So I came across this ad either on my mailing list or somewhere in their page a while back.

Its that kind of ad that you didn’t really bats an eye when the first time you’ve seen it, but then in my postgrad class we were required to pick an ads that induce the feeling of conflict or in other word can be seen as unethical

That is when this ad come back in my mind, so after a simple google research I’ve found this ad again

Don’t get me wrong, I do love Benefit cosmetic product, I’ve been using their Brow Zings, Porefessional, and their Box O’ Powders for years.

But there is something in this ads that could be interpret as offensive, and again this is only my interpretation of this ads from my own point of view. Benefit Co. might have completely different meaning when they design this ad campaign.

The idea of this advertisement seems slightly inconsistent with the already established ads campaign of this company. Because instead of utilizing the feel-good feeling like the previous Benefit Cosmetic campaign, this ads is trying to induce anxiety by emphasizing on woman insecurity about their eyebrows.

The idea that they use for the advertising might be slightly offensive and showing a bit of misogynist behavior by comparing a pair of untidy eyebrow of a woman with a monkey/beast

And the thing is, this approach is designed to aim for the consumer especially those who have big insecurities of their eyebrow to buy and use the product that Benefit Cosmetic offers.

Well, at the same time considering that their target market are mostly teenager-young adult this humorous approach might works because it could be passed off as a light joke.

One of the reason of maybe why they emphasize on insecurities is because research has shown that teenager and young adult have a tendency to be more physically oriented compared to more matured woman.

The comparison and analogy of a woman with un-kept eyebrow with a monkey/beast is very straight to the point. It shows to woman how to always keep their beauty and to use the Benefit Cosmetic product to avoid this kind of situation.

The idea is in no way generic or basic. Although, it doesn’t necessary means that this idea is the best idea that Benefit Cosmetic have ever had. As mentioned before if the humorous sense of this ads is ignored for a second, this ads could come up as offensive, sexist, and misogynist.

There are a lot of reasons of why consumer decide to choose to buy a product, which not necessarily a direct impact from their ad campaign itself.

At the end of the day total sales will be one of the main factor to determine whether or not an advertising is considered a success or not.

So some company might decided to focus on how to make an ads that sells instead of making advertising that is not offensive or in a bad taste.

fin xx