The Importance of Gender in Commercials
By sithfrog 2 Comments
We have a two month old daughter that we adopted back in March and this has lead to some major changes in our house, especially since she is our first child (my wife is due on Halloween with our second). One of these changes is that the TV in our bedroom doesn't get the volume above "1". Our little girl, up until a few days ago when we were finally able to transition her to her crib, was sleeping in our room so we didn't want the TV to wake her up. In order to help make sure we were getting the "full effect" my wife turned on the Closed Captioning. What a useful tool to help the hearing impaired watch television. While not perfect, the people and/or machines in charge of transcripting shows and most commercials do a decent job. One thing has me raising my eyebrow however.
When a person does a voice over on a commercial, in brackets it states [male announcer] or [female voice] or vice versa. My question is why? I know enough about advertising to know that many things are done strategically to make consumers what to purchase the goods or services being offered, but what about those watching who are hearing impaired, have a little one around, or might be watching TV at a bar, waiting room, or some other public place? Does it really make a difference if the announcer is a man or woman? I find it a bit funny that the distinction is made. I certainly don't have any disrespect for these people, but it is not like they are usually given credit for their work. Unless it is a celebrity that is commonly recognized, it's not like we even know the true names of people in commercials, let alone the names of the narrators. I guess I see it as unnecessary. It doesn't hurt anyone, but I just wonder if it wastes someone's time or if advertisers actually feel or have the research to back up that what they are trying to sell will indeed sell better if we know if a man or woman is informing us about, whether we can hear them or not.
Any thoughts?