Marketing Communications

UNETHICAL MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS PRACTICES 561

about a government campaign promoting a healthy lifestyle using the slogan ‘a healthy

person is worth two’. She claimed that she had been unhealthy for all her life and that she felt

stigmatised by the slogan and the campaign. Th e jury expressed its sympathy with the lady’s

health problems but ruled that the government used a perfectly acceptable metaphor and

dismissed the complaint.

A recent study of 600 female role portrayals in online ads for global products concluded

that women are generally portrayed in a stereotypical or decorative way and that sexism is

prevalent in online ads worldwide. On websites directed at women, females were generally

portrayed as decorative. Websites directed at men mostly showed women in a dependent or

a traditional role. General-audience websites featured women mostly as housewives or equal

Source : Image courtesy of The Advertising Archives.

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