Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 9, 1994 TAG: 9402090056
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: C-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Sandra Brown Kelly
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The ads promote Diet Coke and the Hyundai Elantra.
The Coke ad centers around a group of women, office workers, who take an 11:30 a.m. Diet Coke break that consists of watching a well-built construction worker shed his shirt, sensuously pop the top of a can of Diet Coke, and lean back to down the soft drink. The background music is "I Want To Make Love To You."
The Hyundai ad features two professionally dressed women who discuss male inadequacy and macho cars as they watch guys drive into a parking lot in expensive sports cars: $100,000-plus Ferrari Testarosa, a Ferrari Diablo and a Lamberghini Countach.
Says one woman of a driver: "Must be overcompensating for a [pause] shortcoming . . . He obviously has feelings of inadequacy."
Interspersed with the commentary is the voice-over:
"If it's true about men who drive flashy cars, then if a guy chooses to drive a car because it's durable and dependable, wouldn't the opposite be true?"
On cue, a handsome guy parks his sensible Elantra ($8,999 plus shipping costs) and walks past the women, prompting one to ask, "I wonder what he's got under the hood?"
A columnist in Adweek compared the Hyundai ad to an adolescent locker room joke and called it tacky.
But maybe not to everybody.
"Under the guise of target marketing, it's OK to offend a small number of people to get the message across," said Tom Garman, a Virginia Tech professor of consumer economics.
Hyundai Motor America research shows that women buy 53 percent of its Elantras.
Both Coca-Cola Co. and Hyundai heard from consumers about the ads. Some men didn't like being sex objects, or, in case of the car commercial, having their manhood questioned. Some women didn't think that ridiculing men was any way to offset advertising that for years has made sexual objects of women. Other women thought it was high time the tables were turned.
Noreen Klein, a Virginia Tech marketing professor, said the ads show that females are interested in sexuality, "which is not often demonstrated in advertising," but which she is glad to see. The ads also show women in "an aggressive context, evaluating men as sex objects."
The result is rather negative, she conceded.
Klein said the car promotion delivers at least two messages. In addition to promoting female sexuality, it heralds the departure of the values of the 1980s, when the emphasis was on owning prestige items.
"It's saying: Here's a car that doesn't depend on prestige factors," she said.
Dotty Diemer, manager of public relations at Hyundai headquarters in Fountain Valley, Calif., said there was discussion in the fall that the Elantra ad needed to be revised, perhaps deleting the phrase "under the hood."
It was left intact, however, after discussions with focus groups.
She said the ad is one of several that say "it's OK to be a Hyundai owner."
Another ad features a man who stands in front of his support group and confesses to being a Hyundai owner. The group applauds.
Arizona State University Professor Alleen Pace Nilsen, in an essay, "Sexism in the Language," said vocabulary and structure of a language "tells much about the values held by its speakers.
If language in the Hyundai ad was offensive, what might be said about the title of a private party planned Saturday at the Radisson Patrick Henry Hotel?
Real estate agent Harris Ferguson and 16 friends are staging the second annual "Hookers Ball," in which guests are encouraged to come as "harlots of the night and pandering counterparts," according to the invitation.
The downtown Roanoke hotel is a few blocks from one of the city's trouble spots for prostitution, but the private event is a long way from promoting such activity, said Ferguson. The Smith Mountain Lake realty agent uses his personal mailing list to gather a crowd he expects will reach 400.
The ball was held on Williamson Road last year.
Ferguson said the event brings several thousand dollars to Roanoke's economy. Thirty rooms have been set aside at special rates so out-of-town guests don't have to drink and drive home, plus considerable money has been spent by guests who plan "to see who can get the tackiest."
Last year, Ferguson wore a $40 outfit from the Salvation Army store. This year, he found a zebra pattern warm-up suit at a flea market.
He said the sponsors are single guys in their 30s, as he is, who use the party as an opportunity to have a good time and do some business smoozing.
The 15 men and one woman who are hosts for the event will be introduced and their businesses identified, so there's a little advertising mixed in with the Mardi Gras atmosphere.
For fear that some potential customers might be offended by the ball, however, the hosts didn't want their names or their companies mentioned in the newspaper.
Joy Smith, the hotel's director of sales, said the party is business just like any other event at the hotel, but she hasn't decided if the ball's name will be posted on the events calendar in the lobby.
by CNB