Why so many animals doing ads?
The Geico lizard is selling insurance. My mom, while watching the French Open finalists thwack the ball across the clay, is mulling a crossword clue, 'advertising personality Mr. P-----, since 1916.' A little online research and I discover first, that this is Mr. Peanut, and second, that there's a long history in U.S. advertising of using stereotyped images of nature (e.g., Smokey Bear) and culture (e.g., Aunt Jemima) to sell products. What does it mean that a dominating white society first exploits and oppresses Other peoples, and Nature, then invokes images of their benevolence and emotional appeal to sell ever more of the products and behaviors that colonize those Others?
So, I'm sitting here visiting my mom, who's helping my sister learn to knit socks on metal double-points (and 4's... could my most myopic of siblings find anything smaller to start on? Her myopia is exceeded only by her OCD determination to start with something hard. *family love*).
They're watching Federer and Nadal in the French Open Final. I'm watching the Geico lizard during the commercials and idly wondering how this insurance company could have come to see an animated lizard as the ideal spokesman. (The Aflac duck is already a stretch. And now a lizard? With what self-image or cultural value of the consumer is this supposed to resonate?) My mom's doing a crossword puzzle too, and asks me (as her resident expert on all things trivial) for the name of a famous advertising spokesman, "Mr. P_____", at work selling whatever since 1916.
The circle connects when my internet search reveals that this is "Mr. Peanut," mentioned in a news story on USC marketing prof Bonnie Drewniany and her collection of advertising figurines. There's a very high number of non-real figures, such as the Pillsbury Dough Boy, Smokey Bear, and Aunt Jemima. The people are stereotypes. The animals? Really, they're icons as well -- symbols of some idealized aspect of nature like its reliability, benevolence, or emotional similarity to us.
The writer notes: "The genius of using figures or animals to advertise products lies in the figures' believability." Talking animals make a connection into the imagination, Drewniany concludes, that make them more widely believable cross-culturally and intutitively. Another important feature for advertisers is that they can keep this appeal for many more years than an actual or idealized person. An example in the news story is Smokey Bear, whose appeal (since 1947) to us to save his forest home has proved more enduring, and more egalitarian, than, say, a circa 1950 U.S. Forest Ranger ordering us to put our cigarettes out.
I'm going to have to think about "how this means" in terms of environmental philosophy. I'd designed a class exercise a few years back using the excellent online Smokey Bear archive. Time to add in other symbols of nature and culture! Is smokey-bear to nature as aunt-jemima to culture?* What's the relation to cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse? I know there's been research on how the horrid "rat/mouse" squickiness was elided and avoided in the development of Disney's best-loved cute-animal hero. I always detested talking animals myself, whether squeaky cartoon characters or happy-meal-type figurines, but I suppose I'd better find out more now about them (and my non-response to them).
The article on Drewniany's advertising-figure collection:
http://www.sc.edu/usctimes/articles/2002/2002-12/drewniany_collection_1102.html
*Paraphrasing the title of Sherry Ortner's famous 1974 "Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?" Q.v. this nice review of Ortner's influence: http://www.indiana.edu/~wanthro/ortner.htm
So, I'm sitting here visiting my mom, who's helping my sister learn to knit socks on metal double-points (and 4's... could my most myopic of siblings find anything smaller to start on? Her myopia is exceeded only by her OCD determination to start with something hard. *family love*).
They're watching Federer and Nadal in the French Open Final. I'm watching the Geico lizard during the commercials and idly wondering how this insurance company could have come to see an animated lizard as the ideal spokesman. (The Aflac duck is already a stretch. And now a lizard? With what self-image or cultural value of the consumer is this supposed to resonate?) My mom's doing a crossword puzzle too, and asks me (as her resident expert on all things trivial) for the name of a famous advertising spokesman, "Mr. P_____", at work selling whatever since 1916.
The circle connects when my internet search reveals that this is "Mr. Peanut," mentioned in a news story on USC marketing prof Bonnie Drewniany and her collection of advertising figurines. There's a very high number of non-real figures, such as the Pillsbury Dough Boy, Smokey Bear, and Aunt Jemima. The people are stereotypes. The animals? Really, they're icons as well -- symbols of some idealized aspect of nature like its reliability, benevolence, or emotional similarity to us.
The writer notes: "The genius of using figures or animals to advertise products lies in the figures' believability." Talking animals make a connection into the imagination, Drewniany concludes, that make them more widely believable cross-culturally and intutitively. Another important feature for advertisers is that they can keep this appeal for many more years than an actual or idealized person. An example in the news story is Smokey Bear, whose appeal (since 1947) to us to save his forest home has proved more enduring, and more egalitarian, than, say, a circa 1950 U.S. Forest Ranger ordering us to put our cigarettes out.
I'm going to have to think about "how this means" in terms of environmental philosophy. I'd designed a class exercise a few years back using the excellent online Smokey Bear archive. Time to add in other symbols of nature and culture! Is smokey-bear to nature as aunt-jemima to culture?* What's the relation to cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse? I know there's been research on how the horrid "rat/mouse" squickiness was elided and avoided in the development of Disney's best-loved cute-animal hero. I always detested talking animals myself, whether squeaky cartoon characters or happy-meal-type figurines, but I suppose I'd better find out more now about them (and my non-response to them).
The article on Drewniany's advertising-figure collection:
http://www.sc.edu/usctimes/articles/2002/2002-12/drewniany_collection_1102.html
*Paraphrasing the title of Sherry Ortner's famous 1974 "Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?" Q.v. this nice review of Ortner's influence: http://www.indiana.edu/~wanthro/ortner.htm