Advertisment Analysis

Olay presents an advertisement for their "complete" facial cream by depicting a calm, happy woman with several, strategically placed words surrounding her. She is seen gazing proudly at her wedding ring on her finger and words describe the life of a happy wife and mother. She is described as a shoe aficionado and a woman who takes time to take care of herself. As a result, Olay's product is something that is well suited to her and helps her to be "complete".

The ad brings forth strong stereotypes in terms of the woman and communicates her as someone who is only a mother and wife with no greater ambitions. This portrays the woman as someone who spends all her time simply taking care of beauty. This is a strong stereotype and distracts from those woman who work hard to achieve larger goals. The ad generalizes woman as people who have no interest in achieving greater things but rather prefer to focus on their beauty only. Even in regards to her role as a mother and wife, it shows that she still be focusing on her beauty. The ad makes the viewer believe that all woman are simply concerned with meaningless things such as shoes and facial products. It may seem that the ad is empowering woman to be complete in all they do however it chooses not to focus on important aspects. It ignores the strong, ambitious woman that is interested in making a change. While this ad could have focused on the woman being able to be strong in all aspects of her life including work, interest and family life, it does not. This shows that the most important message it is trying to communicate is that woman should not focus on real things but rather on feeble things, which encourages the product. This is vital for the placement of their product in the story that they are trying to sell. Olay creates this image of what looks like an "ideal woman" and then emphasizes the importance of their product in this.