Have you noticed how advertising has changed in the last few years? It no longer just promotes a product or brand, but also educates consumers. Respectively, it “awakens” to “right” attitudes. Such targeted ads are called “woke”.
They know that they are more or less openly promoting the biggest progressive gems, such as the fight to “save” the climate, multiculturalism or LGBT. So, for example, if a family performs in them, it often looks like Dad is a black man, a white mother (usually a blonde) and chocolate children are running around them.
The “sustainability” motif is very frequent in “woke” ads. Although it often sounds very fake. For example, in clothing ads. For the production of cotton, for example, it is first necessary in Australia, Africa or Mexico (here) to grow cotton, the cotton obtained from it is transported to South – East Asia, where the fabric is woven, dyed and the final product is sewn from it in a few buckets. The patches of a world-famous company can be used for this and the company will then sell it expensively in Europe under its own brand. And “sustainability”? He’s obviously getting a tailspin. As in the case of the production of synthetic fabrics, for which oil is the basic raw material (here).
People have become accustomed to the fact that advertisements are unrealistic, they are usually exaggerated, they work with exaggeration and that it is therefore not possible to take literally everything that is heard in them. In short, they are not offended by, for example, a spot in which a mother looks at her child smeared so that even a miner working from the mine shines against him, does not turn her eyes desperately, but on the contrary smiles because she uses washing powder that “washes everything to the net ”. Just like no one is an advertisement in which a person who can’t even move in pain gets something on his back and then climbs the trees so deftly that even the squirrel fades with envy.
In my opinion, however, people are bothered by setsakra when an effort to “educate” them to do the “right” things looks like an inch from a leaky sock. Let us recall their reactions when a bank, in its pre-Christmas campaign, pushed into them to help reduce CO2 emissions by not having carp for Christmas Eve dinner (here). Or how Gillette licked it when it wanted to rid men of their ‘toxic masculinity’ and make them cakes (here).
However, if you think that only “backward Czechs” who do not know what is good for them and who refuse to open up to new positive trends coming from the world have a negative attitude towards “educational woke” ads, then you are very wrong. British consumers, for example, have a similar view, as evidenced by a survey carried out by the local marketing agency Pull (here). According to him, 68% of consumers reject “woke” advertising, considering it unacceptable to promote typical progressive topics such as climate change, LGBT, multicultural diversity and BLM. And 8% of consumers even say they would actively avoid woke-washing products.
However, the survey also found other interesting findings. For example, traders were afraid of his conclusions and opposed him, while consumers responded positively. In my opinion, this is because the former are well aware of the falsity of “woke” advertising and did not want to hear from the latter that they see this pretense very well. While they welcomed the opportunity to finally say how much it cost them to “educate” companies. In the answers, they also often mentioned that they were bothered by the completely unrealistic depiction of ethnically mixed couples and families. It gives them the impression that someone is forcing them on them as some new “norm”. And an interesting finding was that the share of advertisements in which representatives of various ethnic minorities and LGBT appear is higher than their actual representation in society and, for example, disabled people, on the other hand, do not appear in them at all. In other words, the “woke” advertisement of the selected minority is preferred, while the others are completely overlooked.
In short, it can be seen that not only our people, but also British consumers do not like it very much when someone tells them through advertising what their “correct” attitudes should be. Sometimes they even reject the brand altogether because of it. Businesses should therefore carefully consider whether they are fueled by the goods or services they provide to consumers or progressive activism. “Woke” advertising obviously has a different impact than those who want to re-educate the public through it. However, its designation fits quite well. She really is able to awaken something in people.
Maybe resistance …
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