Toshiba’s sleazy tablet ads

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BuzzFeed:

I honestly can’t believe this was approved by such a major company as Toshiba (212,000 employees worldwide). This is 2012, right? Anyway, creatively, the videos are basically lame. The double entendres are lame. The ending jokes are really lame. If you’re going to be sexist morons, at least push the idea a bit. `

` Agreed. If you’re going to be sexist morons, at least put some effort into it. Thanks to Michael Gartenberg.



  • lucascott

    Lame and sexist is giving them too much credit.

  • http://mobilesyncbrowser.com VaughnSC

    It’s parody. In my youth, I often stopped to admire female contortionists in yoga and aerobics ‘workout’ shows. Far be it from me to cast a stone.

    • gjgustav

      It goes a bit beyond parody, I think.

  • http://www.johncblandii.com John C. Bland II

    That’s bad.

  • http://mobilesyncbrowser.com VaughnSC

    Nah. It actually verges on ‘demure,’ as anyone who saw (Canada’s) ‘:20 Minute Workout’ in the 80′s can attest. It’s more like having ‘Lilias Yoga & You’ popping up on your PBS station. I’m sure there are contemporary equivalents, so the humor is required lest you mistake it for ‘the real thing’ and flip channels.

  • Dan

    Oh please, yes they’re terribly bad ads, but when will people get over themselves and stop calling everything with a woman in it sexist and everything with a black person in it racist.

    • http://twitter.com/Moeskido Moeskido

      Perhaps when such ads stop relying upon bad taste to cover up a lack of wit.

      • Dan

        They call this sexist, they called that Asus twitter comment sexist, they call everything with a model/booth babe/good looking woman sexist, so yes really everything.

        • http://twitter.com/Moeskido Moeskido

          Sure, everything that qualifies, given the context and the usage. Sorry to disappoint you.

    • Thomas

      You can do this kind of thing clever and smart … and you can do it ham-fisted … this is clearly the latter …

      • Dan

        True, but that doesn’t make it sexist.

        • http://twitter.com/Moeskido Moeskido

          What would Toshiba have had to do for you to qualify those ads as sexist, then? What’s your threshold for suggestive use of the female body in a lewd context?

          • Dan

            Do you call the AXE ads with half naked men sexist? Because no-one does, because they’re not sexist. Sexual advertisement is not sexist. The woman in this ad is a model, her job is being pretty, using her for that, paying her for doing what she chooses to do, what she gets payed for to do has nothing to do with sexism.

            Tell me were is the discrimination towards this person in this ad? Was she hired to engineer the product but they told her she can’t do it because she’s a women and instead used her as a model? No they didn’t. They hired her for exactly what she put herself on the market for.

            The threshold would be insinuating that women or men can’t use this device because they are men or women. You know, things that are actually sexist, like discrimination, prejudice, intolerance, bigotry etc. because of the sex of the person.

            Ask yourself; if this was a male yoga teacher, or something like that, would you call it sexist? No, it’s just a bad ad.

          • http://twitter.com/Moeskido Moeskido

            You’ll never see a male yoga teacher in ads like this, displaying his body in a suggestive manner which somehow implies that a tablet will satisfy you sexually. Because the target audience of these ads are foolish men, many of whom don’t believe the ad is sexist. Funny how that works.

            The woman in the ad is an actor who accepted a paying gig, regardless of the sexism. You might be shocked to hear that advertising is full of actors who’ve known for decades how demeaning and stupid their work is, but yet do the work anyway. Because it’s paying work that might lead to a few better roles.

            I’m guessing if you could ask this woman if she’d rather have been depicted as a smart professional shown using a new tablet in a genuinely functional manner — without thrusting her ass in your face — she might just say yes. As an actor, she knows she’ll have a much longer working career if she can go out for roles that don’t exclusively depend upon how pretty she remains. Assuming those roles exist, which they won’t. In part because foolish men don’t believe they’re being sexist when they complain about sexism.

            When Toshiba targets women for this product, you’ll know it. Because they’ll find some way to imply that the tablet can help women run a household, manage kids, remain unhealthily skinny, or serve their man in some other way. If they bother addressing that demographic at all. Because only bros buy tablets. Right, bro?

            I haven’t seen many Axe ads, but the ones I couldn’t avoid were all traditionally sleazy, having barely evolved from similar personal-care product ads created in the 1960s, and the messages conveyed were certainly clear enough. “Buy this product and you’ll get laid. Because women are helpless, mindless, easily-influenced, stupid animals, waiting for you to pick them off and brag about it later.”

            The fact that a man might have his shirt off in some of these ads is irrelevant, because he’s still in control of the “relationship,” if you can call it that.

            It’s a bad ad for a reason.

          • Dan

            Sex sells, women more than men, generally because both woman and men can appreciate a beautiful women, while most men don’t respond to attractive males like women do to attractive females. When’s the last time you complained about how sexist an advertisement for heavy machinery etc. is? You haven’t because only women must be protected from being the subject of sexualized content. Because obviously chainsaw advertisements are geared towards people who enjoy watching half naked men taking down trees.

            I got nothing else for you until you look up and accept the difference between sexist and sexualized content, one uses sex to sell thing the other ones degrades a group because they’re not as good as the other sex.

          • http://twitter.com/Moeskido Moeskido

            Sex sells? Really? That’s your blanket reason for why women are depicted as sexualized objects more often than men? And that’s not in itself a sexist assumption? The fact that most of the advertising we’re discussing is overseen, written, designed by, and targeted towards men doesn’t suggest anything sexist to you?

            I complain a lot about ads for machinery, beer, cars, candy, and other products that portray men as stereotyped lizard-brained dumbassed children who have no clue about how to behave like grownups, in or out of a relationship with someone they supposedly care for. I complain about any advertising that tries to make book on generalizations based on gender roles. Because such generalizations are sexist.

            But thanks for making assumptions. Keep complaining about how difficult it is for you to live as a straight white guy in a world that’s slipping back towards the 19th century.