the bullying via speakerphone. The tag-team pressure
tactics work, the husband agrees to buy the house, and it’s supposed to be a
happy moment—until, presumably, they defaulted on their loan a couple of years
later and had to move into his in-laws’ basement. It’s pretty heinous:
Fuckin’ Suzanne and her research.
What Quicken Loans is trying to do is tell consumers not to
trust their instincts. They’re dressing it up in patriotic imagery and the
themes of courage, but the message remains the same: ignore the part of
you that’s telling you to think this through and do it. Advertising does this
all the time, of course, and it’s easy to laugh it off when we’re told to Call
Today, Don’t Delay for infomercial ephemera. But when the same technique is
applied to buying a house instead of a Slap Chop, just a few years after the destruction
of so many people’s personal wealth stemming in part from imprudent house-buying,
it’s some kind of appalling.
* * *
Let’s take a moment to recognize how wonderfully misguided
this passage from the voiceover is:
American history is
the history of the scary thing being the exact thing we have to do: cross that
ocean, walk on that moon, fly. None of this makes rational sense. It only makes
American sense.
Let’s ignore that they’ve glossed over a lot of American history with “ocean,
moon, fly.” (And we’ll ignore the fact that the chronology is off; I’m pretty
sure we were flying before moonwalking, both literally and otherwise.) I love
that their misguided appeal to American exceptionalism included the implication
that “rational” and “American” are antonyms.
More seriously, though, that passage is factually
inaccurate: all those things did make
rational sense. Finding efficient trade routes, beating the Soviet
Union in the Space Race during the Cold War, and traveling quickly between
faraway places—what parts of any of those things are irrational? Quicken Loans
gives away the game inadvertently here; they know that, for many people, buying
a home is an irrational decision—based more on ego and appearances than what’s
best for them financially—but they try to downplay that irrationality by
falsely claiming other things were irrational, too.
I don’t blame them, of course; more honest copy would read:
American history is
the history of the scary thing being the exact thing we have to do: Plessy v. Ferguson, the Vietnam War, KFC Double Downs. None of this makes
rational sense. It only makes American sense.
But it doesn’t quite have the same effect.
* * *
Not to belabor the point, but not everybody needs to own a
home. And more importantly, not everybody needs to aspire to own a home.
One of the creepier things about the commercial is the way
it presents homeownership as a necessary component of living the American Dream
and, by extension, being a true American. Reinforcing the idea that there’s one
single ideal life to which we should all aspire is pretty pernicious; it leads
to disappointment, crippling debt, and a perpetual cycle of acquiring things to
fill an ever-expanding hole in your soul.
A lot of advertising is predicated on making products seem
like universal desires; it’s easier to convince somebody to want a product if
they’ve already been conditioned to accept that product as something they’re supposed to want. But forced conformity
is bad for us all. Don’t get me wrong; if someone chooses to want their little box made of
ticky-tacky, then that’s fine, and I’m not judging—as long as it is indeed
their choice and not the choice of societal pressures and terrible TV
commercials.
(The commercial also presents “having a kid when you
still feel like a kid” as a noble thing to do, which is also pretty messed up—being
a parent isn’t for everybody and arguably isn’t for most people,
and those who choose to become parents should probably at least feel like young adults before popping the little
ones out—but that’s a rant for another day.)
* * *
But here’s the part of the ad that annoys me the most: they’re
commodifying courage. Or, more bluntly, they’re trying to convince us that
buying shit is an act of courage.
Advertising has long tried to convince us that buying shit
is a legitimate form of self-expression. In lieu of developing a personality, the clothes and the cars we buy can convey that for us. In lieu of
making actual choices in our lives, we can sate our need for freedom by choosing
from different, mostly identical brands of cola with varying caloric content. I
know, that’s nothing new or revelatory.
But there’s something grotesque about an ad like this one that
tells us that, in lieu of actually doing something courageous, we can just buy
something really expensive. I’ve seen a lot of ads attempt to commodify all
sorts of things—love, charity, hope, security, etc.—but I’m straining to think
of an ad that explicitly said, “Be brave, buy this thing.”
Sen. John McCain has talked a lot about “defining
courage down”—that is, devaluing courage by using it to describe all manner
of acts that aren’t genuinely courageous. While McCain’s courage
credentials are impeccable1, I disagree with some of what he
says; I think he defines courage too narrowly, which unfairly cheapens some of
the acts of everyday, mundane bravery that are rarely applauded. Where I think
he and I would have no quarrel, though, is saying that buying shit is not courageous, and the idea that it is will
simultaneously make people less able to recognize actual courage and less
inclined to do actually courageous things.
People have to do genuinely courageous things all the time, and not necessarily in the big, taking-bullets, rescuing-people-from-a-fire sort of way; they move to new cities, they start and end relationships, they follow their dreams and help others do the same. It’s gross to see courage so nonchalantly trivialized. Fuck
off, Quicken Loans.
* * *
It’s perhaps unfair to talk smack about an ad campaign
without saying what I would’ve done differently. So just spitballin’ here, but
maybe something like this?
We know buying a home can be scary. We remember what it was
like seven years ago.
Buying a home might not be right for everybody, and it might
not be right for everybody right now.
But we’ve come a long way since 2008, and if homeownership is something you’ve
been thinking about, it may be worth taking another look into it.
Talk to your financial advisor. Talk to your family. Figure
out what your goals and resources are. And if you decide that buying a home is
right for you, we want to help. Call us when you’re ready. Quicken Loans. USA,
all the way, numba one.
Okay, it’s not my finest bit of copywriting, but better, right?
1All right, fine, but can we at least agree that his courage credentials were impeccable pre-Palin?
“They ran into Jeff and Ash—like, literally ran into him,”
the girl recounts, as the father shoots a why-the-hell-is-she-talking-to-us
look to the mother, who in turn flashes an insincere smile while not even
disguising her lack of interest in her child. The daughter continues—“So
awkward! He spilled a little soda on his shirt!”—as a voiceover plays over her:
This story had 30 minutes left, until Kim realized that
Stouffer’s mac and cheese is made with real cheddar, aged to perfection for six
long months. When you start with the best cheddar, you get the best mac and
cheese.
The daughter is so enraptured by the hundreds and hundreds
of milligrams of sodium in her serving of hastily-microwaved food-like
substance that she stops chattering about stupid teenage girl nonsense like her thoughts and feelings and the people in life about whom she cares.
The father, ever the smartass, asks her, “So what about Jessica?”—to which the
daughter replies, “What about her?” And just like that, Operation Get My
Daughter to Stop Sharing Things with Me is a resounding success.
This ad, ostensibly targeting parents who value dinnertime
as a family event, is such a complete misfire that so thoroughly misunderstands
its audience that I’m genuinely curious if JWT took some side cash from Kraft
to bungle it. The reality is, parents who at least make an effort to make
at-the-table, TV-free family dinners a thing want to listen to their kids talk about what’s on their minds. It
is, in fact, the whole damn point of
a family dinner. The problem isn’t that their teenagers are sharing too much;
it’s that teenagers are sharing too little or nothing at all.
Here, the daughter is happily going into detail about her
life—and true, it does sound like inconsequential, high school cafeteria
minutiae. But it’s clearly important to her,
and when someone—especially your own child—trusts
you enough to share, the least you can do is be kind enough to listen without making
faces. Besides, if your kid learns that you can’t be trusted to care about
small stuff, why would she trust you with the big stuff?
In short, JWT at some point pitched a commercial that
essentially said, “Stouffer’s: For terrible parents1 who want their
kids to shut the fuck up,” and Stouffer’s inexplicably said, “OH MY GOD, CAN WE
SIGN UP TWICE?” Well done, all.
A teenage girl is looking at her cell phone. When she takes
a bit of her lasagna, the purported deliciousness of her unit of food causes
her to put her phone down. A voiceover explains: “As Katie puts her cell phone
down for the first time all week, she realizes that Stouffer’s lasagna is
topped with fresh cheese that browns beautifully. Fresh cheese and a touch of
aged parmesan is [sic] what gives us
our irresistible flavor. When you start with the best blend of cheese, you get
the best lasagna.” Her cell phone buzzes; her parents look at their daughter
expectantly; the daughter ignores the phone and says, “What?”
First of all, there’s some seriously mixed messaging here: in
the first commercial, the parents are trying to stop their daughter from
talking to them; in the second commercial, the parents are trying to stop their
daughter from talking (or texting, I guess) to her friends. Which is it? Or do
parents who serve Stouffer’s just want their kids to stop talking to everyone?
Geez, get your pitch straight, guys.
But more importantly, why are they picking on teenage girls
here? Look, I’m not saying that Stouffer’s is a part of some conspiracy to make
the world into a phallocratic dongtopia or anything2, but two
commercials in the same campaign that are predicated on stopping teenage girls
from talking? Two commercials in the same campaign that presuppose teenage
girls just talk about silly, unimportant stuff? Pretty lame, especially if we’re
trying to get girls to Lean In or Step Up or Speak Out or what have you.
And as long as I’m taking swipes at Stouffer’s, take a look
at the Nutrition Facts for Stouffer’s macaroni and cheese, as
presented on its website:
“Serving Size: 2. Servings Per Container: Not Given.” This
is the opposite of helpful.
Just as confusing, despite each serving (which we know is
exactly two somethings) containing 6
grams of saturated fat, the label still goes on to say that the product is “[n]ot
a significant source of Saturated Fat.” Is this why Stouffer’s feels no shame
about how unhealthful its foodesque offerings are—in their world, 6 grams of
saturated fat apparently rounds down to insignificant? Huh.
Yes, yes, I know—this is probably the result of some sloppy
coding. But still, get it together, Stouffer’s.
1I intentionally avoided making the comment that,
if you’re feeding your kid frozen garbage, you’re probably a terrible parent
anyway, so this ad knows its intended audience all too well—which, to be fair,
would be an amazing defense of JWT’s incompetence here. But that’s not cool;
plenty of parents would love to cook healthful meals for their kids, but they
work two jobs and live in a food desert and are barely making ends meet and
thus, Stouffer’s from Walgreens could really be the best of a limited set of
bad options. Plenty of horrible parents make home-cooked meals for their kids;
plenty of genuinely wonderful parents hate the fact that they’re feeding their
kids frozen meatloaf and are working really hard for long hours to make sure
they won’t have to in the future.
A man at an airport so absorbed with the Financial Services
Fearmongering app on his tablet that he doesn’t even notice a fellow
businessman who sat down next to him, leaning over with a big, expectant grin.
They have the same tie, and the businessman wants to make small talk!
But alas, he’s so consumed with the “LIFE INSURANCE: Do you
have enough?” question that he ignores the businessman. The businessman is so disappointed and so frustrated at this failed attempt at human connection that, a
mere ten seconds after sitting down, he dashes off to find another seat—because,
you know, screw you for not noticing me
even though I didn’t even say “excuse me” and can clearly see you’re engrossed
in something. An on-screen graphic delivers the devastating news: “That was
a $40 million dollar deal.”
To emphasize how big of a missed opportunity this was, they redundantly
include the word “dollar” in the graphic—that
was a forty million dollar dollar
deal, damn it.
The voiceover brings it all together: “We all think about
life insurance. But when we start worrying about tomorrow, we miss out on the
things that matter today. At AXA, we offer advice and help you break down your
insurance goals into small, manageable steps, because when you plan for tomorrow,
it helps you live for today.”
And indeed, we’re shown that in the alternate universe where
the man saw an AXA advisor, he would’ve (1) been so worry-free that he doesn’t
even wear ties, yo; and (2) noticed that he and the businessman have matching
socks, with all the smiling and chuckling and surprised finger-pointing that
that entails.
A woman sitting in a coffee shop is reading the legacy media
version of the Financial Services Fearmongering app (“RETIREMENT: Will your
savings last?”) while a sketchy-looking dude is drawing a picture of her1.
Sadly, she leaves the coffee shop without even noticing him, which is a
tragedy, because—“That was her soulmate.”
Look at his face there: “I tried everything—creepily staring
at her from afar, surreptitiously drawing a picture of her—and nothing worked! Ugh,
women today can’t appreciate a nice guy.”
A voiceover once again offers an explanation for what we
just witnessed: “We all have to plan for retirement. But when we start worrying
about tomorrow, we miss out on what matters today.” And had the woman seen an
AXA advisor who would have helped her live for today, we see that she and the
dude would’ve spent so much time at the coffee shop that the lights are off and
everybody—including the staff—is gone. And then off-camera they presumably rob
the coffee shop to finance his career as a sub-mediocre sketch artist.
* * *
The obvious critique is a feminist one: when AXA wants to
talk to men about missed opportunities, it’s about financial deals; when AXA
wants to talk to women, it’s about soulmates and true love. And it’s a fair enough
critique; women are actively engaged in business and have concerns that extend
beyond finding Prince Charming, and these two commercials juxtaposed against
each other suggest that AXA doesn’t look at its potential female clients as
serious-minded about finances. (Although, to be fair, the man in the life
insurance spot does meet with a female
AXA advisor, so there’s that.)
What’s kind of neat about these ads is that, somehow, AXA
(or, more specifically, its ad agency) found a way to construct a pair of
possibly mildly sexist ads that somehow become worse if they’re gender-swapped.
Let’s say it were two businesswomen at the airport with matching
scarves. One woman tries and fails to get the other’s attention and, afterward,
huffily finds another seat as the “That was a $40 million dollar deal” graphic appears.
I can see myself offering two critiques: Is AXA trying to say that women are so
shallow that they’d base a $40
million deal on clothes? Is AXA trying to say that women are so sensitive that they’d get upset because
they couldn’t get someone’s attention after only a few seconds?
And if it were a man who narrowly missed his supposed female
sketch-artist soulmate, complete with a “That was his soulmate” graphic, it’d
look objectifying—as though a woman is comparable to a business deal, just
another thing to win or acquire.
A better fix would be to simply switch the graphics—the woman
at the coffee shop missed a $40 million deal, and the man at the airport missed
his tie-and-sock sharing soulmate. Because, seriously, look at their eyes.
The only business deal that went down that night is a horizontal merger, if you
know what I mean2.
* * *
On the other hand, is it even really sexist? Everybody talks
about how we need to find a proper work-life balance and how your job shouldn’t
be the totality of who you are. And most people will likely agree that love and
family is more important than work and business. So isn’t AXA showing that the
woman (who’s concerned with finding someone to love) has better priorities than
the man (who’s concerned with a business deal)? Isn’t the ad really sexist against men who don’t understand what really
matters in life?
Maybe! But probably not.
Obviously, women have historically had a much tougher time
being taken seriously in business and money matters, so, even if we’re being extremely charitable with AXA’s intent,
it still isn’t helpful in knocking down some stereotypes. And in matters of
love and family, it’s generally been women who scale back on—or entirely give
up—their careers and business lives, and these AXA commercials subtly reinforce
that cultural norm.
A less comfortable possibility: Maybe we really don’t think love and family is more
important than work and business. Think about how much time we spend at work,
or thinking about work, or trying to find better, more lucrative work. It’s
probably more time than we spend on “love,” right? And hey, I’m not judging—who
are any of us to say that anybody’s priorities are better than the other?
* * *
But really, what’s most fascinating about these otherwise
unremarkable ads is how they play with the notion of fate: If you’re not in exactly the right place, at exactly the right time, and in exactly the right mood, you might miss
out on a business deal! Or a soulmate!
And I know it’s just a silly pair of ads, but that’s kind of
a pernicious mind-virus with which to infect your audience, because that way
madness lies. Literally everything is the product of such a precise set of
circumstances that it can be brain-bending to think about it too hard—if I left work a few moments earlier, I
wouldn’t have gotten into that car accident; if I hadn’t stopped to get a cup
of water from the water cooler before leaving, I wouldn’t have left work those
few moments later; if I hadn’t eaten pretzels as a snack, I wouldn’t have been
thirsty for water; if I had enough change for Oreos, I wouldn’t have gotten
pretzels from the vending machine; if I hadn’t given some of my change to that
homeless guy on the corner, I would’ve had enough change for Oreos. ERGO, I
AM NEVER GIVING MONEY TO HOMELESS PEOPLE EVER AGAIN.
Of course, that’s ridiculous to conclude. And imagine if,
say, you were planning on stopping by a convenience store on your way home,
which, obviously, you don’t because of the car accident. And let’s say that
that convenience store was robbed by a violent gunman3 who shot and killed
everybody in the store—what then? Did your car accident save your life? Do you
eat more pretzels now? Do you give more money to homeless people?
So it’s strange for AXA to make a pitch of, “Use our
services to make sure that a precise set of mostly uncontrollable circumstances
align properly so you don’t miss out on something!” I doubt anybody would take
these ads quite that seriously, but still, it’s kind of a mean-spirited albeit
metaphysical fear-based appeal. (Plus, using the ad’s own logic: who’s to say
that, by talking to $40 million deal guy, you missed a chance to talk to some
other dude who had, like, a matching suitcase who would’ve given you an $80
million deal? What then, AXA?)
* * *
And finally—“soulmate”? Really?
This is neither here nor there, but I think the idea of a
soulmate—or The One, or your lobster, or whatever—is depressing. There are a
lot of people on the planet, after all, and if there’s only one soulmate out
there for each of us, then guys—we’re probabilistically screwed. Our soulmates
might not be on the same continent. They might not be born yet, or they might
have just died.
Or what if, by some odds-defying stroke of luck, your
soulmate happens to be in the same city as you are and you just happen to be on
the same bus, but they’re busy on their phone. Or they’re in a bad mood. Or they
just got into a relationship, or just got out of one so they’re not ready to
date. Or maybe they’re just too preoccupied planning for retirement. What then?
A belief in soulmates is either a belief in abject despair,
or it’s a belief that the universe loves us so much that it’ll bend the laws of
statistics and probability to accommodate our hearts’ desires. And honestly, I
don’t think the universe even really likes us as just friends.
Plus, believing in soulmates can be kind of dangerous,
especially if you genuinely believe you’ve met yours. After all, it’s harder to
get out of a relationship—even a toxic one—if you believe that your partner is
your one and only. And “soulmates” talk often ignores the effort that goes into
successful relationships in favor of an assumption that everything will just
fall into place.
So basically, BOO AXA FOR PROMOTING UNREALISTIC NOTIONS OF
LOVE. And also, for making me put in way more thought into your commercials
than I’m guessing anybody involved with making them did.
1See what I did there? It’s funny because he’s sketching a picture of her, and it looks like he’s been sketchily digging through her garbage to
find her old pantyhose. I’m kind of an expert at puns, you see.
2Sex.
3Or gunwoman! I just talked a big game about
possible sexism, and here I am, assuming ladyfolk can’t be robbers. Shame on
me.
Walmart apologized Monday after visitors to its website discovered its section for plus-size women's Halloween costumes was labeled "Fat Girl Costumes."
Our culture is one that makes "being fat" among the worst sins a woman can commit, and the cruelty and vitriol with which the word "fat" is hurled at overweight people has made the word much more pejorative than merely descriptive. So I completely get why people found a section bluntly called "Fat Girl Costumes" cringeworthy.
But the incident made me think of this amazing scene from the third episode of the past season of Louie, Louis CK's FX show.
In the scene, Louie talks with his date about the difficulty of dating. His date, sympathetic, says, "Try dating in New York in your late thirties as a fat girl."
Louie immediately insists that she's "not fat," and his date launches into a remarkable monologue that begins with, "Do you know what the meanest thing is you can say to a fat girl? 'You're not fat.'"
So, it kind of feels like Walmart is saying "You're not fat."
I get why Walmart apologized, even beyond simple PR -- the word "fat" can be hurtful. And outside of corporate communications, I actually think there's value in what others might dismiss as political correctness; when you use a euphemism like "plus-size" instead of "fat," it can be a way of signaling, "I care about you and how you feel, so I'm going to use a word that I hope has less of a chance of hurting you." That's thoughtful, and thoughtfulness is good.
But I wonder if Walmart had tried the opposite strategy: What if Walmart kept the section titled "Fat Girl Costumes," and just said, "Hey, there's nothing wrong with being a fat girl, and we don't think it's an insult. If we change it, that's just us admitting that we think that being a fat girl is bad. So we're leaving it up."
Walmart PR is not in the business of social change, so there's no reason they'd take anything but the path of least resistance. But I'm curious what would really be more comforting to a girl who's overweight: a company apologizing because "fat" is so unacceptable, or a company shrugging because there's nothing wrong with "fat."
Do you want to feel old? Just think -- those $50 savings bonds from Ring Pop that the Silver Snakes and Blue Barracudas got when they couldn't get past the Steps of Knowledge probably reached maturity a long time ago.
Do you want to feel even older? There are people who can legally drink who will never have any idea what I'm talking about.
This post originally appeared on my old “Joe Dellosa on Advertising” blog. ► Dove is trying to invent a new, fake insecurity for women (unattractive underarms?) in order to shill its new Go Sleeveless Deodorant, completely blowing whatever credibility it had as a trustworthy brand that cares about the self-esteem of young women.
The deodorant—whose name is officially stylized as “Dove go sleeveless Deodorant,” with lowercase letters to emphasize casualness of going sleeveless or something—purports to beautify women’s underarms. In addition to its duties reducing underarm odor, Dove promises that Go Sleeveless will provide women with softer, smoother, and more attractive underarms in just five days.
According to a Dove press release dated April 4, Go Sleeveless was inspired by a 2010 study conducted by Unilever with market research firms Omnibus and TNS that supposedly found that 93 percent of women think their underarms are unattractive. Dove to the rescue, right?
Well, no. Many in the media quickly (and appropriately) called shenanigans on Dove’s new deodorant and its associated marketing campaign: Slate called it yet another instance in a long line of marketing efforts designed to foment fake insecurities in women and profit off selling them a cure. American Public Media’s Marketplace did a couple of person-on-the-street interviews with women who expressed no pre-existing concerns about their underarms.
And Stephen Colbert, who’s one of the media’s most astute advertising critics, had the definitive takedown of Dove during the April 13 episode of The Colbert Report. Colbert said “women have now learned that their armpits are hideous” with Unilever’s help and called the Dove’s new deodorant a “breakthrough shame-o-vation.”
Their points are all well-taken, and this should be pretty embarrassing for Dove. After all, even if we give Dove the benefit of the doubt and say that there are probably some women who do feel concerned about the appearance of their underarms, it's audacious for Dove to present its product as a solution to some sort of universal problem affecting virtually every American woman.
What hasn’t been mentioned quite as often is why this should be very embarrassing for Dove: with this advertising campaign—a campaign predicated on shamelessly fabricating a fictitious anxiety and foisting it upon women—Dove has completely blown its brand identity as the beauty brand that cares about the self-esteem and emotional well-being of young women. Oops.
■Cam-pain for real beauty
The last time a Dove campaign got any real attention was its much-lauded and award-winning Campaign for Real Beauty, launched in 2004. In the campaign, Dove criticized our culture’s perception of beauty as unrealistic and damaging to young girls with smart, provocative ads showing the artificiality of the beauty industry.
In other ads, Dove hired models more representative of average women, specifically eschewing thinner, perfectly airbrushed models. (Dove later got criticized when it turned out those models' photos were retouched, just like any other model's photos.)
But even without word of the entirely-unsurprising Photoshop job, it’s easy to see why Dove launching a Campaign for Real Beauty is at least a little hypocritical. Dove, after all, is still a beauty brand, and ultimately, its goal is to sell girls and women products that will make them prettier. And that just doesn’t jibe with a “feel good about the body you have” message—because, in essence, Dove is encouraging girls to feel good enough about themselves that they don’t need to buy all those products from Dove’s competitors, but not good enough that they can forego Dove products.
Don’t get me wrong—as an advertising cynic who takes an ardently feminist approach to advertising to and about women, I really like the general spirit of the campaign. But it’s entirely insincere for a beauty company to criticize the beauty industry while pretending it’s not a part of the problem. Would we give any credence to McDonald’s running ads on childhood obesity if they didn’t acknowledge the existence of Happy Meals?
And that’s the problem with the Campaign for Real Beauty—it’s co-opting a message of positive body image for the purpose of selling products that rely on girls and women feeling that their bodies are imperfect. To put it in starker terms, it’s commodifying girls’ self-esteem by turning it into just another marketing opportunity, and that’s particularly messed up. It’s one thing, after all, to be upfront and tell girls they’re ugly and that they should buy your product; it’s quite another to pretend to be empowering and supportive while passive-aggressively reminding girls that this great new Dove cream can really help them look great.
A couple of other criticisms of Dove’s campaign: There’s the implicit message that some women are more “real” than others, and that attractive or thin women don’t count as real. I’m pretty sure pitting groups of women against each other isn’t the most productive way to go about the whole empowerment thing.
Most damningly, there’s the stubborn little fact that Dove’s parent company, Unilever, also owns the Axe brand, which has no problem celebrating supposedly “fake” beauty in its ads. This was most ably demonstrated in Rye Clifton’s remarkable mash-up between a Dove Campaign for Real Beauty ad and various Axe ads.
Lucky for Dove, those criticisms mostly didn’t stick, and the Campaign for Real Beauty is generally regarded as a major success for Dove. Its brand image as an empowering, pro-girl image is one Dove both values and actively cultivates—it has a “Dove Movement for Self-Esteem” website and brags about its Dove Self-Esteem Fund, which supports organizations like the Girl Scouts and Girls Inc.
In fact, as recently as April 4, Dove proudly tweeted that “[e]ach time you buy @Dove, you help us and our partners provide inspiring self-esteem programs to girls”—self-esteem that couldn’t possibly be belied by a tweet calling Dove Go Sleeveless Deodorant a “must have accessory” if girls are considering going sleeveless.
■Poll dancing
So this brings us back to Dove’s new deodorant. Here’s the marketing challenge facing Dove: How do you create a fake insecurity, push it onto women, and sell them a product that will fix that insecurity, all without looking like complete hypocrites after all that Campaign for Real Beauty stuff?
The answer lies in that press release, which repeatedly notes the results of Dove’s supposed survey: “Perceptions of unattractive underarms have women shunning sleeveless attire,” the headline screams. According to the study, “almost all women feel their underarms are unattractive”—the exact figure being “93 percent,” as mentioned later in the press release.
Remember, press releases are nothing more than marketing departments’ attempts to get the attention of news outlets to do a story on their products, framed the way the marketing department would like. It may be too much to hope that a press release is simply reprinted verbatim (although, sadly, that does happen a lot), but a slyly-written release can nudge a reporter into unwittingly writing a puff piece for a product.
So why does Dove want to emphasize the results of its market research so badly? (You don't see Mountain Dew putting out press releases stating that “90 percent of men think that Baja Blast is the most extreme flavor” when they roll out a new flavor.) Because that’s the way it can get out of looking like a bunch of self-esteem-crushing hypocrites. By pretending that Dove Go Sleeveless Deodorant is merely addressing a well-established problem rather than inventing one, Dove gets to shrug off criticism by saying, “Hey, we’re just responding to women’s needs.”
And it kind of worked. In a March 30 Wall Street Journal article, the “93 percent” statistic is repeated uncritically:
Dove Ultimate Go Sleeveless, which hits U.S. stores this week, claims its formula of specialized moisturizers will give women better-looking underarms in five days. It was inspired by Unilever PLC research that found 93% of women consider their armpits unattractive.
To its credit, the Wall Street Journal does cite the company as the source of the finding, and three paragraphs of the story are used to explain that being seen as fabricating a need is a risky strategy. But the reporting does, without question, take the company’s word that the research inspired the product, rather than raise the possibility that this purported “research” could just be another component of the marketing campaign.
On the other hand, WNBC, the NBC affiliate in New York City, just went ahead and handed Dove free ad time. During WNBC’s LX New York (which is admittedly more an entertainment and lifestyle show but is still hosted by what appear to be journalists), the host conducted an interview with Dove spokeswoman and Gossip Girl star Jessica Szohr about the deodorant. And by “interview,” I mean “hackish shill-session.”
Consider this example of sparkling journalism from the clip above:
WNBC Host: A lot of women, apparently 93 percent of them who responded—
Szohr: Feel uncomfortable.
WNBC Host: Yeah!
Szohr: Yeah.
WNBC Host: Which I was kind of surprised by.
Szohr: Yeah. And this product basically, if you—when you use it, within five days, you get softer, smoother underarms. So that way, when you use halter tops, or tank tops, or dresses that show that area, you can feel comfortable and not self-conscious.
WNBC Host: So if people join in this campaign, they get to go shopping with you, maybe?
The press release offered by Dove doesn’t offer too much in terms of details about the survey itself; this is the entirety of the information about the survey:
Through a Unilever, Omnibus and TNS Research International the go sleeveless: Uncovering Underarms. An online, anonymous survey was taken by 534 women, ages 18-64 to gather insights on understanding the level of anxiety women feel about the appearance of their underarms.
And that’s not helpful. It’s journalistically unsound to cite poll results in news stories without seeing the complete questionnaire and results. Trusting a company to interpret results in an unbiased matter is foolish, and trusting a company’s poll as legitimate without at least giving it a once-over is just silly. This is doubly true when a poll itself is used as a cornerstone in an actual marketing campaign.
Plus, it’s unclear as to whether or not this poll is statistically valid. Dove wrote its press release suggesting some of its results can be generalized to the population (“93 percent of women think their underarms are unattractive,” Dove writes, and not 93 percent of women surveyed), but other statistics use the qualification (“Over half … of the women in the study”; “1 in 3 of the women studied”). The online nature of the survey raises more questions about the poll’s validity, too—the validity of online polls is often questioned due to issues with random sampling and self-selection bias.
So, I emailed Unilever and a media contact at Edelman (Unilever’s PR firm) and asked for the full questionnaire, with the exact wording and order of the questions, as well as the full results. I also asked very specific questions about the poll’s methodology, including if a random sample was used, how participants were recruited for the poll, and what the poll’s margin of error was.
After some friendly emails back and forth, Annette Evans of Edelman wound up emailing me this statement:
Thank you for your inquiry regarding the testing methodology of the go sleeveless: Uncovering Underarms study. This study was conducted by an independent third party market research supplier, to gather insights and provide statistically sound evidence. This online, anonymous survey was taken by 534 women aged 18-64. The survey is statistically sound and adhered to industry-recognized guidelines and the highest quality standards.
Which is basically what the press release said. I emailed back, reiterating my desire for the full questionnaire and results and repeating my questions about methodology; alas, I didn’t hear back.
To be clear, I don’t blame Evans for sending an incredibly (and, more likely than not, deliberately) unhelpful statement. She’s just doing what her client likely instructed her to do. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if I were the first person to ask for the full questionnaire and results—that would explain a lack of even a boilerplate, “sorry, we’re not releasing that” refusal.
But here’s the thing. If Dove is willing to release a part of its market research—the part that helps its marketing effort—without letting reporters see the whole picture, it makes it look like Dove is actively hiding something. And if Dove is unwilling to answer very basic questions about the poll’s methodology, it makes the whole marketing campaign—as well as Dove’s brand image—look completely bogus.
With its campaign for Dove Go Sleeveless Deodorant, Dove appears to be trying to both manufacture and profit from the insecurities of its female customers. Dove is in the beauty industry, so that isn’t surprising.
It shouldn’t even be surprising that Dove is doing this after its whole Campaign for Real Beauty nonsense. A company that harshly criticizes the beauty industry while pretending that, somehow, it’s exempt from the criticism is hardly a paragon of consistency or self-awareness—and no number of donations to the Girl Scouts can change that.
What this should make abundantly clear is that “brand identity” or “brand personality” are meaningless concepts—or, at least, they should be. I don’t really get this tendency to anthropomorphize companies, but we should knock it off: by and large, companies exist to make money, and any personality they show is merely a means to that end. Nike isn’t an athletic company any more than Hallmark is a sentimental company. They’re companies. They make money. They assume whatever identity they feel best helps them make money.
And yes, this includes Dove. I don’t doubt that there are people who work for the Dove brand that care about the self-esteem and body images of young women; I would presume that many of its employees are women who have daughters. And I don’t doubt that many of its employees are earnest in their efforts to use the marketing resources of Dove to do a little good.
But we shouldn’t confuse those employees with the brand or the company. Dove makes its decisions based on what can help them sell enough body wash, deodorants, and creams to keep Unilever profitable. The Campaign for Real Beauty wouldn’t exist if Dove didn’t think it'd help Unilever make money, just as Dove Go Sleeveless Deodorant wouldn’t exist if Dove didn’t think it’d be profitable.
On one hand, I’m tempted to just shrug and chalk it up to the amorality of big business. But on the other hand, I’m pretty annoyed that Dove’s presumption that the cause of helping girls develop a healthy body image is a purchasable commodity, to be bought when it suits the brand’s marketing goals and dropped when it doesn’t.
The people at Dove who actually care about young women should be embarrassed by this campaign, and the people who actually believe that Dove cares about young women should be disabused of that notion.
And at the very least, nobody should be stressing out about their underarms that much. I mean, even before this product came out, Jessica Szohr hardly seems to be losing sleep over hers…
…so neither should you.
You can email me at jdellosa@gmail.com, or tweet me @JoeDellosa.
This post originally appeared on my old “Joe Dellosa on Advertising” blog.
► Dove, criticized for inventing an insecurity for women, is justifying its new Go Sleeveless Deodorant by pointing to a study that says 93 percent of women think their underarms are unattractive but is refusing to release the actual poll or the full results.
This is an introduction of sorts to a fuller piece about Dove, its marketing campaign for the Dove Go Sleeveless Deodorant, and the inconsistency of its "pro-self esteem" brand image. The expanded piece will appear either later today or tomorrow.
Last month, Unilever's Dove began a marketing campaign to promote its new Dove Go Sleeveless Deodorant. The TV commercials for the deodorant promised women that they could have more beautiful underarms after using the product for just five days, which prompted many in the media to accuse Dove of attempting to invent a fabricated insecurity for women -- uh-oh, unattractive underarms! -- and profit from the resulting anxiety. Here's Stephen Colbert on the April 13 episode of The Colbert Report.
That a company in the beauty industry is trying to foment negative feelings in women about their bodies is certainly no surprise, but for Dove to do it seems hypocritical. Dove, after all, actively cultivates a reputation as a supportive, empowering brand for young women -- from its Campaign for Real Beauty to its Movement for Self-Esteem.
Possibly to fend off accusations of hypocrisy, Dove emphasized repeatedly in its press release about Dove Go Sleeveless Deodorant that the deodorant is the result of market research that found that "almost all women feel their underarms are unattractive" -- 93 percent, apparently. (This statistic was repeated unquestioningly in media outlets like the Wall Street Journal and WNBC.) One can imagine Dove arguing, poll in hand, that it's not inventing a new insecurity but merely addressing a pre-existing insecurity.
Unfortunately, the press release contained very little information about the poll itself -- no mention of the exact questions asked, how the poll was conducted, or any discussion of the methodology. It's even not clear if the poll is really statistically valid.
So, I asked Dove if I could take a look at the poll myself. I wanted to see the complete questionnaire, with the exact wording and exact order of the questions, and I wanted to see the complete results. I also had specific questions about the poll's methodology, including whether a random sample was used, how participants were recruited, and what the margin of error for the poll was. After a few emails back and forth, Dove, through its PR firm, declined to let me see the complete questionnaire and results and chose not to answer my questions about methodology. Apparently, I was to take Dove's word for it.
That, needless to say, is a bad idea. If a company is willing to mention some poll results -- presumably, the results that benefit the company -- in its press releases and other marketing materials, it should be willing to release the full results, with a full questionnaire, with a full explanation of the poll's methodology. To do any less isn't just shady and dishonest; it also insults the intelligence of that company's customers and undermine that company's credibility. More importantly, reporters -- especially those who cover advertising and media -- shouldn't let companies get away with it.
What follows below is kind of a Stats 101 mini-primer as to why seeing the questionnaire -- with the exact wording, exact sequence of questions, and full results -- is so important, and why, without it, even a statistically-valid poll can be completely dishonest and manipulative. Since Dove refuses to release any of that, I can only speculate as to how it got the results it did. For all I know, Dove asked fair questions that yielded legitimate results; however, until Dove decides to be more forthcoming, we'd do well to assume the worst.
■Exact wording
Consider the most prominent statistic in the marketing campaign, the “93 percent of women think their underarms are unattractive” stat. It could be Dove just very plainly asked:
Do you think your underarms are unattractive?
A: Yes
B: No
Would 496 women out of 534 women in a supposedly representative sample say they have an active belief that their underarms are unattractive? That seems unlikely. So what if Dove actually asked this:
Do you think your underarms are attractive?
A: Yes
B: No
Only 38 women answering "yes" still seems low, but it’s a little more plausible than 496 actively affirming a belief that their underarms are unattractive. And in this case, if 496 women answered “no,” they’re not necessarily saying they think their underarms are unattractive; they just never thought of describing their underarms as particularly attractive. (It's like if someone asked me if I thought my index finger is attractive -- I'd answer "no," not because I think it's ugly, but because, as a normal index finger, it's neither attractive or unattractive.) Of course, without the original question phrasing, we just don't know.
■Full results
Now, what if the Dove poll asked the question in this manner (with hypothetical results in brackets):
How do you feel about your underarms’ appearance?
A: My underarms are always attractive. [7%]
B: Every once in a while, my underarms don’t look the best. [50%]
C: Occasionally, my underarms don’t look the best. [30%]
D: Often, my underarms don’t look the best. [10%]
E: My underarms are always unattractive. [3%]
I could imagine that, presented with these choices, only 7 percent of respondents affirming that their underarms are always attractive, with a vast majority picking less absolute choices. But if Dove wanted the statistic that 93 percent of women think their underarms are unattractive, it can just lump all the non-“always attractive” responses together -- it's a tricky interpretation of data that could be seen as technically true but is patently dishonest. Hence, the importance of full results.
■Exact sequence of questions
Finally, consider if before asking about their underarms’ appearance, respondents were asked a series of questions like these:
Have you ever noticed any bumps or pimples on your underarms?
Have you ever noticed how rough your underarms can be?
Have you ever noticed any underarm decoloration?
Do you ever experience soreness or itchiness on your underarms?
Can you recall any times when you’ve been embarrassed by your underarms?
Followed up with an innocent, “Do you think your underarms are unattractive?” Clearly, the responses would be more than a little skewed.
It’s like asking, “Do you think Senator Jones is lying about having an affair?,” “Do you agree with Senator Jones’s decision to defund the troops, possibly leaving them without body armor?,” and “Do you think Senator Jones’s health care vote was the result of bribery, as some have suggested?”—and then asking, “Do you approve or disapprove of the job Senator Jones is doing?”
■In closing (for now)
I'll have much more on this in a fuller blog post about Dove, including an explanation of the inherent inconsistency of Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty and why I believe its campaign for its Go Sleeveless Deodorant is embarrassingly hypocritical. (I'm holding off posting that in part to give time for Dove to provide a statement and, hopefully, the full poll; a rep at Dove's PR firm said they'd have something by today.)
In the meantime, it's important to note that Dove is far from the only company to conduct dubious polls, cite the results in its marketing materials, and then balk that the notion of releasing the full questionnaire and results.
For instance, last year, FedEx attempted to smear UPS with its "Brown Bailout" campaign, in which FedEx falsely accused UPS of asking for a government bailout. FedEx cited polls on its website and in its press releases claiming public support for FedEx's position, and FedEx director of corporate communication Maury Lane mentioned polls when he was interviewed about the issue. (He did so during his interview with me, too.)
So I asked to see the full questionnaire and results. Lane told me that I would have to get it from FedEx's pollster, Public Opinion Strategies. Public Opinion Strategies said that they weren't authorized to release that information, and only FedEx could release it. When I emailed and left messages with Lane relaying what the pollster told me, Lane stopped returning my calls and emails.
This may be obvious, but it's a good idea to be suspicious of any poll a company conducts and then cites in marketing materials. Companies don't do polls because they're just so darn curious about people; they do polls because it helps them somehow -- maybe to have snappy soundbites in interviews, or to make press releases sound more authoritative, or, in what I believe is Dove's case, to attempt to preemptively fend off criticism.
Regardless, whenever companies offer poll results in a marketing campaign, customers and (especially) journalists should get into the habit of automatically asking for the full questionnaire and the full results. And if a company refuses to do so, we should get into the habit of telling them that they are being dishonest and very likely lying by omission.
There's only one reason a company would feel comfortable releasing only some but not all of a poll's results: they are hiding something. That's not breaking news, but it's good to remember.
You can email me at jdellosa@gmail.com, or tweet me @JoeDellosa.
