Stereotyping

In perfect world, stereotypes wouldn't exist. In a perfect world, I could walk to the nearest basketball court and be the first one picked in a pick up game. In a perfect world, I wouldn't assume that my neighbor is a freakish athlete and instead is actually a straight A student. I've always been taught not to judge others from the outside in.

However, in the case of advertising, it seems like stereotyping is a necessary evil. The main goal for an advertiser is to sell their product to an audience, which will convince them to buy it. In order to do that, companies need to be realistic in targeting a specific audience, because not many products out there are completely universal. In order to do that, advertisers need to base their ads on generalizations to help sell.

Instead of looking at whether or not advertisements with stereotypes would ever go out of style, what would happen if no stereotypes in commercials existed? For instance, what if all fried chicken commercials had no African American people in it? Would that bring better business than having only African Americans in fried chicken commercials? Probably not. However, the advertisers always should beware of going to far. There is a fine line of being funny and just being down right offensive.

In the end, advertisements will always have its stereotypical tendencies and in my perspective, I'm not too sensitive to it. Advertisers need something to work off of. They need ideas implicated by society already to produce stuff that we like or else they'd just be showing commercials with no real direction.