Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Gender Responses

It is said that the way that different genders interpret and see advertisements is to do with which side of their brain is the most dominant. The right side of the brain is where the lateral thinking takes place which is more emotional this is most dominant within women and the left side of the brain which is logical and rational thinking which is mostly dominant amongst males. In today's lecture we looked at gender differences and how each respond differently to different stimulus especially when looking at advertisement.


In class we were shown 11 different print adverts for various different products and companies, which we then had to write down which ones we remembered. Out of all the adverts I managed to remember six that were shown, all of which used bold colours with a similar colour pallet, writing and text that stood out from the others and simple block shapes.

There was one advert which the majority of the class had remembered, which was the Nivea for Men advert, which used repetition of the brand name, block colours and small precise words that went straight to the message. According to some theories men would be able to remember this ad as they are not as able as women to take in a lot of information at any one time nor are they able to understand complicated messages.


In these circumstances, another factor that influences the differences in the way different genders remember adverts is due to recall, generally it is said that men are more prone to remember the adverts that come on towards the end known as regency, whilst women are more prone to remember the adverts towards the beginning known as primacy.

There is said to be a number of factors that can explain why people remember certain adverts, such as using complimentary or block colours, repetition and text which is why especially with beauty products they tend to use simple shapes and the same colour pallet. One of the most used and successful form of this is using slogans, by using this method consumers are able to recognise a brand or company just by hearing a phrase or by the music that they use.

Here are some examples of some popular slogans;
Another theory is that women tend to remember small details whereas men can't because they think more rationally. To test this out we done a small experiment where we were shown a small room in which we were asked to write down what we remembered in the room. In all honesty I didn't really remember anything, but the other girls in the class did remember an awful lot and really went into detail such as the wallpaper, the telephone the big framed pictured etc, so I would just put this down to I was the exception to the rule.

However since we done this experiment I have completed an test which shows which side of your brain is most dominant. My results showed that I am in the middle, meaning that I use both sides of my brain which maybe why I didn't really remember anything.


We then went on to do a little experiment to show the different gender responses to charity adverts. These adverts are listed below;
After watching these adverts you could immediately see the differences amongst the genders especially after watching the Banardos' advert as this trigged an emotional response amongst all the women in the class, whilst the boys went as responsive. This was also noticable with the Cancer Research ad however the Give Blood ad even though it didn't really make a shock appeal the boys were more responsive to it.

This goes back to which side of your brain is more dominant, as you could see the adverts that provoked a emotional response was amongst the females in which their most dominant side of their brain is determined by emotions, whilst the boys were responsive to the give blood ad which was straight to the point, logical and rational.

I have found some examples of ads that would appeal to men and women based on the gender differences and what would appeal to them;
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