You might have missed the Fiat 500 Abarth commercial among
all the other car commercials of the Super Bowl. And why should you remember it? I’m sure under
normal circumstances a sexy foreign chick dropping whip cream in her cleavage would
spark some memories. However, with two ads featuring Adrianna Lima and many ads
featuring scantily clad women it’s hard to remember one overly clothed (by
comparison) and way over sexualized woman out of many. Yet that’s all the Fiat commercial
seemed to offer.
I am a feminist I will warn you that up front. But I also
enjoy most the ads. where the women were objectified. Even the Toyota Camry commercial that featured a couch made of bikini clad women (it also comes in male). And one of my favourite commercial’s is
Method’s All Purpose cleaner commercial that got pulled after feminists complained
it promoted sexually harassing women. But I found the Fiat 500 Abarth commercial a little much. And it certainly didn’t help Barbie’s image. Like
the plastic doll Barbie. Because if you hadn’t heard Barbie drives a Fiat. And
while Fiat have never been in my consideration set, the fact that JLo and
Barbie were now driving Fiats made me
reconsider my oversight. I mean both JLo and Barbie are hot and successful. With
this ad. Fiat has lost all the headway they had gained. From a brand for
empowered-have-it-all women to a brand for…The nerdy guy?
And Barbie can’t be too happy either. I mean Barbie has had
her problems with feminists. She recently was reconstructed to have smaller
boobs and wider hips so not to create an unattainable body image. (Although
from what I can see, only Heidi Montag was ever negatively affected). I have
also seen Barbie’s semi-recent campaign where Matel is trying to make Barbie a good role model again. The commercials highlight all of Barbie's careers. Now her car of choice is being
associated with the objectification of women. Careful Fiat, we all know what
happened to Ken after something like 60 years—She replaced with a surfer named
Blain!
Update: Ken and Barbie got back together. But she made him work.
LOVE IT! Great blog posting! Definitely made me laugh and think at the same time. Loved the Barbie references! And I have to agree....although the Cleaner Commecial objectified women more it didn't really bother me as much. I think because I found it pretty creative despite the fact that the bubbles were sexually harassing her... And I really want to know what she was saying in Spanish now in the Fiat commercial. I think the commercial could redeem itself if she was saying something really funny, but I doubt that was the case.
ReplyDeleteI don't know a radio station DJ was saying how good this commercial was this morning. And if you read the posts by the Adweek bloggers a couple males really liked it. Although some people apparently Facebooked "put all the hot girls in an ad you want, that won't make Fiats cool". Ironically one male blogger complained about how the David Beckham commercial for H&M made him feel bad about his body which made me angry cause I was like did you not see Adrianna Liama and others? I know I'm not in the demo for this car but I'm in the demo for other Fiat brands and as we seen with the backlash of Dove Real Beauty and Axe commercials the company as a whole needs a semi-consistent image.
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