Provocative ads target female consumers Never underestimate the power of a half-naked woman, especially when appealing to other women. Misty Harris The Ottawa Citizen July 27, 2005 Such is the mantra of today's advertising world, where marketers promoting female-oriented products aren't getting inside a woman's psyche but rather into her lingerie drawer. Over the past month, companies as diverse as Victoria's Secret, Gap and Dove have launched Internet and television campaigns featuring women in various stages of undress. While the efforts are disparate in both direction and purpose, each uses some form of boobvertising to catch the female consumer's attention. "It's not surprising that sexual appeals have an impact in attracting our attention the way they do with men," says Ontario author Shari Graydon, who wrote In Your Face: The Culture of Beauty and You. "But obviously, (a woman's) relationship with those images is much more complicated." This month, Victoria's Secret debuted pinkpantypoker.com, a test-marketing site --which means it isn't always live -- on which potential customers play virtual strip-poker with supermodel Alessandra Ambrosio and her friends. The campy game, to promote the company's Pink line of lingerie, ends once someone is down to her underwear. Scott Linnen, creative co-director of the Victoria's Secret project, told the advertising and marketing site Adverblog the virtual game is intended to mimic a women's Tupperware party, "but for thongs." "Young women like to have an interactive site where they can do something, and I think pinkpantypoker probably is a lot of fun for them," says Yvonne DiVita, an expert on marketing to women online. "I don't know that they're as offended by it as women who went through the burn-your-bra stage." Last week, Gap launched its own website, watchmechange.com. On it, female shoppers tweak a virtual fashionista to their own body measurements, then watch her bust into a farcical striptease -- think Showgirls meets Napoleon Dynamite -- peeling down to her underwear before getting dressed again. "Advertising ... has this long-established instructional role," says Ms. Graydon. "We learn from the media how to do our hair, how to put on makeup, how to dress, and now how to undress." According to Jennifer L. Pozner, executive director of the advocacy group Women In Media & News, the campaigns give women a false sense of empowerment by equating sexuality with self-esteem. "There's something to be said for a woman feeling confident in her own skin," she says. "But when you detach that from any other concept of empowerment in her life, the women's movement becomes reduced to who can wear the reddest lipstick and the shortest miniskirt." Dove's take on the trend is the most appealing to the media watchdog since it features ordinary women. The company's latest block of television ads, Undressing for Dove, features females of all shapes and sizes frolicking in their underwear to assert their self-worth -- and to promote Dove's cellulite-firming body lotion. "At least they're trying to take a different approach," says Ms. Pozner. "However, the hidden agenda with Dove is to make women feel just good enough about themselves that this campaign stands out, but not so good about themselves that they don't need their products." Erin Iles, Canadian marketing manager for Dove, says half-naked women were used in the ads to literally strip down stereotypes about real beauty. By co-opting a tactic used in beer commercials and applying it to a feminist appeal for real beauty, the power is returned to women. "We put women in their underwear because they love their bodies so much and we really want to show off this incredible diversity of body shape," says Ms. Iles. "Women's bodies aren't all about selling sex." Source