Those wee Super Bowl ads are among the most lucrative on TV (with a measly 30-second slot costing $4 million!). Unfortunately, those seconds also happen to be among the most sexist. But you have the power to change that.
According to an article in Forbes, women account for nearly half of the viewers of the football championship, so it makes sense that advertisers start thinking beyond "portraying women as barely sentient objects attached to breasts" to sell their products.
Non-profit, The Representation Project, has launched a new crowdfunded app—Not Buying It, aimed at calling out the most sexist Super Bowl ads.
At the press of a button, viewers will be able to name and shame brands whose offensive ads appear on television, magazines, and even on billboards.
We have GoDaddy to thank for the genesis of #NotBuyingIt, after some 7,500 took to Twitter to complain about the company's ad.
The Representation Project already has one win under its belt. After last year's fiasco, the domain giant got in touch and vowed not to "use sexualized images of women this year.”
It's high time companies learn that though sex itself may sell, sexism is bad for business.
Of course, the surefire way to ensure an ad's success is to ban it, as SodaStream discovered, when its ad starring Scarlet Johansson was axed in advance of the Super Bowl.
Sultry may be Johansson's middle name, yet that's not the reason the original ad was pulled. Instead, it was because the actress uttered the words Coke and Pepsi.
A modified version of the ad—which carefully cuts out the names of Soda's competitors—is slated to appear during the Super Bowl. Ah, politics!
Planning to watch the Super Bowl? Get the Not Buying It app first.
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