Published By Justin on September 10th, 2007
Filed under marketing, tv ads, food / entertainment, music, sex
Filed under marketing, tv ads, food / entertainment, music, sex
A “tip of the hat and wag of the finger” (as Stephen Colbert would say) to Heineken’s new DraughtKeg ad with the robot girl dispensing beer. First, the accolades: this commercial has all the right stuff - a nice cold keg of good (well, decent) beer, techno music, eery lighting effects, and a hot robot chick that can turn herself into multiple hot robot chicks… Heineken just did a 30 second trailer for my ideal wedding night!
Which is why I got a bit pissed at Heineken when I got to the liquor store. Turns out, they are only selling the keg part of the whole robot girl contraption. This is false advertising! Heineken, listen up: send me my self-replicating hot techno robot bride or you’ll be hearing from my lawyers.
September 12th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
I’m with you on this one, I love robot and cartoon chicks more thant he real thing. The commercial is killer and the beer only ok, so great advertising.
September 19th, 2007 at 9:26 am
Yes - but what does this say about women? We are only here to serve you beer and replicate ourselves to fulfill every desire of our ‘master’? This commercial is demeaning to women and the Heineken product.
September 19th, 2007 at 11:58 am
So by your reasoning then, Natalie, I should be offended by the Michelin man.. he objectifies men into fat bastards whose only purpose is to guard the safety of women and children when driving. Or the old “I can’t believe it’s not butter” commercials. After all, how could I ever, when serving my girl a buttered bagel, live up to the unrealistic expectations set by hunky Fabio? How can I possibly cope with the demeaning or idealizing abstractions of men that I am bombarded with in society every day?
I gotta call bullshit on this. I simply don’t identify with the Michelin man. I don’t feel I’m competing with Fabio. If you are somehow identifying with this highly abstracted weird robot girl with extendo-arms and a pony keg in her mechanical chest cavity, then that’s really more a statement about you than it is about the commercial. I read an article on AdAge or AdRants about how this is “the most misogynistic beer ad ever”. So I asked several of my female friends what they thought of it. Not one has had any problem with it. The common consensus was, “whoa, cool”. I’m going to side with the ladies on this ad.
September 19th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
No Natalie, women are not here to serve beer, replicate themselves and serve every desire of their masters. We just *wish* they were.
September 19th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
haha you’re not helping, Luke!
September 19th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
I’m sorry that you feel that way. I don’t identify with the robot or what she is going. My fear is that the young girls and women out there who are just starting to form their identity and learning to be a woman in this highly sexist and rape cultured society will identify with it.
September 19th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
http://www.apa.org/pi/wpo/sexualization.html
September 19th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
I would agree that media sends a lot of messages to our youth. What I dispute is the power of those messages in shaping them. Most research puts family and peers (local social groups) as *orders of magnitude* more influential than media. Parents and friends fuck with kids’ heads, not the media.
Sooo many studies have been commissioned, testing this relationship. Is Grand Theft Auto creating a generation of kids who steal cars and beat hookers in the streets? Is gangsta rap causing drug use and rape? Etc., etc. The answers to all these studies is always a resounding “No”.
I listened to NWA, Easy E, 2 Live Crew, Tupac, etc in my formative teen years. And yet I still open car doors for women and have several female friends. Why? Because my parents and friends respect women.
Berating advertising for our societal ills is a cop-out. It’s much easier to write an angry letter to Heineken than it is to address the larger issue of how we are raising our children.
September 19th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
Don’t you think though, that they have some influence? Even if they are not the main influence, they are still there. I also agree that the way we raise our children has the power to shape our children - but if understand Rape Culture and what it entails then there is no way that you can deny that we are a society that tolerates abuse, degradation, and the inequality of women in our society. This tolerance shows up in our print media everywhere - from Heineken to the ads from Calvin Klein (especially the 1995 ad campaign that looked like kidde porn). We live in a society where the media not only condones sexual violence - but also idolizes it.
September 19th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Yes, media does have *some* influence. But media is not “on the medal stand” in importance. If you are truly concerned with shaping young women’s images, there are so many larger targets than a stupid beer ad (that none of my female friends even found the least bit offensive).
As for “Rape Culture”, that’s just radical feminist drivel meant for shock value. Since around 1980, rape incidents have been on a constant trend *downward*! It is still a problem - one rape is one too many - but if we were to make any statements at all about modern media’s effect on rape statistics, it would be that it helps reduce occurences! I am not trying to make this point, as any 1st semester Sciences major knows that “correlation is not causation”, but it does at least make the point that “Rape Culture” is completely bogus.
September 20th, 2007 at 10:52 am
Like I said before, I am very sorry that you feel that way.
September 20th, 2007 at 11:42 am
It has nothing to do with how I feel. What I state is fact. Here are the US Dept. of Justice rape stats since ‘73.
Saying things like “we live in a Rape Culture” is extremely inflammatory, Natalie, especially when evidence points to the contrary. And I’m sure radical feminists think you’re helping when you throw the word “rape” around when casually talking about media/culture/etc… but you’re not. You are trivializing something that is very real and very serious. It is kind of like the old adage, “In an argument, the first person to call the other a Nazi loses the argument”.
If you want to convince people that media is demeaning our young women, support it with facts, not inflammatory rhetoric. Baseless rhetoric will only hurt your cause and lead people to dismiss you.
September 20th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
i thought that i did provide you with some facts, please see above website.
September 20th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
Yes, I read parts of the report. I really don’t know what to make of it. I’m not calling it false, but certain parts seemed a bit suspect. Like, “[Researchers] found that the extent to which girls viewed their bodies as objects and were concerned about their bodies’ appearance predicted poorer motor performance on the softball throw”. I mean, come on!
Yes, I do not disagree that media does send out messages laden with sexual imagery. But I look at my female cousins and see how confident and successful they are, and it knocks things back in perspective. Parenting and peers trump media. Even the APA site said that.
And what I really took issue with was your use of “rape culture”. Even the APA report, while not using the term, did allude to a conclusion that our society was more likely to engage in rape due to trends in sexualization. Why, then, is rape in decline? What does this say about the APA report?
Psychology is called a “soft science” for a reason. It has trouble presenting “hard facts”. A physicist can drop a ball from a tower, time its descent, and come up with the rate of acceleration due to gravity at Earth’s surface. Meanwhile, a psychologist is stuck saying, “Describe your mood today… now throw this softball!”
September 21st, 2007 at 7:58 am
Just because rape is on a decline that does not mean that we do not live in a rape culture.
Part of what rape culture contains is that males and females are not able to identify what rape is - date rape, use of date rape drugs, rape while intoxicated because it is ingrained in the society that this type of behavior is normal and boys and men (and also women who rape) are entitled to the use of someone else’s body. It does not solely rest on the prevalence of rape. Just because a woman is strong and confident in herself does not protect her from being raped.
Some other statistic that you may find interesting is that only 3 in 10 rapes are actually reported, 2/3 had a prior relationship with that person, 1 in 3 college students will be sexually assaulted before they are done with college.
In a survey of 11 to 14 year olds:
• 51% of the boys and 41% of the girls said forced sex was acceptable if the boy “spent a lot of money” on the girl;
• 31% of the boys and 32% of the girls said it was acceptable for a man to rape a woman with past sexual experiences;
• 87% of the boys and 79% of the girls said sexual assault was acceptable if the man and woman were married;
• 65% of the boys and 47% of the girls said it was acceptable for a boy to rape a girl if they had been dating for more than six months
There are so many other ‘hard’ statistics…if you want to see more go to the following websites. If you want to see something with your own eyes…do this…take out sheet of paper and write down what you do everyday to avoid being raped. Ask some of your male friends what they do to avoid being raped everyday. Then, go to some of your female friends and ask them what they do everyday to avoid being raped…
http://www.icasa.org/statsFacts.asp - Illinois Coalition against Sexual Assault
http://www.calcasa.org/ - California Coalition Against Sexual Assault
http://www.usdoj.gov/ovw/ - United States Department of Justice: Office On Violence Against Women
September 21st, 2007 at 1:07 pm
On my paper I wrote, “Stay out of prison.” :)
May I ask where you got your survey results of 11-14 year-olds?
I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this topic. I’ll agree that media sends sexual messages. I’ll agree that it objectifies both women and men. But I don’t believe it’s teaching men to rape women. I happen to think that a downward trend in rape incidents is very much an indicator that we don’t live in a “rape culture”. And while it may very well be true that only 3 in 10 are reported, I’m sure that stat held back in ‘73 as well, and therefore has no bearing on the statistics.
I think it would be interesting to do a survey of men, asking them if putting a roofie in a girl’s drink, carrying them home and having sex with them is rape. I’m hypothesizing you’d be hard-pressed to find a significant % that truly believes it isn’t. I don’t think media is convincing any of us men that it’s ok to have sex with an unconscious woman. Do you really think that?
Really we’re on the same side on this one, Natalie. I have dealt with the issue of rape in my own family - I know first-hand how traumatizing it is - I think offenders should be castrated and given a slow, painful death. I just don’t think this “rape culture” business is helping the cause. Women aren’t being raped because of a Heineken ad. They’re being raped because of sick fucks that had a shitty childhood, abusive parents, or who knows what. I think directing attacks at the media is misplaced and distracts people from the real problem.
October 11th, 2007 at 10:12 am
Speaking as a female who was apparantely “degraded” on account of this commercial, I’d say it’s one of the most creative and well-made ones on television…
Don’t speak for all of us. Especially considering the fact that many women were apart of CREATING the commercial.
October 26th, 2007 at 6:24 pm
Hey, there was an article recently about someday perfecting robots so that people could actually have sex with them.
I tell you what! If they ever get even CLOSE to the Heineken robot girl, “Minnie”, I will stop dating real women, and take out a lone and spend ten years paying of my sex robot girl.
Who need the bitching and moaning anway? (Ok, I do like one kind of moaning). I lived in China for five years, and I am returning soon, because the women there were the CLOSEST thing I have ever come to to finding submissive, subserviant women. They are all young, crazy for sex, and willing to please their man no matter what.
God Bless CHINA!
Lost Gypsy
October 29th, 2007 at 5:32 am
Women who finds it demeaning watching any media with women selling SEX have a problem with lack of SELF confidence or wrongly educated…These media are simply using what is naturally the most attractive FORM or medium to whoever they are trying to sell their products. In this case the target is Male adult, and the medium is SEXY women (what else do you think gets a man’s attention and maintain it - Hormones dictates a lot of our actions,this is how nature ensure survival of our kind ), now if the target is the gay populace, they would probably use Fabio, then maybe Natalie would not have any problem with it. Watching sex from a media DOES NOT promote rape, provided of course everybody who watched were properly educated. Interpretation of any media depends greatly on a person’s level of education and of course upbringing. SEX is merely a tool for PROCREATION….the pleasure we derive from it ,like I stated before, is nature’s way of ensuring our survival.
October 29th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
uh, this is still my halloween costume!! and it’s frid’gn AWESOME!
October 31st, 2007 at 12:33 am
Just please tell me - who is minnie in real life? She is about the hottest woman I have seen!
November 1st, 2007 at 7:49 pm
Natalie… It says: (1) Women are hot. (2) They can operate very important, complicated mechanical items (while in tall shoes) and (3) They can draw a beer with just the right amount of head while smiling the whole time. And you only have to do everything we say until we marry you - then you get the antidote…..it’s called a ring! Now get the king a beer!
January 17th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article Heineken’s New Beer-Dispensing Robot Girl, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.