" Why do you always complain about your cramps and your uncomfortability. Look at these people; they"re having a good time while on there period." That's what I told my girlfriend when looking at a recent tampon ad. It's funny though, that this particular ad we were looking at, was talking about how they (the tampons) don't hurt, how they helped conquer fear and also the race of people that it used.
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When I first look at this ad I see two girls and a guy playing Frisbee. It seems like a fun atmosphere, so it caught my eye. In one picture they show a girl taking the Frisbee away from a guy and in the next she is taking it away from a girl. It's a happy ad that shows two girls possibly on there period. Which in the case of the product being sold an underlying meaning of you can have fun and still be on your period could be inferred. .
"Sweet!!! (and I was almost a no-show "cause I thought using a tampon would hurt.) Obviously the advertisers are saying that these specific types of tampons are comfortable. It's a smart move to make this the very first thing you see in the ad because this automatically assures the consumer that this product is not harmful in anyway. In a buyer's eyes this will trigger a need to be safe. Most people nowadays are risk adverse and try to avoid all possible situations that compromise they"re safety. So by reiterating that this product is comfortable, the buyer already feels "protected" without even knowing it. Although you must consider this, everybody has a different body stature and what is comfortable to a "regular" sized woman or lady might not be comfortable to an overweight or smaller woman or lady.
"The continuous pressure is to create ads more and more in the image of audience motives and desires."(Marshall McLuhan, pg. 61 cc) The tampon advertisers must know this to be true being that they affiliate the need to dominate with the ad. "Playtex helped me conquer my fears, then Jill and I conquered the boys!" Being that this was stated in the ad, the main character of our advertisement had an enormous fear of using tampons, possibly because foreign objects in small places can be intruding and painful.
