Abstract
Promoting beauty products to young women in the 21st century is a challenging task, as most female customers tend to follow the existing trend instead of choosing what product will suit them specifically. Therefore, consistent changes in the company brand are required to suit the needs of millions of young women all over the U.S. and the world.
However, as soon as a message regarding the uniqueness of each customer and, therefore, the need to choose the appropriate product is sent, the target audience is likely to buy the goods that will make them unique. The key idea that the company sends to its customers, therefore, is not shaping their appearance to comply with the current trend but, instead, to create their own concept of fashion with the help of the products provided. The organization under analysis bends the concept of beauty, offering every young woman an opportunity to feel not only beautiful but special.
Introduction
The significance of appearance – or, to be more exact, the appearance that follows the existing concept of beauty – can hardly be overrated nowadays. The people that are deemed as beautiful gain more attention are treated in a more favorable fashion and are overall more socially successful than those who are not. Herein the significance of beauty-related services lies. However, while most beauty services do exactly what the current standards compel them to, very few offer their customers actual help in identifying the means to emphasize their beauty as they see it. Company X does exactly that; it bends the current concept of beauty so that its clients could find their unique style and shape it the way that they like.
Thesis Statement
To make the target clients perceive the message and, which is even more important, believe its sender, the latter must be as brusque as possible, which can be achieved by combining a comparatively persuasive message written in a delicate font with a series of rather sharp images.
Rationale
The rationale for the choice of the image in question is rather basic. Seeing that the representation of beauty as an ambiguous concept that can be interpreted in a variety of ways depending on the environment that it is placed in is the key message to be conveyed, the images under analysis have to represent the traditional concept of beauty yet also trick the audience into challenging the current beauty standards.
The sequence of images chosen for the promotion, in its turn, serves the specified purpose perfectly. For instance, the billboard that contains the image of a woman and that advertises a beauty product can be used as a stock representation of female beauty. Combined with the textual part of the message, the information in the picture will become contradictory to itself since the picture will applaud to the concept that the text criticizes. As a result, the audience will spot the inconsistency and will feel the urge to analyze it, thus, coming to the necessary conclusion.
The image of a woman belonging to one of the African cultures, when combined with the specified textual elements, will help the audience view the problem from a different perspective.; Particularly, the people whom the specified commercial will be targeted at will perceive the message that the concepts of beauty depend on the environment that they were created in, and what is interpreted as marvelous in the country of the customers’ birth will not necessarily be accepted as such in other parts of the world. Thus, the audience will be ready to accept the fact that beauty is a very controversial concept that can be attached to literally any visual element (DeMello, 2013).
Last but definitely not least, the combination of a comparatively unattractive and at some point, quite scary image of a woman with the above-mentioned textual part will most likely trick people into analyzing the current perception of beauty from a critical perspective. People will question the current beauty standards and, therefore, be able to realize that they possess intrinsic beauty that the company in question may help the reveal.
Media and the Message
As it has been stressed above, the project in question is aimed at stressing the significance of the contemporary problem concerning the wrong perception of beauty. Particularly, every single element of media is supposed to point to the need to reconsider the existing interpretation of beauty so that people could stop pursuing the goals that were foisted onto them and search for the interpretation of the phenomenon in question as viewed through their esthetic lenses (Wolf, 2013).
Each element of the media chosen, therefore, represents the message in a rather obvious manner. Particularly, the visuals speak to people’s traditional image of beauty, therefore, pointing to the fact that it is mostly influenced by modern media. The sexualization of the images used in advertising is also stressed in the next image, which represents a billboard commercial for a skin product (Gunter, 2014). The mild contrast between the images, the choice of a font and the message that the text conveys serves as the trigger for the audience to pay closer attention to what they consider beautiful as opposed to what media offers them is the foundation for the weight of the message to grow (Sponder, 2011).
The shift to a social satire of beauty as the key idea behind the imagery used in the next slides also serves as food for thoughts. Last but definitely not least, the image containing a screenshot with the words “You’re ugly” on them represents the worst effects of the pursuit of the ideals suggested to the target audience by modern media. Making people view the concept of beauty from a critical perspective, it points to the fact that the positive assessment of one’s physical appearance depends on not only the societal prejudice and standards but also on one’s personal interpretation of the subject matter (Wang, 2012).
Intent
The key intent of the message concerns convincing young women that, instead of shaping their appearance to the current standard of beauty foisted onto them by modern media, they should seek the unique characteristics that single them out and try making their own fashion statement. The project in question is not aimed at proving the current concepts of beauty wrong since not all ideas promoted by modern media are misguided.
There is a grain of truth in the way that beauty is represented in the modern media; however, the positive characteristics thereof are concealed by a thick layer of prejudice that can lead to a significant drop in self-esteem among young women (Shields, 2013). Herein the need to emphasize the importance of a positive self-image and the need to redesign the target audience’s perception of their selves lies. The project in question, therefore, is aimed primarily at pointing to the fact that physical beauty can be viewed as a combination of physical health and unique characteristics of one’s appearance that makes one stand out as an individual.
It would be wrong to believe, thus, that Company X wants its clients to abandon the existing standards of beauty. Instead, the message sent to the target audience conveys the idea of finding the unique characteristics that make them stand out of the crowd and use these characteristics as the means to make them unique in their beauty. It is essential that the target audience should realize that they are not persuaded to buy the company’s product but, instead, are provided with a different way of interpreting essential social concepts. As a result, the relationships between the organization and the customers will be based on mutual trust, which will create an opportunity for enlightening the specified audience on the issue of beauty in media.
Conclusion
Although persuading the target audience to bend the concept of beauty to their advantage and view the features that modern standards do not consider beautiful as such although the general opinion is a challenging task, it can be carried out by incorporating the imagery that contrasts with the message and, therefore, makes the latter stand out. Once the information concerning the uniqueness of appearance and the necessity to glorify it reaches the customers, they are likely to be exhilarated about trying the services of Company X.
Reference List
DeMello, M. (2013). Body studies: An introduction. New York, NY: Routledge. Web.
Gunter, B. (2014). Media and the sexualization of childhood. New York, NY: Routledge. Web.
Shields, R. C. (2013). Measuring up: How advertising affects self-image. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Web.
Sponder, M. (2011). Social media analytics: Effective tools for building, interpreting, and using metrics. London, UK: McGraw Hill Professional. Web.
Wang, A. U. (2012). Visualizing beauty: Gender and ideology in Modern East Asia. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Web.
Wolf, N. (2013). The beauty myth: How images of beauty are used against women. New York, NY: Random House. Web.