HW# 6: Advertisement Code of Ethics

Christina Aguilera's Skechers Ads

(Christina Aguilera flesh bearing ad nursing herself)

Skechers Footwear is a shoe company that appeals to all ages of society in America, but is advertised in magazines such as Seventeen or Cosmo Girl to catch the attention of the youth more than other ages. I remember when I was younger, the ads for Skechers were more action packed or casually promoted with just showing the shoe and some kid wearing it. But now over the years, Sketchers has been competing with comanies such as Puma, Nike, Adidas, Reebok, New Balance, Converse, AND 1, and Asics. These casual shoe companies seemed to have pushed Skechers to try new types of advertisement such as promoting women with the sex sells idea because they have not been the leading seller of their competitors.

Code of Ethics:

Who is the audience for the advertisements?

Ad campaigns and sellers need to realize the age of their viewers and where they are publicized. For this Skechers ad, I can see where they recognized appealing to the younger audience using pop artist Christina Aguilera that was a part of younger girls and boys lives because she is reconized from starting at Disney, and growing up entertaining fan's in the pre-teen/ teenager era with other singers and boy bands such as Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, and *NSYNC. Also from Disney they advertise is the recent Ashley Tisdale who was just put on the cover of Cosmopolitan. They combined these famous spokesmen with Skechers footwear which has also appealed to the younger pre-teen/ teenager buyers when advertised to get younger kids to buy this product because it has their favorite pop role model singer in it.... But what was the whole point of using sexuality and riskay-ness to appeal to the young? I mean, yes, sex does sell no doubt but what they are doing is triggering the imagination and curiousity for these kids.

(All 3 ad's were called the "Naughty and Nice" series)

Other Code of Ethics that I think should be within advertisements, even when they are trying to discover the next raw thing they can get away with to catch the attention of consumers through pathos is realizing and understanding age, race, ethnicity, religion, gender, disabilities, technically anything personally offensive or rule out a certain unique-ness.

3,000 women, members of the American Family Association (AFA) and the U.S.-based Centre for Nursing Advocacy (CNA) pulled these ad's from U.S. distribution.